Someone needs to teach him about the birds and the weasels

An editorial about McCain's views on abortion and reproductive rights:

What scares me most about McCain, beyond our 100-year presence in Iraq, his itchy trigger finger relative to other foes, and his enthusiasm for tax cuts for the rich, is his fiercely conservative record on women's reproductive freedom. Here, there is no moderate McCain or reach-across-the-aisle McCain. On issues related to abortion and even birth control and sex education, McCain is as ideological as any Operation Rescue activist crawling around in front of an abortion clinic.

...

McCain's voting record is solidly antichoice. He said directly in South Carolina that Roe "should be overturned" and strongly reiterates that position on his campaign Web site. He told the American Conservative Union that one of the three most important goals that he wants to achieve as president is to promote "a nation of traditional values that protects the rights of the unborn."

In accordance with these views, McCain promises to "nominate strict constructionist judges," which is code for "will overturn Roe if given half a chance."

This is true. On McCain's website, if you go to "Issues" -> "Human Dignity", it brings you to this page. A sampling:

John McCain believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench. Constitutional balance would be restored by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, returning the abortion question to the individual states. The difficult issue of abortion should not be decided by judicial fiat.

NARAL has an entire page up about McCain's consistent votes against reproductive rights.

Sen. John McCain served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1983 to 1986 and in the U.S. Senate from 1987 to present. During his four years in the House, then-Rep. McCain cast 11 votes on abortion and other reproductive-rights issues. Ten of these votes were anti-choice. In the Senate, through 2006, Sen. McCain cast 117 votes on abortion and other reproductive-rights issues, 113 of which were anti-choice.

NARAL almost yearly produces a numerical score of how "pro-choice" a politician is, based on how they voted on issues of reproductive choice that year. For the years in which they gave those scores, McCain consistently scored abysmally (warning: PDF), with an average of 2% over 15 years in the Senate. If you tally in all the anti-choice votes he made in the years when they didn't produce a score, then he'd get an even lower number.

All that's bad enough. But this is probably the worst part (outside of the comments):

An intelligent person might think that someone as rabidly antiabortion as McCain would be backing approaches to prevent unwanted pregnancies, thereby, ipso facto, fewer abortions. Well, think again.

McCain is an antagonist of sensible family planning and effective sex education. In 2005, he voted "no" on a $100-million allocation for preventive health care services targeted at reducing unintended pregnancies, particularly teen pregnancies. In 2006, he voted against funding for comprehensive, medically accurate sex education for teens.

McCain is much more comfortable with President Bush's wasteful and utterly ineffective abstinence-only approach.

The New York Times Web site reported the following exchange with a reporter in Iowa in March 2007:

Q: "What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush's policy, which is just abstinence?"

McCain: (Long pause) "Ahhh. I think I support the president's policy."

Q: "So no contraception, no counseling on contraception. Just abstinence. Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?"

McCain: (Long pause) "You've stumped me."

Abstinence-only education at work!

Via LG&M.
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Looks like we have to get out of Texas again

No! Come on, Texas, we were so proud of you! Why do you have to throw that all away?

Last week, state Attorney General Greg Abbott petitioned the appellate court to reconsider the matter en banc (see exerpts below and on the following three pages). Abbott wrote that, if permitted to stand, the court's decision may "invite … challenges to previously-uncontroversial criminal prohibitions" on sexual practices such as "consensual adult incest or bigamy" (Page 4).

They have scans of four pages of the the petition. The petition claims that "The Supreme Court has specifically confirmed that protecting morals is a legitimate government interest", and back this up by citing a decision from 1957. It then whines that the court didn't do this because it relied on the much more recent Lawrence v. Texas. Then they go on to confuse legislators' ability to regulate whatever "they deem harmful to the public" with the right to "protect morals". Here's a hint, Attorney General of Texas: getting a dildo isn't gonna hurt anyone.

Unless it's real big, maybe.

Via LG&M.
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Today's the day the teddy bears have their picnic

Or at least a romp in the grass.

Everything was on the table -- more accurately, on a video projector -- at Miami Metrozoo's Sex and the Animals event, a Valentine's Day tradition.

Hosted by zoo ambassador Ron Magill, the popular lecture attracted more than 400 people to see and hear the intimate details of how wild things do the wild thing.

