THE STUDY OF HUMAN SEXUALITY IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL sciences is now a litde more than one hundred years old. Any review of the theoretical, methodological, and substantive development of the field of sex research must come to the conclusion that progress has been remarkably slow, perhaps even halting. In some measure, this rate of development is a consequence of the modest rate of development in other areas of the social and behavioral sciences; but, more importandy, it is the result of the competition between social and behavioral approaches to the understanding of sexual life and other powerful belief systems. Thus religious values and institutions, the legal system, the field of medicine, and, more recendy, the mass media, through the transmission of fictional sexual narratives as well as the reformulation of scientific and pseudo-scientific knowledge, are important players in the debate about what role sexuality has and should have in the lives of individuals and in the social order.