During the summer of 2002, there was an onslaught of articles with titles like “Iran ahead of U.S. in Sex Education” or “Iran beats the United States – worth noting – in Sex Education!” The author spent the summer of 2004 in Iran, talking to young adults about their overall level of knowledge with regard to sex and sexuality, and it became apparent that there was a gap between the proclamation of these articles, and what was really going on.

Delving deeper, it seemed that the problem was not the overzealousness of Western journalists at seeing a member of the “axis of evil”…