“It hardly seems worth mentioning that the search for role models of sexual rectitude has gone pretty badly lately. That famous poster of Farrah Fawcett — her golden locks tumbling around her shoulders and her gleaming smile offering a girl-next-door counterpoint to the suggestiveness of her red swimsuit — sure makes it look as though, by comparison, the 1970s were an era of wholesomeness. They weren’t. It was about then that social conservatives — fed up with sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, divorce, Roe v. Wade, women surging into the work force and who knows what else — began organizing politically to stamp out all this threatening change. They failed. But eventually they did succeed in imposing their prescription — abstinence-only sex education that studies have repeatedly shown doesn’t work — on the one group of sexually active people most in need of hard information and least likely to respond to harangues: teenagers.” (07/02/09)