How to integrate values, power, and advocacy into sexual sci

There is widespread acceptance by American sexual scientists of the need to be aware of our values and control their potential biasing effect. Despite this belief there is a lack of consensus among sexual scientists concerning whether we should advocate for or against sexual policy issues that come before Congress and impact our field. Also, sexual scientists have conflicting views on just how much they should publicly reveal about their personal values concerning a sexual problem issue. Above all, the containment of bias requires confronting the interface of values, power and advocacy with the work we do in sexual science. I spell out my Value Aware approach as a pathway for dealing with these complexities of our sexual science field. I illustrate the tenets in that approach by discussing the way the current debate on public school sex education in America has been handled by sexual scientists, politicians, and others and the way one recent research study compared straight and gay families.