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Is forced frequency the cure for sex scarcity?

What does it mean that this article ? about married couples forcing themselves to have sex every day ? has been #1 on the NYT most-emailed list for days?

It should be noted that both couples ? the "Bible-studying steak-eating Republicans from Charlotte, N.C." and the "backpacking multigrain northerners" from Boulder ? both had not so much an idea for their marriage as an idea for a book. And it was a good idea, if getting publicity is the key to book sales. But would you want to read either book? I mean, even if you think that entering a pact like this would resexualize your marriage, don't you already have enough information to go ahead and try it? Do you actually want to read the way the Mullers and the Browns describe their repeated, self-forced sex? It's notoriously hard to write about sex. (Check out the Bad Sex in Fiction Awards.) So the chance that these dreary people have written anything worth reading is low. But book projects and PR will go on and on, even if sex does not.

Oh! I have a new entry for John Steele's contest! Marital sex is to sex as....

Back to the main topic: Is forced frequency the cure for sex scarcity? Should individuals with low desire just force themselves? Should they make contracts with partners and bind themselves to have sex whether they want it or not?

Did the Mullers or the Browns ever arrive at any interesting philosophical thoughts about love and free will? Or is it just cutesy, modestly dirty, and tripping gabbily toward the happy ending where they are tired of doing it every day but pleased with their improved relationship and more-than-once-a-month sex life?

Full post as published by Althouse on June 10, 2008 (boomark / email).