America's War On Sex:
The Attack on Law, Lust, & Liberty

Topics and Presentations

• Why a War on Sex? How does it affect you?
• How the Right's obsession with your sexuality is undermining democracy
• Beyond sex: how the attack on sexual rights is just the beginning of the Religious Right's political agenda
• How the government and religious Right are using the political system to transform the political system
• The myth of "activist judges"--and why the Right is promoting it
• How the Right gets it wrong about sex
• How the Right shapes the narrative and vocabulary of sexual issues today
• How healthcare, marriage counseling, sex research, and academia are being vandalized by the War on Sex
• How the Right is successfully creating religion-based local government
• Are sexual feelings and sexual imagery bad for kids?
• The Sexual Disaster Industry--promoting fear and suspicion in a world that's safer than you think
• The powerful relationship between personal sexual problems and repressive public policy
• Whose rights? Why are consumers of porn and adult entertainment excluded from public policy discussion?
• Why democracy can't currently protect your sexual rights
• Why sexual rights are crucial to other American freedoms
• Why the rights of sexual minorities are important for your sexual freedom

The Right has successfully politicized our private lives. Questions such as who you have sex with, what you do with them, and what you fantasize about are now considered of legitimate public interest.

At the same time, the Right has demonized sexuality, transforming America's cultural narrative about sex into one of danger and fear. The U.S. bathes in sexual opportunity and sexually-oriented entertainment, but when America talks sex, it's almost exclusively about how dangerous it is: unwanted pregnancy, the "homosexual agenda," infidelity, kiddie porn, date rape, STDs, "porn addiction," fetal pain, broadcast "indecency," pedophilia.

After terrifying people with propaganda, of course the Right can pass repressive public policies around sexuality almost at will. But these policies don't fix social problems--they make them worse. This makes people more anxious for themselves and their loved ones, so they ask for even more repressive public policies around sex. Politicians and "morality" leaders gladly comply.

The subject of sexuality may seem trivial, but the government and Religious Right are using it as the vehicle for transforming America's secular democracy. Sexual crime and "indecency" are the pretext for dramatically truncating our right to see, hear, and write what we wish. "Harmful to minors" legislation demands that adults be limited to viewing websites that are fit for children.

The War on Sex is not just about eliminating abortion, sex education, HBO, and strip clubs--although those are some of its goals. Those who war on sex have been perfectly clear: they want to transform our secular democracy. And with their War on Sex, they're succeeding.

In her foreword to his new book, ACLU President Nadine Strossen describes Marty Klein as "my longtime colleague in the civil liberties movement." Come hear this disarmingly candid, extremely knowledgeable, savagely funny sociologist and sex therapist for yourself.