Sexuality

Sex is everywhere. We sometimes believe that it was Freud who woke us to this thought, but, in truth, sex has always been everywhere--and everyone has always known it. From the dark, plush contours of the first human images--the exaggeratedly sexual "Venus" figures carved by Cro-Magnon--through the pale, bald lingams of the East to the many-breasted magna maters of Asia Minor, sex and sexuality have been seen as central--at least in some sense .

Robert Van Handel remembered the boy as about 9 years old, tan, effeminate. "Now that I think back on it, he was probably the most beautiful child that I molested," Van Handel wrote to a therapist. Van Handel, a priest who ran a boys choir in Santa Barbara, said he coaxed the boy into posing for nude photographs. He described the experience as "stimulating" in a graphic account of improprieties he said he carried out at a Franciscan boarding school there. For decades, the now-shuttered St. Anthony's Seminary was awash in dark secrets.

AS they seek to document and demystify one of life's great thrills, scientists have run across some real head-scratchers. How, for example, can they explain the fact that some men and women who are paralyzed and numb below the waist are able to have orgasms? How to explain the "orgasmic auras" that can descend at the onset of epileptic seizures -- sensations so pleasurable they prompt some patients to refuse antiseizure medication? And how on Earth to explain the case of the amputee who felt his orgasms centered in that missing foot?

AURORA, Colo. - On May 2, D'Avonte Meadows, a 6-year-old with an infectious grin and rambunctious streak, was suspended for three days from Sable Elementary in suburban Denver for crooning "[I'm] Sexy and I Know It" to a girl in lunch line. The school declared it sexual harassment and told his parents that, because D'Avonte sang the same song to the same girl before, he is a repeat offender. The news media pounced. And Stephanie Meadows, D'Avonte's 29-year-old mother, gave her bewildered son, a special needs student, a crash course in birds, bees and sexual boundaries.

Robert Warren Cromey's "Celebrate, and Guide, Sexuality" (Column Left, May 31) contains some very uncomfortable truths. While many religious groups spend their considerable resources and energies trying to stamp out "forbidden sex" (in one form or another), they seem strangely mute on the really crucial issues of the times. That list is very long and very familiar: hunger, war, drugs, homelessness, battered wives and children, white-collar crime, prejudice and, of course, AIDS. Given the fact that sexual abstinence (i.e.

Concerning Howard Rosenberg's Oct. 19 column, "It's More Fun to Sell Sex Than Protection": Please tell me what is wrong with people on TV or in life admiring the attractive behind of another person; with discussing vasectomy, pregnancy or sperm; with laughing a little at sex, sexuality and our own foolishness? Are we really supposed to pretend these things don't exist? Please tell me why we should feel uncomfortable with our children about our own bodies (and theirs). The confusing messages we send them must certainly cause more confusion and terror--and more sexist behavior--than anything else in their lives.

"Trans-Sister Radio" is the latest offering from Vermont author Chris Bohjalian, whose 1997 novel, "Midwives," was an Oprah Book Club choice. (Random House Audiobooks; abridged fiction; three cassettes; five hours; $25; read by Judith Ivey.) Professor Dana Stevens is a woman trapped in a man's body. He's about to rectify that situation through surgery. Dana is also in love with Allison Banks, a schoolteacher in a rural Vermont town.

After reading your review of the Erasure concert ("Capering Andy Bell Leads Erasure Through Zesty Evening" by Mike Boehm, Calendar June 18), I was pretty upset. For me and for three good friends of mine, this was our first concert, and we were very excited. Naturally, our hopes were high for this concert, and Erasure proved very quickly to be a very enthusiastic group. The four of us, as well as many others at the concert, knew of the two men's homosexuality. That had absolutely no effect whatsoever on our feelings toward the music or the band.

Quickly now, name the four stages of orgasm. If your teen-ager is attending a public high school in California, he or she probably knows the answer. It's just one of many topics covered in a typical sex education unit that is part of the health course taught in most California public schools. Without a doubt, sex education is the most controversial of school subjects. So what is taught in a typical course? And who decides?

