Stimulating sex research

There are countless grants and funds poured into studies about cancer, heart disease and depression. And ever since a guy named Kinsey decided to study sex, here in Bloomington, the amount of money given to those following in his footsteps has increased substantially, raising awareness and sending the message that sexual research is just as important as other forms of study in the realm of public health.\nAn internal review at the National Institute of Health upheld the decision to continue issuing grants to controversial studies involving sexual behavior and AIDS, much to the chagrin of conservative efforts to block the grants in the United States Congress last summer (The Chronicle, Jan. 13). NIH director Elias A. Zerhouni said the studies were unquestionably important to public health.\nThis decision directly affects studies currently being conducted at the Kinsey Institute relating to sexual risk-taking.\n"We can't look at AIDS, teen pregnancy and other social issues without understanding the sexual nature behind them," said Jennifer Bass, Kinsey's information services director (IDS, July 17).\nTo deny the importance of studying sexual behavior is to bury our collective heads in the sand. With so much talk about AIDS and STDs, a few sappy commercials and some condom ads on late-night TV won't solve the problem. Conservatives love to stand up and denounce sexual behavior -- adhering to the rhetoric of abstinence -- but they never ask the key questions beginning with "Why?"\nIf we really want answers, we have to ask tough questions rather than deal out simple solutions. Any college kid will tell you sex is much more complicated than we could have ever expected, and I'm not talking about the basics.\nIt isn't just an act anymore. Rather, it's a cultural anomaly that carries with it connotations and consequences, and what makes sex even more complicated is that we can't stop thinking about it.\nWhen a mysterious disease in the 1980s killed an alarming amount of people, no one knew why. Eventually it was determined the disease was primarily transmitted through sexual contact, but low and behold someone had stopped funding sexual research for one reason or another, so we had no answers or explanations.\nIt took the fear of AIDS to restart organizations like the Kinsey Institute in the 80s. With so many alarming statistics concerning sexual behavior being released every day, it's heinous to think anyone is standing in the way of current research to simply understand why certain sexual trends are prominent.\nSomeone needs to send a memo to those who oppose sexual studies and let them know people are still having sex.\nGet over it. It's time we start understanding.