about

"In America today, sex is ubiquitously visible in the media and highly valued as an essential part of adult sanity. At the same time, it is under harsh attack in the schools, the courts and legislatures, and large parts of the psychological establishment, especially when it involves either youth or sexual minorities. To bring both reason and celebration back to sex, we need smart, creative, courageous public advocates -- and they need to be organized to act together. Sex in the Public Square promises to do just that. In the name of sexual knowledge, tolerance, and pleasure, I applaud SIPS and can't wait to start working with them."

The rules here are mostly common-sense but common sense isn't always so common, so we thought we should spell them out.

Privacy

We will not sell, rent, or otherwise share your account information with anyone. Period.

Etiquette

We welcome dissent and passionate debate and so we need to create the kind of environment where that can occur safely. That means no personal attacks. "I think that's a ridiculous idea because ..." is much more effective than "You'd have to be a real idiot to think that ..."

Images

It's hard to talk about sex without talking about sexual images, and it's hard to talk about sexual images without sometimes using them as illustrations. This is primarily an information and discussion site, not primarily an entertainment site, but either way there will be times when explicit imagery may be appropriate. Our policy is that graphic sexual images be kept off the front page of the site.

This site works like a combination of a blog and a more formal web site. The "front page" (what you get when you click on "The Public Square" or the header image) will always, in the center column, list the newest content on the site.

Content comes in a variety of forms. There are member blogs, forums, polls, news stories, announcements, reviews, calls for action, and resource lists. (If there are new kinds of content you're interested in, let us know!)

The menus at the top of the page will help you navigate through the site. Several of the main menu items have submenus. This page, for example, comes under the Welcome! menu because it is a page that will be useful mostly to people just joining in for the first time.