Why do humans feel and behave the way they do, sexually and reproductively? That will be the focus of a new documentary series being produced for public television by the British Broadcasting Corp. and WNET/New York. The eight-part series of hourlong documentaries, as yet untitled, will be filmed worldwide and will be a collaboration between the natural history unit of the BBC and the science and natural history unit of WNET.

OAKLAND — Right fielder Torii Hunter , on the restricted list since May 14 while he deals with the arrest of his 17-year-old son, will probably rejoin the team early next week, Manager Mike Scioscia said. Hunter has been in Texas, where Darius McClinton-Hunter was arrested on a sexual assault charge. Though the Angels have not been required to pay Hunter during his 10-day absence, he is receiving his full salary, according to a person familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly about it. If Hunter returns for Monday night's game against the New York Yankees in Angel Stadium, he will have been away for two weeks.

The Angels put All-Star right fielder Torii Hunter on baseball's restricted list Monday after his 17-year-old son's arrest in Prosper, Texas, on suspicion of felony sexual assault of a child. Darius McClinton-Hunter , of McKinney, Texas, was arrested along with four high school classmates after a monthlong investigation, according to Prosper police. McClinton-Hunter and Garrick White , also 17, were arrested as adults, police said, along with three juveniles. No record of charges against McClinton-Hunter could be found on the police website.

In One Person A Novel John Irving Simon & Schuster: 426 pp., $28 Late in John Irving's 13th novel, "In One Person," the narrator, an aging writer named William Abbott, recalls visiting a high school friend dying of AIDS. It's the early 1980s, the beginning of the AIDS crisis, and Irving evokes the deathly terrors of that period, a time when people seemed, literally, to evaporate, to become, in the words of the late David Wojnarowicz, "a dark smudge in the air that dissipates without notice … glass human[s]

'After Dark Action' "Dragon Eyes" MPAA rating: R for brutal violence, pervasive language, some sexuality/nudity and drug use Running time: 1 hour, 31 minutes "El Gringo" MPAA rating: R for bloody violence, language and some sexuality Running time: 1 hour, 38 minutes "The Philly Kid" MPAA rating: R for violence and language Running time: 1hour, 33 minutes "Stash House" ...

John Travolta is now facing allegations of assault and sexual battery from a second anonymous male masseur, according to an amended complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court. Similar to the complaint filed Friday, the amended civil complaint goes into graphic detail about Travolta's alleged behavior - including unwanted touching and inappropriate nudity - while he was on the table for an in-room massage. While the first John Doe described events alleged to have taken place in Beverly Hills on Jan. 16, the second referred to an alleged encounter in Atlanta on Jan. 28, according to a court document obtained and published by Radar Online (Caution: Document contains graphic material)

Nancy Eomurian was driving through a Long Beach church parking lot April 28 when she found a man covered in blood lying on the ground near the lifeless body of his 9-year-old stepdaughter. Next to the child she saw what appeared to be nonsensical scrawl written on the side of a container. "I first thought the scrawl was graffiti, then I realized it was blood," Eomurian said. "It was like time stopped. " Prosecutors allege that the man, 31-year-old Jacinto Zuniga Trujillo, killed the girl out of fear she would reveal that he had been molesting her. The L.A. County district attorney's office accused Trujillo of capital murder and molestation, alleging that he had abused the girl for months.

WAKEFIELD, Mass. — For more than a year, the guilt and shame overwhelmed Kayla Harrison, even though she had done nothing wrong. "I can't describe how I felt," she says quietly. "I think I cried pretty much every night. " She also thought about suicide — even tried to run away from home once. Then she decided to stand and fight. Sexually abused by her judo coach for three years as a teenager, Harrison did what few in her position ever find the courage to do: confront her attacker in court.

For nine years the "teardrop" rapist was one of Los Angeles' most prolific serial predators, preying on women from Melrose Avenue to Manchester Boulevard. The assailant, sometimes described as having a teardrop tattoo below one of his eyes, targeted girls and women walking alone in the early-morning hours. He would force them into a secluded area at the point of a gun or knife before raping or sexually assaulting them. There were 27 reported rapes or attempted assaults between 1996 and 2005.