This book is about America s rendezvous with sexual reality. We are the

nation in the Western world with the highest rate of virtually every sexual

problem: rape, AIDS, teenage pregnancy, child sexual abuse, and many

more. These are problems that nobody wants to have, and so it is apparent

that we must be unknowingly thinking and behaving in ways that produce

these tragic outcomes.

As a sociologist who has studied American sexual life for over forty

years, I felt I understood how we were unwittingly producing these

sexual problems and I felt obligated to share that knowledge with the

public. I do not see social science as existing in an ivory tower where

you just "state the facts." Rather, I see science as the handmaiden of

those who wish to build a better society. It is to that aim that this book

is dedicated.

My conclusion is that our sexual crises all have the same root cause.

These multiple crises are produced by the lack of a sexual ethic and a sup-

portive institutional structure that is integrated with the new type of

society in which we live. But there is such a new sexual ethic developing

and it is what I call Sexual Pluralism. This is the ethic that is sweeping

over Western Europe and in the 1990s it has increasingly taken root in

America. I describe the meaning of this ethic in the opening chapter and

show its relevance for resolving our sexual crisis throughout the book. I

compare it to our traditional "one size fits all" sexual ethic and indicate

how, while that old ethic may have worked for an agricultural society, it

will not work for the knowledge-based society that is evolving as we

enter the twenty-first century. Thus, this book is a statement of the new