Washington No Sex, We're Republicans

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.

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."