Experts disagree about the relationship between testosterone and aggression. The endocrine system is complex, and it is difficult to attribute aggressive behavior to any one hormone, or to attribute a particular behavior, as opposed to a predisposition to a behavior, to hormones at all.

But let’s assume that the presence of testosterone does play some role in fostering aggression. One question then becomes: should the U.S. army encourage its production in the blood of its soldiers? Feminists and social conservatives are saying no. I say yes.

The issue has to come to the fore because a Christian group called the American Family Association (AFA) has launched a campaign to force the Pentagon to enforce more stringently a ban on the sale of sexually explicit material on military bases. Apparently Penthouse and Playboy are available for sale in some commissaries.

According to USA Today, the American Family Association is shocked and dismayed to find these magazines there, and even more so by the military’s contention that these publications, based upon its careful analysis of their contents, are not pornography, and thus not subject to the ban. The military has a special unit that makes such determinations. It employs a complex formula that takes into account how many pages of a publication contain lewd and lascivious material and how many pages do not. “They’re saying, ‘We’re not selling stuff that’s sexually explicit’” complained Donald Wildmon to USA Today. “We say it’s pornography.”

On this issue, I’m a bedfellow–not literally–with Nadine Strossen, who heads the ACLU. Her reasoning is that: “we’re asking these people to risk their lives to defend our Constitution’s principles … and they’re being denied their own First Amendment rights to choose what they read.” Although my reasoning is somewhat different, I concur and augment: our country is in a fight. Whether Playboy is pornography or not, we don’t need sexually obsessed prudes running the show. We do need maximum aggressiveness to win.