The Barometer Online

Issue date: 2/18/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Cory Reed Emeritus professor Robert Nye checks role in his HST 432 class Tuesday afternoon. Nye has been teaching the class since the 1980s.

In the first class meeting of HST 432, "The History of Sexuality," each year, Emeritus Professor Robert Nye warns students that the class is going to be X-rated.

The content covers sexuality from ancient Greece to the present, and few topics are left untouched. But in 15 years of leading discussions with OSU students about controversial subjects like homosexuality, transgender operations, prostitution, child molestation and masturbation, no one has dropped the class because of the warning, he said.

"The result is that it really opens up the communications," Nye said.

The classroom communication with students recently inspired the professor to write a letter to the editor of The Oregonian about news involving Portland Mayor Sam Adams' sexual relationship with a teenager. The letter, titled "We all lie about sex, and justify it as a form of self preservation," was published in the Jan. 31 edition of the newspaper.

"I always ask my students if they would reveal everything about their sexual histories where their anonymity could not be assured, and only one or two brave souls raise their hands," Nye said in the letter to The Oregonian.

He poses the question in an effort to show students the difficulty of understanding people's sexual histories, he said. Nye used this example in his piece to exemplify the fact that society inhibits people from feeling comfortable enough to tell the truth about sex, and Adams shouldn't be prosecuted for being human.

Initially, Adams lied about any involvement with the boy. Once news broke, Adams admitted to kissing the boy before he turned 18, but waited to engage in a sexual relationship until after he turned 18, Nye said. The young man backed up Adams' statements and said that the acts were consensual.

"There are still enormous numbers of disincentives for people to express their sexual desires," Nye said. "We're very uptight in this society compared to other societies throughout history about sex with minors."

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