Sexuality

There are many things that Tatiana von Fürstenberg and Francesca Gregorini have in common — but perhaps most particularly is the fact that they're both the children of famous parents. Von Fürstenberg's mother is fashion designer Diane von Fürstenberg; Gregorini's mother is onetime Bond girl Barbara Bach, who married Ringo Starr when Francesca was a teenager. Both women were raised speaking Italian, and each attended a boarding school in England. Still, they say now, their formative years varied greatly.

WASHINGTON - Lawmakers from both major parties rebuked the Pentagon on Tuesday for failing to curtail sexual assaults in the military, arguing that the inability of commanders to solve the problem may mean they need to be stripped of the power to decide on prosecuting and punishing offenders. With an estimated 26,000 service members experiencing "unwanted sexual contact" last year - and evidence that many fear retaliation if they report an assault to a superior - Congress is preparing to take up a bill by Sens.

In the airy Venice apartment where Damon Lawner and Natacha Merritt are working to escalate the sexuality of L.A. night life, two slobbery chocolate Labradors ambled about with a tennis ball. A couple of actors and designers huddled over a long table, pencil-sketching some stage-blocking ideas for the duo's upscale fetish party Sanctum . By the stairwell, a vermilion-haired model cheerily tried on lingerie with varying degrees of structural difficulty, and Merritt posed the girl's limbs just-so.

Re "Uncoupling the hookup culture," Opinion, May 28 As a sexuality educator and author, I applaud Bob Laird's article. But I do have one concern. He stated that Boston University religion professor and author Donna Freitas "denigrates abstinence education. " Although she does have concerns, she has also written about its benefits. Stating that she denigrates abstinence education feeds into the terrible myths about virginity that perpetuate the hookup culture Laird decries.

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?

Frank Ocean, the acclaimed R&B singer and member of L.A. hip-hop collective Odd Future, published a statement on his Tumblr site early Wednesday morning in which he opened up about his sexuality, and revealed that he had fallen in love with a man. The acknowledgment, he wrote, was supposed to be first published in the liner notes to his highly anticipated new album, "Channel Orange," which comes out July 17. The singer, who dropped his first bombshell...

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.

Frank Ocean's Def Jam debut, “Channel Orange,” isn't due for two weeks, but the album has had Twitter abuzz for days. As the Odd Future crooner previewed the highly anticipated disc for press, attention shifted to his sexuality after one blogger's brief mention that when he sings about love on a number of tracks he uses “him” as opposed to “her.” It was that quick line that has dominated the blogosphere. PHOTOS: Gay celebrities, who is out? What was fascinating about the rampant speculation about Ocean isn't that it spread so quickly (much of this week's headlines have centered on Anderson Cooper confirming his sexual orientation)

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.

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.

BEIJING - In China's southern Hainan province, a school principal and a housing authority official were arrested after they allegedly took six girls ages 11 to 13 out to sing karaoke, got them drunk and spent the night with them in a hotel. A principal in Anhui province was arrested on suspicion of molesting nine girls, and a 50-year-old math teacher in the same province was charged with raping a 7-year-old girl. A kindergarten security guard was arrested, accused of molesting children.

A self-described "loud-mouthed Irish priest" ("And may they carve it on my gravestone!" he once quipped), the Rev. Andrew M. Greeley rejected a conventional definition of his vocation. Denied a parish, the Roman Catholic priest created his own pulpits as a sociologist whose groundbreaking research corrected misimpressions of American Roman Catholics and as a bestselling novelist whose works - "The Cardinal Sins," "Thy Brother's Wife" and more than 50 other titles - made readers blush and church superiors fume.

SACRAMENTO - California lawmakers Wednesday advanced a dozen gun-control measures, including background checks for ammunition buyers, and gave early approval to a tax penalty on the Boy Scouts for barring openly gay leaders. Legislators also voted for a new $75 charge on real estate transactions to pay for affordable-housing projects. Mass shootings such as the one in Newtown, Conn., in December spurred Democratic lawmakers to look for ways to tighten California's gun laws, already some of the toughest in the nation.

The number of reported hate crimes in Orange County fell by 21% last year, even though such crimes based on sexual orientation almost doubled, according to a report released Thursday. The Orange County Human Relations Commission found that 61 hate crimes were reported to authorities in 2012, continuing a general downward trend since reported hate crimes peaked at 101 in 2006. The most frequent target, the commission said, were blacks and people perceived to be gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender.

A new government report singles out Los Angeles County's Twin Towers as having one of the worst rates of inmate-on-inmate sexual assault of any men's jail in the nation. One in 20 inmates held there reported that he had been victimized by another inmate while in custody, far higher than the national average of 1 in 60, according to the Department of Justice. The report is just the latest reminder that sexual abuse remains an intractable reality of incarceration in this country. Congress took a first step toward confronting this behavior in 2003 when it passed the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The landmark legislation required the Justice Department to adopt new detention regulations that are expected to take effect in August.

Students and activists joined together Wednesday to file complaints against colleges and universities nationwide, alleging that the schools have failed to follow federal laws, including those involving the reporting of sexual assaults and discrimination. Attorney Gloria Allred announced that complaints were filed against Swarthmore College, Dartmouth College, USC and UC Berkeley on Wednesday morning. Some of these were Title IX complaints alleging a hostile environment for women.

Authorities in Ventura County on Monday night announced a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and criminal charges against a man who sexually assaulted a woman earlier in the day. The woman was walking alone about 9 a.m. Monday in an incorporated area near Santa Paula that borders fruit orchards when she confronted by the man, who was wielding a knife, the Ventura County Sheriff's Department said. The man forced the woman into the orchard near Peck Road and Santa Paula Street and assaulted her. The woman received minor injuries but did not require medical attention, authorities said.

Paula Coughlin was grocery shopping in Jacksonville, Fla., when I caught up with her on the phone this week. If anyone has an interesting perspective on the U.S. military's absurd inability to deal with sexual assault, it's Coughlin. She is the former Navy lieutenant who blew the lid off the tawdry goings on at the 1991 gathering of Naval aviators known as the Tailhook Assn. Symposium. In a third-floor corridor of the Las Vegas Hilton, she was sexually attacked by fellow flyers. When the Navy failed to act on her complaint, she went public.