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Sex, Lies and Politics
by LARA RISCOL

[from the August 30, 2004 issue]
The Nation

Paranoid personality disorder is characterized by a distrust of others and a
constant suspicion that people around you have sinister motives. People with
this disorder tend to have excessive trust in their own knowledge and
abilities and usually avoid close relationships with others. They search for
hidden meanings in everything and read hostile intentions into the actions
of others. They are quick to challenge the loyalties of friends and loved
ones and often appear cold and distant to others. They usually shift blame
to others and tend to carry long grudges.

Sex, Lies and Politics
by LARA RISCOL
[from the August 30, 2004 issue]
The Nation
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 will put a smiley face on President Bush's bulging
chastity industry, for which he has allotted $273 million in his 2005
budget, plus a third of the $15 billion global AIDS-relief package.
The ascendancy of abstinence-only under Bush has not only altered funding
priorities; it has sanctioned a climate of hostility toward sexual health
professionals, who 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 (her comments, presumably critical, were not
made public). Charged with incompetence and insubordination, she was
retrained and reassigned. Or take the Florida teacher who was suspended
after his students used a banana to demonstrate how to put on a condom; he
couldn't make the meeting where school officials fired him because his wife
was in labor.
Even abstinence educators face right-wing wrath if they depart from the
movement's dogma. 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. Young was vilified by Focus on the Family and the Abstinence
Clearinghouse for conducting a university-approved survey asking state
abstinence coordinators how they define "sexual activity." "I've been
involved in controversy forever," said Young, a Southern Baptist deacon,
"but I never before felt I could lose my job." After an aide to US
Congressman Dave Weldon smeared Young last year, the state dropped its
contract for "Sex Can Wait."
Unlike buttoned-down Young, the bearded, free-spirited University of Kansas
professor Dennis Dailey seems just the 1960s throwback conservatives love
to slam. A single student complaint spun into accusations that "Dr.
Dailey's a pedophile," a dozen death threats and hundreds of ugly e-mails.
The offended student turned out to be an intern for hard-right Kansas State
Senator Susan Wagle. "It doesn't matter if what you're doing is good or
bad," said Dailey, honored for teaching excellence when under fire. "When
they attack, it's about forwarding their agenda."
Dailey noted that the field has always been controversial, but today's
attacks are more vile and infused with more money. Sexuality professionals
discuss this trend's chilling effect, but most insist on anonymity for fear
of losing their jobs or organizational funding. "Principals are afraid,
teachers are nervous," said Elizabeth Schroeder, a sex ed trainer and
consultant. "We walk around on eggshells when we're offering life-saving,
life-enhancing information." Eva Goldfarb, assistant professor in health
professions at Montclair State University and co-author of the sexuality
curriculum "Our Whole Lives," added, "The difference now is the assault is
top down. It's sanctioned at the highest levels." Thus, after Sexuality
Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) and
Advocates for Youth initiated an online campaign against federal funding of
abstinence-only in late 2002, the two groups were subjected to three
federal audits each.
Caged and cornered, the thirty-seven-year-old American Association of Sex
Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) and forty-six-year-old
Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) are venturing into the
political fray.
With their members demonized as "the condom crowd" or "promiscuity
pushers," these professional organizations have joined activist coalitions
in support of sexual health education and research; are backing the
comprehensive Family Life Education Act; and both chose unprecedented
advocacy themes for their conferences this year. Of course, chastity
crusaders have long shed any modesty about pushing a political agenda.
While AASECT conference presentations in May included research on sexuality
and aging, disability and sexual abuse, 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. The
Abstinence Clearinghouse, whose founder also runs an anti-abortion
center, is a key cog in a retro-right movement experienced in ideological
warfare. "Who wins in the end?" Dailey asked. "I vote on science,
rationality and good hearts."
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040830&s=riscol