Richard Viladesau is author of Theological Aesthetics: God in Imagination, Beauty and Art (Oxford University Press, 1999), in which he discusses how beauty can reveal the divine. He is a professor of theology at Fordham University, a Catholic institution in New York, N.Y.

Lilian Calles Barger is an independent historian and the author of Eve’s Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body, an examination of women’s relationships with their bodies and how that affects their Christianity. Contact via her website.

In January 2006, Journal of Adolescent Health published a review of U.S. sex education policies and programs, concluding that the government’s push for abstinence-only education is “morally problematic” and threatens teens’ human rights to “health, education and life.”

The U.S. government report on the first-year impact of four abstinence-only education programs.

A backgrounder on abstinence-only sex education programs. Results, delayed since 2004, were eventually released 2006. The backgrounder is provided by Mathematica, a social policy research firm.

The Guttmache Institute seeks to advance sexual and reproductive health through research, policy analysis and public education. Contact Rebecca Wind.

The United States government’s principal agency for protecting the health of all Americans and providing essential human services.

Responsible for federal programs which promote the economic and social well-being of families, children, individuals, and communities.

Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), for matching grants to states to provide abstinence education and, at state option, mentoring, counseling, and adult supervision to promote abstinence from sexual activity, with a focus on groups that are most likely to bear children out-of-wedlock.