The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) is leading the latest assault of religious fundamentalists and their political allies on any government-funded activity addressing sex and sexuality. They are many of the same small group of people behind multiple rounds of audits of AIDS education/prevention organizations.

In July the House came within two votes of passing the Toomey amendment proposed by conservatives. It would have prohibited approximately $1.5 million in funding for ten research projects that deal with issues of sexuality that are supported by the National Institutes of Health at universities around the country. The defeat came only because one conservative against the amendment.

More troubling was the fact that eleven liberal allies — including presidential candidate Dick Gephardt, two members of the Congressional Black Caucus, and three females from the California delegation including Loretta Sanchez and Jane Harman — were absent from voting.

The conservatives, emboldened by their near success, began another round of assaults at an Oct. 2 congressional oversight hearing.

Later the TVC’s Anita Sheldon Lafferty sent to a committee staff member a list of nearly 200 “smarmy” research projects dealing with sexual matters that they considered “questionable.” The staff member in turn asked the NIH to explain why they are funding those projects, and NIH began to contact the researchers.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) was outraged. He labeled it a “hit list” that smacked of “scientific McCarthyism” in an Oct. 27 letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson. “Imposing ideological shackles on this research would be a serious public health mistake.”

Waxman said that a number of scientists had contacted him through his web site expressing fear that their funding might be cut off and that they might be subpoenaed. He urged Thompson to both investigate the matter and to reaffirm “his support for the NIH peer review process and the research it funds.”

The next day, after TVC’s role in generating the “hit list” became clear, Waxman called for an accounting of all contact that HHS officials have had with the TVC.

One NIH administrator, who asked not to be identified, said they have begun to coach their grant applicants to not include certain buzzwords in their applications that are bound to attract the attention of conservative zealots. However, the downside is that such hiding also limits the ability of NIH and all people to identify and access the research that is actually being done.

“We can’t have moralizing and ideology trump science when it comes to protecting public health,” said Alan Leshner, head of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “It’s vitally important that we understand the processes by which public health problems spread if we’re ever going to get a handle on issues as important as HIV/AIDS and drug abuse.”

The American Psychological Association is forming a coalition that will focus exclusively on sexual health research and policy with the goal of educating members of Congress in this area.