A few weeks ago, I wrote about a handful of senators in Georgia who engineered a grass-roots campaign to, ahem, liberate professors who study human sexuality from their state-university posts.
Today, two professors - Dr. Mindy Stombler and Dr. Kirk Elifson - are testifying in front of the Georgia Senate to hold onto their jobs. The reason? Their expertise in queer theory, oral sex and male prostitution.
At first, it was all about the money: reducing payroll by eliminating professors who weren’t engaged in bottom-line enhancing research. But, as I pointed out in an earlier post, a search of the University’s expert guide, however, yielded just 11 other sex-focused professors, hardly sufficient for the widespread conspiracy Byrd suggests, nor would the elimination of their salaries (even a very generous $100,000 a year X 12 is only $1.2 million) be sufficient to reverse the financial fortunes of an organization as large and complex as a University.
But it didn’t take long for this initial dust-up over salary to whip into a veritable tornado of moral outrage. State reps Charlice Byrd, Calvin Hill and John Brown wouldn’t let go of the sensationalist minutiae: “How do I go back and explain to the 7,500 veterans of this state that we have money to pay for male prostitution experts and oral sex experts, and queer theory?”asked Brown. “How do I go back and explain to the 7,500 veterans that we have money to pay for these things but not for veteran housing?”
For starters, by explaining that expertise in oral sex didn’t mean delivering instructional Tristan-style lectures, but instead engaging in long-range studies focused on harm reduction and disease prevention.
Then you can mention that the so-called expert in male prostitution aims to “assist community based organizations to implement HIV/STD interventions for incarcerated men and women, and to gain insight into the health related consequences of substance abuse.”
And finish up with a few facts on impacts and outputs: Dr. Mindy Stombler and Dr. Kirk Elifson’s work has contributed positively to the community by helping policy development, increasing harm reduction measures and garnering research funding from the National Institutes of Health.