Our New State Motto? Arizona: Where Men Go to Give Up Sex

What is it about Arizona that makes men come here to give up sex?

Perhaps it's because we don’t use a black light set the mood … it’s for locating scorpions. Or maybe after exposure to some of the crazy shit that goes on with our politicians, no one would want to reproduce.

A few years ago, golfer Tiger Woods visited the Meadows in Wickenburg to cure his compulsion for banging IHOP waitresses. (I’ll get to the golfing sex jokes later.) And now we learn through TMZ that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein is seeking treatment in the desert after his lechery for leading ladies was revealed in the New York Times.

Actually, it shouldn’t have taken an undercover investigative reporter to get to the bottom of this story. Weinstein had it written into his contract that he couldn’t be fired for his sexual conquests as long as he paid off the accusers. (Imagine trying to sell that plot twist to Hollywood.)

Since the Times story, more than a dozen actresses, including Oscar winners Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow, have attested to his detestable behavior.

The secret was so well known that Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane loathingly mocked Weinstein at the 2013 Oscars while announcing the nominees for Best Supporting Actress.

"Congratulations,” said McFarlane, who later admitted that a good friend had been assaulted by the producer, “you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein."

But why did Woods and Weinstein and many others that TMZ probably doesn’t know about search for sexual salvation in Arizona?

We don’t know for sure, but apparently we are home of one of the leading sexual addiction therapists in the country, Ralph Earle, MDiv, Ph.D, ABPP, LMFT, CSAT. (Yes, men brag about the length of their titles, too.)

Earle is the founder and director of Psychological Counseling Services in Scottsdale. The clinic’s mission: healing hearts and transforming lives. If they are indeed treating this Hollywood tin man, they’ll probably have aim a bit lower.

Neither Earle nor the clinic returned requests for comment, so I did some actual research and read the intro to one of the counselor’s books, The Pornography Trap. (I imagined Hayley Mills playing the lead in Miramax’s film version, but that’s a fantasy for another time.)

Let me summarize this cautionary tale of virginity:

Peter (Earle’s choice of pseudonyms not mine) and Doris fell in love at a Christian college but decided to “save themselves for marriage.” So Peter continued to masturbate regularly while watching X-rated TV shows or calling phone sex lines. They married after graduation and lived happily ever after … or for at least or the next two months until Peter, a part-time youth minister while attending seminary, was caught playing kissy-face or whatever with two high school girls.

What happens next? Does Dr. Ralph pull Peter out of this jam? Not sure. That was the end of the PDF.

And the book really didn’t give me a clue about why Weinstein is apparently holed up somewhere in Scottsdale. He doesn’t seem a likely candidate to be a man of the cloth.

But we have so much else in Arizona  that could help the wayward man limit his libido.

Like sports.

Give a man a choice between sex and a seat on the 50-yard line and you know where his butt is going to be every time.

And we’ve got it all: pro sports, major college sports, and the Coyotes. We’ve been host to Super Bowls, college football championships, and just this last spring, the NCAA Final Four.

Even Grand Canyon University has gone big-time, hosting college basketball power Louisville and its Hall of Fame coach, P. Rick Pitino last season.

Talk about the Christians versus the Philistines.

A couple of seasons ago, Pitino was caught having sex with a woman who was not his wife at his table in a Louisville restaurant. (“Would you like to see the dessert menu, sir?” “You bet.”)

Then, his school was penalized after the NCAA discovered basketball players were being entertained by hookers and strippers. But Pitino wasn’t put on indefinite leave (i.e., they're working out a severance package) until one of his assistants was charged with writing a $100,000 check to a recruit, proving that men are more willing to pay for a winning team than for sex.

If not football or basketball, though, maybe it’s our golf that helps gets men’s minds out of the gutter.

You can golf 12 months a year here, playing a round sated with sexual innuendo without actually participating.

You wrap your fingers around a steel-hard shaft. You brag about the length you get out of your wood. You knock it in the hole. You ask a stranger, “Do you want to join our threesome?”

Johnny Carson once asked Arnold Palmer’s wife if she did anything to wish the golfing legend luck before a tournament.

“I kiss his balls,” she reportedly said.

"Well, I bet that flutters his putter,” Carson deadpanned.

Years later, Palmer told Jay Leno the conversation never happened. “I don’t even go to bed without pajamas,” Palmer said.

Ohhh …kaayy.

Finally, among westerners, we know there’s no better substitute for sex than the Second Amendment. Nothing makes a makes a man feel more potent than unholstering his gun.

In some places, guns are more important than sex. At the University of Texas, for instance, you can open carry a Glock on campus, but not a dildo. I’m not making this up.

So perhaps the Arizona fear factor will be part of Weinstein’s treatment.

Maybe he will be reminded that every woman he harassed, assaulted, or raped was somebody’s sister, daughter, mother, cousin, aunt, or BFF. And most likely, many of those friends and family members are packing.

I never advocate violence, of course, but I merely point out that this isn't Hollywood, where most actors shoot blanks.

Out here, the bullets are real.