Perhaps first things you learn as a sexuality researcher is to set aside your preconceptions. So as I prepared for my first Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality regional meeting in Pacific Grove, California, I tried to banish my preconceptions of what a conference on the science of sex would be like. I was pretty convinced it would be everything you don’t really want sex to be – dry, humorless, boring, and a little bit weird.

All of my preconceptions melted away on Friday night as I sat in a lecture hall at the Monterey Bay Aquarium watching Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno with Steven Webster, PhD a founder of the aquarium. He was giving us a lecture on sex and marine life, and he (along with Isabella) introduced us to some of the ocean’s creatures with the most interesting gender and sexual variations. Highlights included male sea horses that get "pregnant", clown fish who are sequential hermaphrodites, and anglerfish whose males are essentially parasites living off of the bloodstream of females.

On Monday, we launched our petition to protect sexuality studies and the vital role that sexuality research plays in contributing accurate, scientific evidence to policy and interventions. In 36 hours, we've collected over 1,000 signatures from students, researchers, advocates and others across the country. Sign it now if you haven't already. And forward it to five friends.

This afternoon, two of the researchers targeted in the GSU probe will testify before the Georgia State Senate Committee on Higher Education--Mindy Stombler, whose research on oral sex informs our understanding of what oral sex is, and thus can contribute to STI prevention and adolescent health interventions, and Kirk Elifson, whose work on male prostitution has improved the efficacy of HIV interventions.

It is offensive, first, that academics and universitives must defend their right to perform rigorous scientific inquiry in any field. It is also offensive that legislators have cloaked their moral agenda as a fiscal one. But what is most offensive is how both the media and the legislators are misrepresenting the researchers and GSU in their efforts to stoke a moral panic.

I always find it interesting when proponents of abstinence-only education start espousing things like ethics, parental-child communication, character, and "a healthy dose of self-respect" when talking about the elements of "holistic" abstinence education programs like K-Lo, or Kathryn Lopez, does in her article in the Washington Times today.  Ms. Lopez's support for these programs is based solely on ideological and religious points of view rather than any thing grounded in scientific evidence.  Of course, she is a "conservative columnist" according to Wikipedia, not a journalist, and she has no background in health education or public health (her undergraduate degree is in philosophy and politics). 

K-Lo inaccurately describes comprehensive sex ed programs as handing out condoms and promoting teen sexual activity and repeats the same old tired argument that teen sex is the problem that results in unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. She also provides "evidence" in support of abstinence-only programs from the Best Friends evaluation, a report that used logistic regression...