Scientific Sexuality Research or Moral Panic? 

National Sexuality Resource Center calls out CNN and Georgia Legislators for misinformation, cloaking moral agenda as fiscal one.

San Francisco, CA: As Georgia State University sexuality researchers are forced to defend their work in front of the Georgia State Senate, the National Sexuality Resource Center protects the role of science in sexuality—and criticizes legislators and the media for attacking academic freedom and sensationalizing sex in an effort to get an audience.

The GSU professors are defending critical sexuality research: Dr. Mindy Stombler and Dr. Kirk Elifson’s work on topics including oral sex and male prostitution have contributed to policy and intervention on HIV/STI transmission—and have been funded by the National Institutes of Health. Yet Georgia legislators Charlice Byrd and Calvin Hill assert— wrongly and repeatedly—that college students are being taught classes on oral sex, purposefully stoking society’s fears about sex education and youth sexuality to further their own moral and fiscal agendas. CNN fueled the hype by polling GSU students for their thoughts on ‘oral sex classes’ taught at the school.

“CNN missed the real story. Scientific research is the underpinning of effective policy and prevention—especially in areas such as healthy sexuality, where misinformation and stigma flourish,” said NSRC director and San Francisco State professor Dr. Gilbert Herdt. “It is not only shameful to ridicule and undermine sexuality research, it undermines our national health. The public’s sexual literacy depends on it.” In fact, the NSRC has its own journal, Sexuality Research and Social Policy, whose primary goal is to translate research into policy.

NSRC board member Dr. Deborah Tolman, Professor of Social Welfare at Hunter College School of Social Work and the Graduate Center, CUNY, conducts research on adolescent sexuality, including oral sex. Tolman says, “Identifying and understanding developmental differences are critical to sound educational and social policy to support healthy development. Research can challenge myths and determine what, in the words of Bristol Palin, is realistic for adolescents and young people to know about their choices and expectations about oral sex.”

Few have come to the defense of the sexuality researchers, in an economic climate that makes many institutions feel financially vulnerable. Yet the NSRC’s petition to support sexuality research gathered thousands of signatures in only 48 hours, from advocates and sexuality researchers around the world, and has been linked to across the web, and comes to the support of other sexuality research, programs and courses being targeted across the country.

As one respondent noted, “We are not afraid to study the causes of heart disease or diabetes. It should be no different with diseases that have a sexually transmitted etiology.”

See the full press release.

Sign the petition.