"This is the fifth time in a row this thing has sold out," Magill said. "And I'll tell you why -- everybody wants to hear about sex."

...

He clicked through dozens of images -- all photos he shot on African safaris and other excursions -- of animals in the act.

"I got right down on my back for this one," he said of a few close-ups.

Magill dropped plenty of nuggets of who-knew? information, such as:

• Flamingos like to have sex with others watching them. Two of the birds will get down while 30 others look on.
• Frogs sometimes do it with two or more partners at a time. Most animals are not monogamous, Magill said.
• Female pandas only have a three-day window each year to get pregnant. Zookeepers have shown the pandas films of other pandas having sex to get them in the mood.
• Tigers in captivity are implanted with birth-control devices so they don't over-reproduce.
• Some animals are gay, too. "Homosexuality is found throughout the animal kingdom," Magill said.

Biological exuberance in action!
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Alright, let's move to Texas!

An appeals court has overturned the Texas ban on selling sex toys:

A federal appeals court has overturned a Texas statute outlawing sex toy sales, leaving Alabama as the state with the strictest ban on such devices.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Texas law making it illegal to sell or promote obscene devices, punishable by up to two years in jail, violated the Constitution's 14th Amendment on the right to privacy.

Companies that own Dreamer's and Le Rouge Boutique, which sell the devices in its Austin stores, and the retail distributor Adam & Eve, sued in Austin federal court in 2004 over the constitutionality of the law. They appealed after a federal judge dismissed the suit and said the constitution did not protect their right to publicly promote such devices.

In its decision Tuesday, the appeals court cited Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 opinion that struck down bans on consensual sex between gay couples.

"Just as in Lawrence, the state here wants to use its laws to enforce a public moral code by restricting private intimate conduct," the appeals judges wrote. "The case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the state is morally opposed to a certain type of consensual private intimate conduct. This is an insufficient justification after Lawrence."

Woo-hoo! They're getting it right!
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Our states is learning!

In addition to these states, we can now welcome Arizona into the reality-based community:

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano (D) is telling the Bush administration that the state does not want $1 million in federal funding for abstinence-only education because the programs don't work.

The move makes Arizona the 16th state to reject the federal money.

...

Since 1996, the federal government has spent over a half a billion taxpayer dollars on abstinence-only programs.

A 2006 study by the independent Society for Adolescent Medicine called the programs "scientifically and ethically flawed".

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Is our states learning?

This was sent to me by my brother: it looks like ten to twelve states this year are rejecting federal money for abstinence-only sex education.

The number of states refusing federal money for "abstinence-only" sex education programs jumped sharply in the past year as evidence mounted that the approach is ineffective.

At least 14 states have either notified the federal government that they will no longer be requesting the funds or are not expected to apply, forgoing more than $15 million of the $50 million available, officials said. Virginia was the most recent state to opt out.

Two other states -- Ohio and Washington -- have applied but stipulated they would use the money for comprehensive sex education, effectively making themselves ineligible, federal officials said. While Maryland and the District are planning to continue applying for the money, other states are considering withdrawing as well.

Until this year, only four states had passed up the funding.

Huzzah! It looks like they're waking up to the fact that abstinence-only sex education (aside from being an oxymoron) just plain doesn't work.

Not everyone is pleased, of course. The government that offers the money isn't happy:

"We're concerned about this," said Stan Koutstaal of the Department of Health and Human Services, which runs the program. "My greatest concern about states dropping out is that these are valuable services and programs. It's the youths in these states who are missing out."

They're not happy, and they're not too bright. The youths in the states that are forced to have abstinence-only education are the ones missing out, because educating teenagers on how not to have sex doesn't work. The youths in the states that know that are also missing out because you won't give them money for a proper sex-ed course. But they're going to get something, at least, which is better than before.

The anti-sex crowd also are miffed:

"We're talking about the health of millions of youth across the United States," said Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association. "We know abstinence education offers the best for them. Now is the time to put more emphasis on that message, not less."

Yeah... "we know abstinence education offers the best for them. We don't have any proof of that, and we don't even have convincing arguments to wave away all the evidence that it doesn't, but we know it! We know it in our genitals. Thinking--that's what genitals are for, right?"

But wait, there's more from Huber!

