Last Saturday, the mailman brought the scourge of librarians and mothers all over the country a guaranteed path to eternal damnation, at least in the eyes of some. Last

Saturday, I got the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

A few weeks earlier, SI started publishing a notice warning parents the swimsuit issue was on the horizon. The magazine now offers customers the opportunity to not get that particular issue so they won't be offended when the best selling issue of the year (by a wide margin) arrives in mailboxes and newsstands everywhere.

The weeks following the annual celebration of warm weather, fashion, and scantily clothed young women brings the wrath of those destined to protect impressionable young male eyes from naked female skin.

In a world where violence is not only prevalent but celebrated, fraud is an accepted way of doing business, and greed is considered a character trait, some folks get their undies in a wad over near naked ladies in a sports magazine.

Year after year letter after letter scolds SI for daring to print something as offensive as women in bathing suits. And the magazine prints as many of those complaints as they can find space for.

So many subscriptions have been cancelled over swimsuit models, you'd think the magazine would be out of business by now. Or at least beaten and bloodied enough to stop publishing that particular issue.

Yet, today the issue not only features more models in more exotic locations, it doesn't include anything else. Real sports stories are sent out later in a separate magazine. Celebrity swimsuit models, wives of famous athletes, regular swimsuit models in very little swimsuits, and even some supermodels wearing only paint not only fill the issue entirely, Time, Inc. has to make that particular issue thicker.

This underscores the obvious. Sex is extremely influential in a country of former Puritans. We deny it, cover it up, justify it, and limit how far we take it, but anything remotely connected with sex will sell, and sell extremely well. Sex will also sell pretty doggone good by itself.

The key is to draw a line somewhere so the product being sold appears to be innocent, like, say the upcoming summer beach

fashions. When Sports Illustrated published photographs of a famous gymnast working out naked, the outcry was so strong the magazine promised to never do something so vile again, for fear of dooming the country to a fire and brimstone thunderstorm.

But no matter how small they become or how wet they happen to get during the photo session, swimsuits are still swimsuits. Innocent young girls will be able to wear them during the summer so they have to be acceptable, right?

Some folks will still scream for censorship, for innocent females to be covered from neck to ankle. Impressionable young boys might be damaged. But those in power know that is not necessary; no one will get prurient ideas from Sports Illustrated. They're not naked. They're wearing swimsuits.

Since the intent is not to arouse anyone, the government won't get involved like they did with Janet Jackson. Besides, there are millions of internet predators to worry about.