WASHINGTON — When it comes to sex, Congress is a lot like junior high school.
The subject makes some people squirm in embarrassment. And there’s a popular clique trading a lot of bad information.
That’s the view of the nation’s highest legislative body found in Rep. Diana DeGette’s new book, “Sex, Science and Stem Cells.”
A Democratic congresswoman from Denver, DeGette posits that the Bush administration’s policy on stem-cell research, which she’s tried to change for seven years, is part of a pattern of legislating on human sexuality issues that is based in religious beliefs and not science.
Conservative Republicans, prodded by “the religious right,” she argues, have injected politics into science and tainted everything from funding for sex education in schools to efforts to stop the spread of HIV abroad.
“This brought me to the inevitable conclusion that too many of our elected officials are simply incapable of thinking rationally about sex,” DeGette writes in the book. “The disconnect was so transparent that some of our older male politicians couldn’t even talk about any aspect of human sexuality without biting their lips to avoid snickering like schoolboys.”
DeGette timed the book to November’s election.
In 2006, DeGette traveled the country campaigning for candidates who supported her embryonic-stem-cell legislation, which President Bush had vetoed. After the 2006 election, the bill passed Congress again with 14 new votes of support, many from candidates DeGette had helped. When Bush vetoed the bill a second time, she decided to think bigger.
“The whole purpose of the book is really to let average voters know all of the insane things that happen in Congress . . .” DeGette said, “in the hopes that it will energize people to vote for pro-science candidates in November, including at the presidential level.”
DeGette argues that it’s not partisan, but rather “hard-hitting.” Of those criticized, she said, “they deserve it.”
The book criticizes President Bush and other Republicans by name.
So far the book has sold fewer than 1,000 copies since its Aug. 4 release, according to Nielsen BookScan.
Asked whether it’s likely to attract anyone who doesn’t already agree with its message, DeGette said “the title of the book … and the nature of the book is something that piques people’s interest.”
The book is at points deeply personal. DeGette details how her daughter Francesca at age 4 was diagnosed with juvenile-onset diabetes, thrusting the family into a world transformed by multiple daily shots, dietary restrictions and constant watchfulness and worry.
DeGette wrote that she debated leaving Congress at the time of the diagnosis but decided she might be able to use her legislative post to help many people with serious illnesses.
When issues related to embryonic-stem-cell research began to surface in Congress, “I slogged through the material with a legislator’s eye and a mother’s heart,” she wrote, “I thought about what these possibilities might mean for Frannie and for millions of other diabetes patients all over the world.”
DeGette, for the most part, hesitates to talk about her daughter as a factor in the embryonic-stem-cell legislation but said she knew she had to tell the personal part of her story in the book.
“It’s important when you write a book like this that the reader knows where you’re coming from,” DeGette said, adding that it shows she is not some “crazy left winger” but rather a person with “a really strong motivation to pass the legislation.”
“I’m glad I did it. I think it helps put all that into perspective,” DeGette said.
Anne C. Mulkern: 202-662-8907 or amulkern@denverpost.com
