As per your specific question in regard to masturbation, I think that is something that is a part of human sexuality and it’s a part of something that perhaps should be taught. But we’ve not even taught our children the very basics. And I feel that we have tried ignorance for a very long time and it’s time we try education.
Joycelyn Elders (b. 1933) American pediatrician, public health administrator, academic
Comment, United Nations AIDS conference, New York City (1 Dec 1994)
(Source)
When asked if it would be appropriate to discuss or promote masturbation as a means of getting younger people to avoid riskier forms of sexual activity. She was fired as Surgeon General for the Clinton Administration for that and earlier comments on controversial issues.
Quotations about:
sexuality
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Condoms will break, but I can assure you that vows of abstinence will break more easily than condoms.
Joycelyn Elders (b. 1933) American pediatrician, public health administrator, academic
Keynote Speech, Sistersong Conference (3 Jun 2007)
(Source)
Whether or not birth control is eugenic, hygienic, and economic, it is the most revolutionary practice in the history of sexual morals.
Walter Lippmann (1889-1974) American journalist and author
A Preface To Morals, ch. 19 (1929)
(Source)
The church has stood, a rock colossus of bigotry, in the path of ten thousand proposed reforms. Sane efforts to legalize birth control information, the manufacture of proper birth control appliances, appliances for the inhibition of the spread of venereal disease, public instruction in sex hygiene, free clinics for the treatment of venereal disease, the inspection and treatment of prostitutes, controlled prostitution itself, the publication of psychological and physical sex information, aid for unwed mothers –myriad attempts by sane men acting sanely on real problems -— have been fought down by church-frightened legislatures and church-dominated courts.
Sex addiction and porn addiction crusaders complain that porn is terrible sex education. I agree, just as watching a car chase in an action movie is a terrible way to learn to drive.
Marty Klein (b. 1950) American sex therapist, author, public policy analyst
“You’re Addicted to What?” The Humanist (Jul/Aug 2012)
(Source)
Nothing could be more grotesquely unjust than a code of morals, reinforced by laws, which relieves men from responsibility for irregular sexual acts, and for the same acts drives women to abortion, infanticide, prostitution, and self-destruction.
Suzanne La Follette (1893-1983) American journalist, author, feminist
Concerning Women (1926)
(Source)
Any sufficiently advanced lingerie is indistinguishable from a lethal weapon.
The Christian attitude does not mean that there is anything wrong about sexual pleasure, any more than about the pleasure of eating. It means that you must not isolate that pleasure and try to get it by itself, any more than you ought to try to get the pleasures of taste without swallowing and digesting, by chewing things and spitting them out again.
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer and scholar [Clive Staples Lewis]
Mere Christianity, ch. 6 “Christian Marriage” (1952)
I’m not running down sex; sex is swell, sex is wonderful. But if you put a holy aura around it — and that is what you are doing — sex stops being fun and starts being neurotic.
There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Comment to George Stevens
In "Johnsoniana," The European Magazine and London Review (Jan 1785). From an anecdote by George Stevens.
I’m as pure as the driven slush.
Tallulah Bankhead (1902-1968) American actress
In the Observer (24 Feb 1957)
Ben, the ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with — in the face of a preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called ‘morals.’ Most of us know the code is wrong; almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) American writer
Stranger in a Strange Land [Jubal] (1961)
(Source)
In the 1960 "uncut" edition, the passage reads as: "Ben, the ethics of sex is a thorny problem because each of us has to find a solution pragmatically compatible with a preposterous, utterly unworkable, and evil public code of so-called "morals." Most of us know, or suspect, that the public code is wrong, and we break it. Nevertheless we pay Danegeld by giving it lip service in public and feeling guilty about breaking it in private. Willy-nilly, that code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck."
When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.
Matt Groening (b. 1954) American cartoonist, writer, producer
Life in Hell, “Basic Sex Facts For Today’s Youngfolk”
Murder is a crime. Describing murder is not.
Sex is not a crime. Describing sex is.Gershon Legman (1917-1999) American writer
Love & Death: A Study in Censorship (1949)
My own belief is that there is hardly anyone whose sexual life, if it were broadcast, would not fill the world at large with surprise and horror.
W. Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) English novelist and playwright [William Somerset Maugham]
(Attributed)
