Teaching Moral Sex: A History of Religion and Sex Education in the United States

Whose job is it to teach the public about sex? Parents? The churches? The schools? And what should they be taught? These questions have sparked some of the most heated political debates in recent American history, most recently the battle between proponents of comprehensive sex education and those in favor of an “abstinence-only” curriculum.

Kristy Slominski shows that these questions have a long, complex, and surprising history. Teaching Moral Sex is the first comprehensive study of the rol...