The Social Organization of Sexuality

Edward O. Laumann et al., publish 'The Social Organization of Sexuality', which is a study of 3,432 adult Americans about their adult sex lives via face-to-face interview during the National Health and Social Life Survey of 1992. Due to right-wing political demands, no questions are asked about adolescent or child sexual behaviors: fetishes, masturbation, or same-sex behaviors, except for some about the experience of child sexual abuse. The conservative right, led by Jesse Helms and William Dannemeyer, argued that the survey was a plot by lesbian and gay people to normalize their lifestyles and that it had an anti-family agenda. Congress has the project moved from public to private funding on the grounds that it allegedly promotes homosexuality and sexual decadence. The authors say this about the survey’s political history:

Sex and the prospect of studying and revealing dimensions of adult sexual behavior prompt anxiety and even fear. The political history of our survey document the exploitation of that fewer by a few politicians. The manipulation of the anxiety about sex for the purpose of exercising influence or power over others is repugnant in whatever context it is found. It is particularly offensive when used by someone in authority to obtain sexual favors or to achieve a political or economic goal; it is inappropriate in a relationship, in the workplace or in the halls of Congress.