"Our critics would have governors believe that these programs are just somebody standing in front of the class wagging a finger and saying, 'No. No. No. Don't have sex.' That's not what these classes entail," Huber said. "They are holistic. They include relationship-building skills and medically accurate discussions of sexually transmitted diseases and contraception."

Oh? Such medically-accurate discussions of STDs as "HIV ... can be spread via sweat and tears"? Or such medically-accurate discussions of contraception as "nearly 1 in 3 will contract AIDS from infected partner with 100% condom use"? Or such relationship-building skills as telling kids that "any same sex 'sexual experimentation' can be confusing to young persons and should be strongly discouraged"? Yeah, that sounds exactly like it's the best thing for children to hear. (See here for more information on what abstinence-only education really teaches kids)

The states who opted out had some encouraging things to say:

"The governor has often stated that abstinence-only education does not show any results," said Gordon Hickey, a spokesman for Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who announced plans to give up the funding last month. "It doesn't work. He's a firm believer in more comprehensive sex education."

...

"Why would we spend tax dollars on something that doesn't work?" asked Ned Calonge of the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. "That doesn't make sense to me. Philosophically, I am opposed to spending government dollars on something that's ineffective. That's just irresponsible."

I'm pretty sure we won't be hearing anything of the sort from Gov. Sonny "Let's pray for rain!" Perdue anytime soon, unfortunately.

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We're number one! We're number one!

In STDs, that is:

More than 1 million cases of chlamydia were reported in the United States last year — the most ever reported for a sexually transmitted disease, federal health officials said Tuesday.

Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they think better and more intensive screening accounts for much of the increase, but added that chlamydia was not the only sexually transmitted disease on the rise.

Gonorrhea rates are jumping again after hitting a record low, and an increasing number of cases are caused by a "superbug" version resistant to common antibiotics.

Syphilis is rising, too. The rate of congenital syphilis — which can deform or kill babies — rose for the first time in 15 years.

"Hopefully we will not see this turn into a trend," said Dr. Khalil Ghanem, an infectious diseases specialist at Johns Hopkins University's School of medicine.

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But if your only goal is to punish people who have sex, abstinence-only is a good plan

All together now: abstinence-only education doesn't work:

Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of mil lions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.

"At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners" among teenagers, the study concluded.

The report, which was based on a review of research into teenager sexual behavior, was being released Wednesday by the nonpartisan National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.

In fact, if you want to have effective results, instead of trying to foist your Puritanical fear of sex onto children, you ought to actually, y'know, teach them useful stuff:

The study found that while abstinence-only efforts appear to have little positive impact, more comprehensive sex education programs were having "positive outcomes" including teenagers "delaying the initiation of sex, reducing the frequency of sex, reducing the number of sexual partners and increasing condom or contraceptive use."

"Two-thirds of the 48 comprehensive programs that supported both abstinence and the use of condoms and contraceptives for sexually active teens had positive behavior effect," said the report.

...

The study, conducted by Douglas Kirby, a senior research scientist at ETR Associates, also sought to debunk what the report called "myths propagated by abstinence-only advocates" including: that comprehensive sex education promotes promiscuity, hastens the initiative of sex or increases its frequency, and sends a confusing message to adolescents.

None of these was found to be accurate, Kirby wrote.

Instead, he wrote, such programs improved teens' knowledge about the risks and consequences of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases and gave them greater "confidence in their ability to say 'no' to unwanted sex."

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Next we stop teaching people to drive to bring down the number of car crashes

It's true; information never helped anybody make informed decisions.
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Oh, you mean those prostitutes...!

David Vitter, who acknowledged paying for the services of prostitutes in D.C., denies having done the same thing in New Orleans:

Republican Sen. David Vitter denied having relationships with New Orleans prostitutes, a week after admitting links to a Washington escort service that federal prosecutors allege was a prostitution ring.

Vitter emerged on Monday from a week of seclusion by appearing at a news conference in suburban Metairie while holding hands with his wife, Wendy.

He denied the New Orleans prostitution allegations and offered no indication that he would resign. He said he planned to fly Monday night to Washington to resume work in the Senate.

...

Also last week, the former madam of a New Orleans brothel that was shut down several years ago claimed Vitter was a client in the 1990s. However, her defense lawyer and a US attorney who prosecuted her said Vitter's name never came up in that investigation.

