Louanne Cole-Weston, PHD, shares information and advice on men's and women's sexual health issues from masturbation to erectile dysfunction.

Saturday I sat in front of a grocery store for several hours with a retired elementary school principal and former teacher. Why would I do that? She and I were registering voters - some who had moved since the last election and some for the very first time, including a woman in her fifties. I've always voted in every election , but this is the first time I've been politically active by volunteering. I'll make no secret of it. I will be voting Democratic this November. Show me a sex therapist, educator or researcher and I'll show you someone who will be voting Democratic.

Recently I received a comment from a parent concerned about her children's sexual curiosity and exploration. Since this is a common concern, I thought I'd share her question and my response. "I just googled "sexual curiousity" because we found our son (6) and daughter (3) under the covers with her panties off (no touching but still...) and were horrified and grief-stricken. He knows it is wrong (and she is too young to understand) but what do we do now? What consequences can we give him (we gave him a time out) so that he understands the behaviour is always wrong (when you're a child) without him thinking he's a horrible person? Do we need help?"

David Duchovny made an interesting choice recently. He chose to enter a sexual addiction rehabilitation center and to announce it himself with limited detail to People magazine - rather than be "outed" by paparazzi. His attraction was apparently to sexually explicit images available online . It's a common enough situation these days. Sexual addiction is a phrase that, when it was created, was easy for media to embrace. They had already heard about other addictions by that time. And, even though it has developed as a therapeutic industry , it still often bases its treatment on a negative sense of sexuality. Because of the narrow focus, it emphasizes the danger of sexuality. Sometimes when one has a hammer, most things look like a nail.

People come to my office for all sorts of reasons that pertain to their sexuality. But one of the most frequent issues that surfaces in our discussions turns out to be initiation - how to get sex started with one's partner. It turns out that this can be a problem both for people in a new relationship and for folks who've been together for many years. Among the newly dating, I've seen initiations that move at warp speed and those that have a more glacial pace. Sometimes the speedier folks' motivation for jumping into sex quickly can range from "I'm so turned on that I can't wait any longer" to issues that pertain to anxiety - "If I try to delay, he'll think I'm not into sex" and "If I don't make a move, she'll think I'm not attracted to her."

I've often wondered how so many words that describe sexual behaviors also wind up being words of disrespect. Some would argue from an extreme feminist perspective that all heterosexual sex involves some form of disrespect to the woman. I am not satisfied with that explanation, nevertheless, here's the joke that involves this word play: A preacher was explaining that he must move on to a larger congregation that will pay him more. There is a hush within the congregation. No one wants him to leave. Joe Smith, who owns several car dealerships in the city stands up and proclaims, "If the preacher stays, I will provide him with a new Cadillac every year and his wife with a Honda mini-van to transport their children!" The congregation sighs in relief and applauds.

Some of my favorite jokes involve kids and their innocent portrayal of seemingly adult topics. At Back to School Night last fall, my son's kindergarten teacher told a few jokes. He, a former Marine teaching kindergarten (yes, really), peppered his presentation to the parents with four jokes. Of course, the one I remembered was: Little Susie comes home from school one day and proudly says, "Mom, I learned how to make babies today!" Mom's eyebrows went up and she said, "You did??" "Yep," said Susie. Mom, nervous about where this was going, ended the conversation and called up the teacher the next day. She said, "Susie tells me that she learned how to make babies yesterday. Is this true??" "Yes," replied her teacher, "it is." At this, Mom replied, "Do you think that's appropriate?" "Yes," said the teacher, "When she comes home today, why don't you ask her."

Recently one of my clients was reading a book about jokes and philosophy. It was a book that taught the tenets of many of the great philosophers using jokes to get their ideas across. I briefly flipped through it to see if there happened to be anything about what jokes mean in terms of sex, but found nothing. My client was up to Kant and said he hadn't run across anything about sex yet. What sprang to mind was a desire I've quietly had to write about sex jokes -- perhaps a book some day when my kids are older and wouldn't harass me with, "Mom, are you still writing that book about sex jokes?!?"

I've been thinking about how sex plays out in "the senior years" lately. I have quite a few sixty and older clients right now and they keep me on my toes. I was listening to my colleague, Dr. Dean Edell, on his national radio show recently. He was describing a study conducted in Scandinavia of senior citizens seventy and older . Essentially, the study found that many of these seniors were quite content with their sex lives. In fact, they were more satisfied now than they had been ten years ago in most ways that the research had evaluated.

I was working with a client this week who had come to the realization that he probably needed to end his marriage. Fortunately, there are no children involved. A while back I had suggested that he read a book called Stop Walking on Eggshells . He did so and then returned to meet with me. I often recommend this book when I suspect that a client of mine has a loved one who has the mental condition called Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) . In his case, I had met his wife and I was rather sure that this diagnosis was accurate, but rather than apply a label to her, I thought that it would be beneficial for him to come to his own conclusion.

On June 17 California began performing marriages between same sex couples. As a Californian for the last 36 years and a former San Franciscan for 22 years, I've been watching this social and legal battle unfold for quite some time. When San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsome began issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples in 2004, I sensed that there would be some kind of obstruction and eventually there was. Yet, even Governor Schwarzenegger (who is personally against marriage between same sex people) was unwilling to oppose it legally from his elected office. Groups opposing the decision by the California Supreme Court are now waging a campaign to reverse the court's decision by placing a voter initiative on the 2008 November ballot to ban same sex marriage in the state's constitution. This ballot measure campaign is being spearheaded by the Concerned Women of America.