group pressure accounts for both sexual experience and exposure to erotic materials among youth. A study of a heterogeneous group of young people found that exposure to erotica had no impact upon moral character over and above that of a generally deviant background. Statistical studies of the relationship between availability of erotic materials and the rates of sex crimes in Denmark indicate that the increased availability of explicit sexual materials has been accompanied by a decrease in the incidence of sexual crime. Analysis of police records of the same types of sex crimes in Copenhagen during the past 12 years revealed that a dramatic decrease in reported sex crimes occurred during this period and that the decrease coincided with changes in Danish law which permitted wider availability of explicit sexual materials. Other research showed that the decrease in reported sexual offenses cannot be attributed to concurrent changes in the social and legal definitions of sex crimes or in public attitudes toward reporting such crimes to the police, or in police reporting procedures. Statistical studies of the relationship between the availability of erotic material and the rates of sex crimes in the United States presents a more complex picture. During the period in which there has been a marked increase in the availability of erotic materials, some specific rates of arrest for sex crimes have increased (e.g., forcible rape) and others have declined (e.g., overall juvenile rates). For juveniles, the overall rate of arrests for sex crimes decreased even though arrests for nonsexual crimes increased by more than 100%. For adults, arrests for sex offenses increased slightly more than did arrests for nonsex offenses. The conclusion is that, for America, the relationship between the availability of erotica and changes in sex crime rates neither proves nor disproves the possibility that availability of erotica leads to crime, but the massive overall increases in sex crimes that have been alleged do not seem to have occurred. Available research indicates that sex offenders have had less adolescent experience with erotica than other adults. They do not differ significantly from other adults in relation to adult experience with erotica, in relation to reported arousal or in relation to the likelihood of engaging in sexual behavior during or following exposure. Available evidence suggests that sex offenders' early inexperience with erotic material is a reflection of their more generally deprived sexual environment. The relative absence of experience appears to constitute another indicator of atypical and inadequate sexual socialization. In sum, empirical research designed to clarify the question has found no evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior among youth or adults. *The Commission cannot conclude that exposure to erotic materials is a factor in the causation of sex crime or sex delinquency. 4 Commissioners G. William Jones, Joseph T. Klapper, and Morris A. Lipton believe “that in the interest of precision a distinction should be made between two types of statements which occur in this Report. One type, to which we subscribe, is that research to date does not indicate that a causal relationship exists between exposure to erotica and the various social ills to which the research has been addressed. There are, however, also statements to the effect that 'no evidence' exists, and we believe these should more accurately read 'no reliable evidence.' Occasional aberrant findings, some of very doubtful validity, are noted and discussed in the Report of the Effects Panel. In our opinion, none of these, either individually or in sum, are of sufficient merit to constitute reliable evidence or to alter the summary conclusion that the research to date does not indicate a causal relationship." III. Positive Approaches: Regardless of the effects of exposure, there is still a considerable amount of uneasiness about explicit sexual materials and their pervasiveness in our society. In discussions about obscenity and pornography, the fact is often overlooked that legal control on the availability of explicit sexual materials is not the only, or necessarily the most effective, method of dealing with these materials. Apart from legal controls, a great deal of support exists in our society for several other methods of dealing with obscenity and pornography. According to a national survey, nearly everyone approves, for example, of parents teaching children "what is good for them and what is not." A very large proportion, approximately three-quarters, of the adults in our survey also approve of dealing with sexual materials by providing instruction in school that teaches children "what is good for them," by industry regulating itself in terms of the kinds of materials it makes available, by librarians keeping "objectionable materials" off the shelves, and by groups of citizens organizing themselves to keep "objectionable things" out of the community. The Commission has explored the effectiveness of sex education, industry self-regulation, and organized citizen action as methods of dealing with the availability of sexually explicit materials. A. SEX EDUCATION A large majority of sex educators and counselors are of the opinion that most adolescents are interested in explicit sexual materials, and that this interest is a product of natural curiosity about sex. They also feel that if adolescents had access to adequate information regarding sex, through appropriate sex education, their interest in pornography would be reduced. There is mounting evidence of dissatisfaction with existing sources of sex information. Although adults indicate that parents are the most preferred source of sex information for children and that other children are the least preferred 1 The Report of the Positive Approaches Panel of the Commission provides a more thorough discussion and documentation of this overview. source, these same adults indicate that child peers had been a principal actual source of their sex information. Other sources of information indicated by adults as preferred sources, such as church, school, and physician, were also minor actual sources for them. Studies of today's adolescents reveal that their peers are still the principal source of sex information and that parents, church, and physician are minor sources. Schools, however, are a more important source of sex information today