The Times-Picayune newspaper in New Orleans also reported that Vitter had used the services of another New Orleans prostitute.

Vitter, 46, referred vaguely to the New Orleans-based reports but said that "those stories are not true."

I don't have any clue whether the allegations are true, and I don't mean by posting this to insinuate that they are. I just wonder whether this will be one of those cases where the accused acknowledges just as much as has already been confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt, and denies everything else... until new evidence shows up, in which case he suddenly acknowledges it again, but everything else is still a lie.

It doesn't have to be, but it would be amusing.
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I don't care enough to come up with a title for this post

I found this odd. The Sydney Morning-Herald sent me an e-mail containing a number of headlines, including this article, "How porn is wrecking relationships":

The internet has brought an explosion of pornography into the home and workplace of virtually every Australian. Just a mouse-click away are images that exceed the bounds of fantasy or imagination. In 1961 the introduction of the pill helped usher in a sexual revolution. It had a profound effect on sexual attitudes, practices and relationships. It brought worry-free sex first to married couples, then to singles. And now there are experts - psychiatrists, sociologists and relationship counsellors among them - who argue that the social and psychological impact of internet pornography is potentially as huge.

For some Australians, the rising tide of internet pornography has offered a form of sex education. It has helped extend sexual repertoires, re-invigorated flagging sex lives, and assuaged anxieties or hang-ups. It has been, some argue, a liberation.

But internet pornography is also emerging as the new marriage-wrecker. More and more clients, counsellors say, have begun to cite internet pornography as a factor in their relationship breakdowns.

The technology has created what some call an addiction. Others are more cautious, describing it as a compulsion. Whatever the label, internet pornography is becoming yet another outlet for those with pre-existing compulsive personalities while for others, it has made it easier to do the things that a former head of the American Academy for Matrimonial Lawyers, J.Lindsey Short, says "traditionally lead to divorce".

An increasing number of men appear to be hooked, and the women in their lives are flailing about in unhappiness, self-doubt and self-blame.

The entire article is about men getting addicted to pornography and how this affects women. And yet in the same e-mail there's another article, which says that one-third of porn viewers are women:

RECORD numbers of Australians are visiting pornographic websites, including sexually explicit dating sites - and one in three of them is a woman.

...

[W]hile some women have suffered from their partner's internet porn obsession, women in general are considered the new consumer growth market, according to Fiona Patten, chief executive of the Eros Association, the adult retail industry's peak body.

I don't mean to trivialize any actual problems discussed in the first article, but it almost seems as if they're furthering the stereotype that only men look at porn.
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"I'm sick and tired of living in a society where a cancer can be oppressed just for being a cancer!"

Remember three months ago, the Governor of Texas signed an executive order that made HPV vaccinations mandatory for schoolgirls?

Seems the state legislature is objectively pro-cancer, and passed a bill blocking that order. Gov. Perry has decided not to veto it.

Yet at the same time, the Texas House has approved a bill that would set aside $3 billion to cure cancer.

Apparently fighting the governor is more important than fighting cancer.
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But are they orange?

The Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose

--Haldane's Law

A study was published recently on the "coevolution of male and female genital morphology in waterfowl". That is, it has long been recognized that there is a wide amount of variation in penises among those species of birds that have them. But no-one, until now, had bothered to look at the genitalia of the females of the species. The results are very interesting.

In some species of ducks, a female bonds for a season with a male. But she is also harassed by other males that force her to mate. "It's nasty business. Females are often killed or injured," Dr. Brennan said.

Species with more forced mating tend to have longer phalluses. That link led some scientists to argue that the duck phallus was the result of males' competing with one another to fertilize eggs.

"Basically, you get a bigger phallus to put your sperm in farther than the other males," Dr. Brennan said.

Dr. Brennan realized that scientists had made this argument without looking at the female birds. Perhaps, she wondered, the two sexes were coevolving, with elaborate lower oviducts driving the evolution of long phalluses.

To test this idea, Dr. Brennan traveled to Alaska. Many species of waterfowl breed there, with a wide range of mating systems. Working with Kevin McCracken of the University of Alaska and his colleagues, she caught and dissected 16 species of ducks and geese, comparing the male and female anatomy.

