Abstract

Sex, Lies and Politics

The article reports on a trend in hostility toward sexual health professionals in the United States since President George W. Bush started promoting abstinence-only. Throwing a bone to its sex-obsessed religious base, the GOP has slipped an abstinence activist into its convention mix of mostly moderate speakers, Miss America 2003. He has allotted $273 million in his 2005 budget for the chastity industry, plus a third of the $15 billion global AIDS-relief package. Sexual health professionals increasingly face harassment, intimidation and marginalization if they stray from the abstinence-only-unless-married line. For example, in the spring of 2003 a Tennessee teacher's thirty-year career nearly derailed after she commented on an abstinence video shown to her seventh-grade health class. University of Arkansas health science professor Michael Young, co-author of the award-winning "Sex Can Wait" curriculum, has been targeted by conservatives simply because he adheres to a law dictating that abstinence education be medically accurate and neutral on religion and abortion. The Abstinence Clearinghouse's "Pure Country" conference in June included presentations by Focus on the Family, Bush Administration officials and Judith Reisman, known for pedophile smears against sex researchers like the late Alfred Kinsey.