For elderly, sex doesn't have to get old

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Getting old does not mean saying so long to sex, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

More than three-quarters of American men aged 75 to 85 and half of women that age are still interested in sex, a survey of the elderly by University of Chicago researchers found.

"It's not age per se; that when you get to 80 it's all over with," said sociologist Edward Laumann, who led the study of 3,000 American men and women aged 57 to 85 who lived at home, not in nursing homes.

"It's driven by more proximate factors such as if you become obese, or you're smoking too much, or you contract diabetes. Medications can depress sexual interest. The aging process itself is not a major factor driving these results," he said in a telephone interview.

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Uganda turns to mass circumcision in AIDS fight

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Ugandan authorities have launched a mass circumcision drive with the hope it will reduce HIV/AIDS rates in the east African country.

Some studies indicate circumcision could be 70 percent effective in protecting men against infection by the disease during heterosexual intercourse, when used in conjunction with condoms and other safe-sex practices.

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Rowan Williams: gay couples reflect the love of God

Gay relationships can "reflect the love of God" in a way that is comparable to marriage, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams.

In a series of letters from 2000 and 2001, when he was still archbishop of Wales, Williams wrote that scriptural prohibitions against homosexuality, such as those in Leviticus, were addressed "to heterosexuals looking for sexual variety in their experience".

In the correspondence, an exchange with an evangelical Christian, Williams argued that passages criticising homosexual activity were not aimed at people who were gay by nature.

"An active sexual relationship between two people of the same sex might therefore reflect the love of God in a way comparable to marriage, if and only if it had about it the same character of absolute covenanted faithfulness."

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Self reported sexual activity in Australian sexagenarians

We compare the self reported sexual activity and satisfaction in Swedish 70 year olds1with recent data from the Australian longitudinal study of health and relationships (ALSHR)—a nationally representative random sample of men and women aged 16 to 64 who completed a computer assisted telephone interview.2 The sample had 635 sexagenarians (60-64), most (80%) with a regular partner, almost all of them married and living with their partner. A quarter of women and 15% of men were not in a regular relationship. Regular sexual activity was the norm for those with a regular partner, both women and men reporting an average of three sexual experiences a month...

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FOXSexpert: The Health Benefits of Masturbation

Perhaps the joke’s on us. While people love to make wisecracks about it, few will actually admit to doing “it.”

Yet, according to Martha Cornog, of "The Big Book of Masturbation", self-pleasuring is surely the second most common human sex act. And, despite its torrid history, that’s proving to be a good thing. Turns out this once taboo behavior has plenty of health benefits and can do wonders for your sex life.

While the shackles of masturbation have been loosening around our loins, it is only recently that society has started to let go of its guilt around solo sex. This is in part thanks to sex researchers affirming that most of us do it, as well as the embracing of it by television sitcoms. Who can forget the bet made by Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer as to who could remain the “master of their domain” the longest?

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HIV-Positive? No Olympics For You!

So the Olympics have started. Excited?

Yeah, me neither. To be honest, the last time I caught Olympic fever I could count how old I was on two hands. It was the winter of 1980 and the US hockey team was the underdog to the big bad Soviet Red Army team. (Yes, they actually called it that.)

And it wasn’t just our hockey team that was poorly thought of. America in general didn’t fair too well in the seventies and no one expected much from it — on the world stage or at the Olympics.

So rooting for our hockey team felt good, magical, and thrilling. It was amazing when they won.

But like everything else, a good thing became kinda not so good. The “U-S-A! U-S-A!” chant that echoed out of Lake Placid lost its defiant underdog status and quickly became the embodiment of jingoism. The next twenty-eight years of Olympics would see America cycle between either being disproportionately self-flagellating when we didn’t excel (see Men’s Basketball) or obnoxiously overbearing when we did (see Men’s Basketball).

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