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Hello and welcome to Behind the News, my name is Doug Inwood, one topic broadly speaking, growing repression at the state level, both two guests.

We'll hear from the writer Judith Levine on the latest Sex Panics, and then from the University of Florida, English Professor Phil Wagner, on Governor Ron DeSantis' Crackdown on Academic Freedom.

There's a bill in the Indiana legislature to stop state funding for the Kinsey Institute, full name Kinsey Institute for Research and Sex, Gender and Reproduction.

It's named after the famous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, who is a professor at Indiana University.

Founded in 1947, was independent until it was merged with the University in 2016.

It and the researcher was named after, have been controversial from the start, as is anything connected to sex in this Puritan culture.

And now a member of the state legislature, Larissa Sweet, is trying to stop state funding for the Institute. Why?

And adds to this, the current frenzy over trans kids, and it looks like we're deep and yet another sex panic.

To help us make sense of this, we're joined by the journalist Judith Levine.

Judy has been researching and writing about sex, feminism, and free expression for a long time.

Her 2002 book, Harmful to Miners, The Parals of Protecting Children from Sex, looked mostly at the sex panics of the 1980s and 1990s.

Here she is, look at the current panics, Judith Levine.

Okay, so I told you, your 2002 book, Harmful to Miners, popped up in my office the other day, and I was just looking through it before I called you.

Things aren't quite the same now, but there is an awful lot of continuity in one of the striking things it's all about protecting the children.

Then it was an assatinous daycare workers, now it's child porn and the mortal dangers of exposing minors to drag shows.

Let's just review the landscape of sexual panic experiencing right now, and starting with the Indiana State government's move to cancel funding for the Kinsey Institute.

It's not final. It may not be for a few weeks, but it's still some scary stuff.

The legislator leading the charge, Larissa Sweet, says it's all about criminal child exploitation.

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