If a male bird had a long phallus, the female tended to have a more elaborate lower oviduct. And if the male had a small phallus, the female tended to have a simple oviduct. "The correlation was incredibly tight," Dr. Brennan said. "When you dissected one of the birds, it was really easy to predict what the other sex was going to look like."

Some of these elaborations included spirals in the vagina, anywhere from none to eight full 360° twists, and up to three pouches near the cloaca where sperm can be deposited, but that don't function for sperm storage.

Female ducks seem to be equipped to block the sperm of unwanted males. Their lower oviduct is spiraled like the male phallus, for example, but it turns in the opposite direction. Dr. Brennan suspects that the female ducks can force sperm into one of the pockets and then expel it. "It only makes sense as a barrier," she said.

To support her argument, Dr. Brennan notes studies on some species that have found that forced matings make up about a third of all matings. Yet only 3 percent of the offspring are the result of forced matings. "To me, it means these females are successful with this strategy," she said.

Dr. Brennan suspects that when the females of a species evolved better defenses, they drove the evolution of male phalluses. "The males have to step up to produce a longer or more flexible phallus," she said.

Other scientists have documented a similar coevolution of genitals in flies and other invertebrates. But Dr. Brennan's study is the clearest example of this arms race in vertebrates.

"It's rare to find something so blatantly obvious in the female anatomy," Dr. Brennan said. "I'm sure it's going on in other vertebrates, but it's probably going in ways that are more subtle and harder to figure out."

The paper is available for free on-line.

We examined vaginal and phallus anatomy in a sample of 16 waterfowl species, collected during the reproductive season. We found great variation among species in vaginal morphology. Some species had the typical simple avian vagina, whereas others had a highly complex vagina. Vaginal elaborations included a variable number of blind ending pouches proximal to the cloaca, and a variable number of clockwise spirals ending at the shell gland (or uterus). Pouches are "dead end" side cavities in the vaginal lumen that cannot be eliminated by longitudinal elongation of the vagina. Pouches are located in the distal end of the vagina, close to the cloaca, and varied in number from 0–3 among species. Spirals are full 360° twists in the vagina that can be eliminated with elongation of the oviduct, and are found at the cranial end of the vagina always ending at the shell gland. Spirals varied in number from 0–8 among species. The magnitude of vaginal elaboration we found in waterfowl is surprising because no variations in vaginal morphology have been previously reported in birds despite decades of anatomical research on avian oviducts.

Although the mechanics of copulation in birds with phalluses have not been studied, eversion of the male phallus occurs during, not prior to, cloacal contact (P. Brennan, pers. obs.). Thus, the shape and location of the vaginal pouches suggests that they might prevent the phallus from fully everting, and therefore from depositing sperm further inside the vagina. Our observations indicate that these pouches do not function in sperm storage: examination of the mucosal folds inside the vagina of Pekin duck (domestic Anas plathyrhynchos), Long-tailed duck (Clangula hyemalis), Widgeon (A. americana), Green-winged Teal (A. carolinensis) and African goose (Anser cygnoides) revealed sperm storage tubules (SSTs) only in the utero-vaginal junction, where they occur in all other avian species, and none inside the vaginal pouches. Sperm deposited in the vaginal pouches proximal to the cloaca would have a longer distance to travel to fertilize an ovum and may be more easily ejected by the female.

Congruent with previous descriptions, the phallus of all waterfowl species we examined spiralled in a counter-clockwise direction (viewed from the base of the phallus to the tip), but the vaginal spirals we discovered were coiled in the opposite direction (moving from the cloaca to the shell gland). Overall, the anatomy of these complex waterfowl vaginas suggests that pouches and spirals are anatomical barriers that function to exclude the male phallus. If this is the case, we would expect that male and female genital structures would have coevolved so that waterfowl species in which males have a longer phallus and higher levels of forced extra-pair copulations (FEPCs) would have a more elaborate vagina, while species where males have a small phallus and lower levels of FEPCs would have a simpler vagina.

A lot of people think that male and female genitalia fit together "just right", like a lock and key (or a child's toy). Unfortunately, reality isn't that nice.

Natural selection against hybridization (i.e. reinforcement) can lead to the evolution of a genital "lock and key" mechanism and complex genitalia. This hypothesis predicts coevolution between male and female genitalia because male genitalia (the key) must match female genitalia (the lock), in order for successful copulation to take place. However, since the female waterfowl vagina spirals in the opposite direction to that of the male's phallus, this suggests antagonistic rather than mutualistic coevolution that does not support the "lock and key" hypothesis.

