Joycelyn Elders was the US Surgeon General under Clinton. She lost her job this way (quoting Wikipedia):

“In 1994, she was invited to speak at a United Nations conference on AIDS. She was asked whether it would be appropriate to promote masturbation as a means of preventing young people from engaging in riskier forms of sexual activity, and she replied, “I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught.”

The government certainly couldn’t stand for that. Good lord, condoning masturbating?

I have never been able to let that one go. Too clearly a mark of how broken things are, and how far politics are from reality.