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- NATION, Page 27American NotesWASHINGTONNo Sex, We're Republicans
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- Ever since the time of Romeo and Juliet, teenage love has
- inspired poems, novels, movies and songs. It also inspired
- University of North Carolina researchers to design a five-year,
- $18 million survey of 24,000 youngsters in grades 7 through 11
- to determine teen attitudes toward sex in the '90s. The study,
- ranging from the tame (hand holding) to the torrid (sodomy and
- oral sex), won funding from the National Institutes of Health
- in May. But last week Secretary of Health Louis Sullivan
- abruptly canceled the study because he feared it would
- contradict his stand against casual sex.
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- Sullivan's decision was prompted largely by pressure from
- the Republican right. Gary L. Bauer, president of the Family
- Research Council and a Reaganite conservative, complained, "We
- already know teenagers have sex too early, too often and with
- too many people." In the House, California Republican William
- Dannemeyer proposed an amendment to the NIH appropriations bill
- that would prohibit federal funding for future sex surveys,
- while Colorado Democrat Patricia Schroeder called the
- cancellation of the study "nothing less than medical
- McCarthyism."
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