Sanford Comes Home

 Posted by  Sex, The Media, U.S. Politics  1 Response »
Jun 252009
 

I have to admit that the Mark Sanford sex scandal has captured my attention. Usually I don’t care about these things (John Ensign, John Edwards, David Vitter, Eliot Spitzer, Bill Clinton, etc.) except to bemoan the tragedy of gifted and skilled political voices who threw it all away. To paraphrase what Dee Snider of Twisted Sister once said: family and career are too important to give away in exchange for five minutes of orgasm.

For some reason, however, the Mark Sanford thing feels different to me. Continue reading »

Gay Genes

 Posted by  Homosexuality, Sex  1 Response »
Jun 252008
 

My wife just sent me a fascinating article on Slate that I thought I would share with you. Some geneticists recently completed a study on how genes for homosexuality could continue to exist given that homosexual men tend not to procreate. They tested a number of theories against the data, and discovered that what seems to happen is that there actually isn’t a genetic marker for homosexuality, per se, but instead a series of genetic markers that lead to a dramatic increase in attraction for males. Women who have this set of genes tend to produce significantly more children than women who don’t have this set of genes; but if they pass those genetic markers to their sons, then those men are significantly more likely to be gay. (Which is not necessarily to say that most or even many of them are gay, just more than you would otherwise expect.) The study was only concerned with homosexuality in men, and does not address homosexuality in women at all.
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The Latest Look At The Oldest Profession

 Posted by  Poverty, Sex, Social Security and Welfare  1 Response »
Mar 122008
 

An interesting off-shoot of the Spitzer case seems to be a revival in the debate about prostitution. In the New York Times Opinion Page today, for instance, you can find three different articles about prostitution: one written by the authors of two sex books on sex trafficking who argue that prostitutes are naturally victims and that prostitution ought to remain a criminal offense, one written by a prostitute who finds it baffling that Spitzer would use an escort service instead of going through a madam, and an interview with a different prostitute about the kinds of people who use high-priced call girls. Here is a summary of the major arguments.
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Newsflash: People Get Each Other Sick

 Posted by  Education, Sex  No Responses »
Mar 112008
 

It’s a headline designed to scare: Study Finds 1 in 4 US Teens Has A STD. And it’s true, at least according to a recent federal study, which included a survey about adolescent women’s sexual practices and clinical testing. The article then goes on to describe “shocked” health experts, advocates stressing that more sex ed is necessary, attacks abstinence-only programs, and mostly decries the general state of sexual health in this country.
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