All citations omitted.
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God bless this great state!

Once again, I am proud to live in Indiana.
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That wouldn't have been my first bet

This just in....

Gov. Rick Perry has signed an executive order making Texas the first state to require schoolgirls to be vaccinated against the sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

Seriously? Texas?
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Won't somebody please think of the kittens?

Every time you have sex, God kills a kitten.

Unless you're married or over thirty years old.

The federal government's "no sex without marriage" message isn't just for kids anymore.

Now the government is targeting unmarried adults up to age 29 as part of its abstinence-only programs, which include millions of dollars in federal money that will be available to the states under revised federal grant guidelines for 2007.

...

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the revision is aimed at 19- to 29-year-olds because more unmarried women in that age group are having children.

Government data released last month show that 998,262 births in 2004 were to unmarried women 19-29, the ages with the most births to unmarried women.

Although I have to wonder--do these include people who do have a significant other in their life, but just haven't married them? And how large a percentage would that be?

"They've stepped over the line of common sense," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education. "To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health."

What, they've only now stepped over the line of common sense?

'Cause funding abstinence training to tell kids things like this is still in touch with reality:

For condoms to be used correctly, over 10 specific difficult steps must be followed every time. This tends to minimize the romance and spontaneity of the sex act. (Choosing the Best, p. 25).

...

"Women need affection while men need sexual fulfillment; women need conversation while men need recreation companionship; women need honest and openness while men need physical attractiveness; women need financial support while men need admiration, and women need family commitment while men need domestic support" (WAIT Training, p. 199).

I like that the WAIT Training logo includes the rhetorical question "Why am I tempted?"

But please, think of the kittens:


[Edit] Oh, and no masturbating, either.
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How counter-intuitive

A new study, published in Lancet, seems to show that people aren't actually having sex at younger ages, promiscuity doesn't necessarily cause sexually transmitted diseases, and in fact married women may be at higher risk than unmarried:

Professor Kaye Wellings of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicines and her colleagues analysed data from 59 countries worldwide.

...

"We did have some of our preconceptions dashed," she said, explaining that they had expected to find the most promiscuous behaviour in regions like Africa with the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases. That was not the case, as multiple partners were more commonly reported in industrialised countries where the incidence of such diseases were relatively low.

"There's a misperception that there's a great deal of promiscuity in Africa, which is one of the potential reasons for HIV/AIDS spreading so rapidly," said Dr. Paul van Look, director of Reproductive Health and Research at the World Health Organisation, who was unconnected to the study. "But that view is not supported by the evidence."

Wellings says that implies that promiscuity may be less important than factors such as poverty and education - especially in the encouragement of condom use - in the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases.

So... even if teaching people to use condoms did promote promiscuity, that doesn't necessarily mean it would increase the rates of STDs? That would seem to be another crutch knocked out from the abstinence-only plan of sex education.

The study also found that contrary to popular belief, sexual activity is not starting any earlier than previously believed. Nearly everywhere, men and women have their first sexual experiences in their late teens (aged 15-19 years), with younger ages for women than for men.

I kind of wonder how accurate this information is, though. I especially wonder how this breaks down by country--even if the trend is not for children to be having sex earlier, might it be true for, say, the United States?

In some instances, married women may be at more risk than single women.

"A single woman is more able to negotiate safe sex in certain circumstances than a married woman," says van Look, who points out that married women in Africa and Asia are often threatened by unfaithful husbands who frequent prostitutes.

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God didn't intend for humans to engage in all these unnatural sexual acts like sodomy and fellatio and other words that Debora won't recognize and should not ever, ever look up.

No, this is how God intended sex to be:

Drosophila seminal fluid has the property of reducing the female's interest in remating, increasing her rate of egg-laying, and is also mildly toxic. Artificial selection in the lab can produce females that are resistant to the effects, and males that produce more and more potent semen to overcome their resistance, to the point where the line of "super potent" males, when crossed to unselected females, kill their partners with their ejaculations.

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The spider Kama Sutra.

Cause male spiders need love too.

But they gotta pay.

With their lives.
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Hot sex can cure the common cold
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