We can agree that necrophilia is undesirable because it upsets the relatives of the deceased and contributes little or nothing to the psychological well being of the necrophile, but it is not worthwhile to design a program specifically to prevent necrophilia. Here again, sex research is needed to determine what is truly rare as opposed to what is merely hidden:...

The main disadvantage of deviance is that it adds to the inescapable commonplace problems of sex we all share: the problems of finding a partner of similar inclination and of concealment. The more bizarre one's sexual desires, the fewer potential partners exist and the more necessary it is to conceal one’s activities from relatives, employers, and neighbors.

Many other sexual attitudes and behaviors cannot be so simply and pragmatically defined, but are largely matters of ethics, social philosophy, and taste. For example, we can clearly attempt to prevent pedophilia because it often exploits children, infringes parental rights, and exposes the pedophile to serious punishment, but what do we do about pedophilia's mirror image: gerontophilia? Do we want to prevent people from being attracted sexually to persons many years their senior?

Although we realize that the individuals must to a large extent adapt to society, we must not abandon scientific objectivity and unquestioningly allow society to determine our concepts, our counseling, and our therapies. It is at this point that sex research plays a vital role, for it is only through objective research that we can better understand how attitudes and behaviors develop and at what points in the development intervention can be most effective, and that we can ascertain the long term consequences of various attitudes and behaviors on individuals and society as a whole.

In keeping with our general history of medicine in which the emphasis has been on intervention after, rather than before, the onset of a problem, there has been too little attention paid to the prevention of specific sexual dysfunction. Most of our sex education has been so diluted and nonspecific that its preventive role is minimal.

What suggested by these arguments is the complexity of the processes of sexual learning and the competition that exists among the messages sent and the agents of communication. Not only do we have to concern ourselves with communicators and messages, but we also have to attend to the fact that individuals change over the life span.

There is another media system that exists sometimes parallel to and sometimes interacting with television, which in some cases offers materials for programs or justification for them. This is the reasonably voluminous flow of materials which has issued from the social and behavioral sciences over the last 40 years with reference to sexuality.

The erotic content of television is minuscule and focuses largely on patterns of heterosexual activity among the attractive, and the punishment -- drawn out, of course -- of those who violate various sexual taboos. Such programs are similar to romance comic books or pulp novels or mass audience best sellers in their cultural consequences.

In contrast to the constancy of parents, the media in a number of forms have substantially changed their sexual content over the last 40 years. The media, however, should be considered as a complex and often contradictory set of sources, rather than as a single set of mutually reinforcing influences.

Parents may indeed influence the sexual lives of their children, but evidence for how and to what degree remains obscure. What we do know is that the processes are commonly indirect and rarely take place through the provision of reproductive and erotic knowledge.