than they were a generation ago. This trend toward delegating some responsibility for sex education to the schools is approved by a substantial majority of adults in our country. The amount of support for sex education in the schools varies among different segments of our society, however: People who are older, who have less formal education, and who have conservative attitudes toward sex are less likely to support sex education. Young people report dissatisfaction with the sex information they get both at home and at school. They report that at home parents are frequently embarrassed or uninformed and most do not talk openly and honestly about sex, while at school, the information they are given tends to be irrelevant, insufficient, or is made available too late. In the absence of satisfactory information from preferred sources, young people tend to turn to their friends, and to books and periodicals, although they recognize that these may not always be reliable sources. Young people would prefer to receive information from more appropriate and more reliable sources and in a more timely fashion, and think that more responsibility should be delegated to the schools. More desired sources of sex information are not necessarily more reliable. Parents, a preferred source of sex information, are often neither well informed about sex nor expert in communicating with children. Formal courses in sex education are relatively new in universities and colleges and there are few teachers who are well prepared for imparting sexual information to young people. Studies indicate that physicians are often no better informed about some significant aspects of human sexuality than the generally educated citizen and may be no more at ease in discussing some sexual matters. This is also true for professional religious workers. Training of professional workers in the area of sex education is beginning to receive some attention, but opportunities for formal training are still not widely available. Less than 15% of our colleges and universities offer any training in this area and such training is frequently only in summer workshops. Even so, the amount of professional training currently available represents a considerable increase in opportunity over what was available as recently as two years ago. The American Association of Sex Educators and Counselors devotes a great part of its annual national meeting to practical seminars and workshops in order to supplement the sparse existing training opportunities. Medical schools are now beginning to include courses in normal human sexuality in their curricula. At the present time, about half of the medical schools in the United States devote any portion of their curricula specifically to human sexuality and for the most part the courses offered are elective. This represents a tremendous increase in training opportunity as compared with two years ago. Within theological schools discussion of sex education is only beginning. Commercially prepared teaching materials for sex education courses at all levels are now becoming available; however, materials for use in the training of professionals are still severely limited. In fact, at least two medical schools and one religiously affiliated private training institute for professional workers have used what is generally termed "hard-core pornography" in their sex education courses because no other materials are available explicitly depicting the wide range of sexual behavior with which professionals in human sexuality must be familiar. Training of professionals in sex education must overcome not only the absence of adequate information about sex, but also existing attitudes which inhibit the open discussion of sex without embarrassment or titillation. The experience of the two medical schools and the private training institute suggests that the use of pictorial depictions of explicit sexual activity with discussion provides not only information but also a reduction of inhibition and embarrassment in talking about sex. It should be noted that a similar finding was obtained in some of the experimental studies of the effects of explicit sexual materials. Many schools have implemented sex education programs in the past few years and these represent a wide variety of approaches in terms of content and context. Some courses start in elementary school and continue through high school, while others are initiated only in junior high or even senior high school. Some sex education courses are integrated with other courses, and some are separate courses under a variety of different titles. The content of different courses varies from principal focus on comparative structure of reproductive systems, to focus on the social content of sexual activity, to emphasis on moral sanctions constraining sexual expression. Thus, there is little professional consensus regarding the appropriate scope of sex education. The recency of the introduction of sex education into the curriculum and the pluralism that exists regarding the definition of goals, content and context, have resulted in the almost total absence of empirical research aimed at evaluating programs of sex education. The Commission has been able to discover only two formal studies. One is still in the process of data analysis and no results are as yet available. The other indicates that girls who had a particular sex education course were less likely to have illegitimate children than girls who had not taken the course and that boys who took the course were less likely to be divorced later, at the time the study was conducted, than were boys who had not had the course in sex education. Sex education in the schools has been advocated because the existing alternatives for communicating about sex with young people are felt by so many people, both adults and young people themselves, to be inadequate or undesirable. Although sex education has been endorsed by a variety of national organizations, such as the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, the National Council of Churches, the National Education Association, the American Medical Association, and the American Psychiatric Association, and although a majority of adults in our society favor sex education in the schools organized opposition to sex education has emerged in the past two years at both national and local levels. This opposition has resulted in a decelerating rate of introduction of new sex educa |