Belgian Senator Urges Sex Strike Until Government Is Formed

If you want a politician's attention, hit 'em in the pants. That's the message from a Belgian senator who has urged legislators' spouses to go on a sex strike until their partners form a new coalition government.

Flemish parliamentarian Marleen Temmerman, a member of the Socialist Party, proposed prohibiting hanky-panky as a way to end the political deadlock that followed June's inconclusive election. Belgium has gone 242 days without a government, which means the nation is just seven days away from beating the previous world record held by Iraq.

Herwig Vergult / AFP / Getty

With Belgium about to hit eight months without a government, Socialist politician Marleen Temmerman called on parliamentarians' spouses "to have no more sex until a new administration" is formed.

This isn't the first unusual initiative intended to get parliamentarians talking. A Belgian comedian -- yes, they exist -- suggested that men should stop shaving until a coalition deal was signed. Sadly, the threat of an increasingly hirsute electorate didn't trigger a new round of negotiations.

So Temmerman decided to get personal and suggested that a political union might be best achieved through the denial of physical union. She asked party members' wives and girlfriends to "garder leurs jambes fermees" ("keep their legs closed"), Belgian news site Le Soir reported. And Temmerman -- who is also a respected gynecologist -- demanded that spouses of all genders "withhold sex until a deal is reached."

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Temmerman says a similar initiative worked in Kenya in 2009, when women took a vow of chastity to defuse rising tensions between the president and prime minister's followers.

"Kenyan prostitutes were offered financial compensation if they showed sisterly solidarity and participated in the sex strike," she said. "The impact has never been scientifically proven, but after just one week there was a stable government."

Fans of the classics might also agree on the merits of a bonking ban. "Lysistrata," a play first performed in Greece around 400 B.C., relates how women from rival city-states agreed to abstain from sex until their men signed a peace treaty. Realizing that love and lust are more important than battle and bloodshed, the soldiers eventually put down their weapons and pick up their womenfolk.