It’s a tremendous shame that this sensible article is even needed. I continue to be astonished and saddened at how US sentiment regarding sexuality is so vastly different from that of non-Catholic Europe. Sure, the pervading myth that the nation was founded by Puritans doesn’t help (in fact the Virginia colonies were there long before) but there’s so much more to the problem. Perhaps someone will study the phenomenon and its antecedents and provide a definitive history of how sexual repression and fear came to be such a dominant force in the USA — a force which continues to exert its baleful influence even into the 21st century.