Modern sexuality poses continual challenges for writers as they navigate changing sensitivities on verbiage. One example broke into the news last week when Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was chastised for assuring a U.S. Senate hearing that she "would never discriminate on the basis of sexual preference."

Hawaii Democrat Mazie Hirono accused Barrett of uttering an "offensive" word. Barrett responded that she never meant to offend and "if I did I greatly apologize." Immediately, Merriam-Webster, a standard arbiter of proper word usage, announced that "preference" is now labeled "offensive" because it suggests "a person can choose who they are sexually or romantically attracted to."

When the all-consuming U.S. political campaign has ended (thankfully!), the media need not only to ponder such evolving word choices, but to keep current on the frontiers of human sexuality and reproduction in science, ethics and politics, such as the following potential story themes. All of these issues raise moral issues that will cause discussions, debates and even conflict in various religious traditions.

Fertility equality — The New York Times has surveyed at length this new movement, a.k.a. "the right to a baby." This is an extension off of "marriage equality," that is, legalized same-sex marriage. Exponents now contend that the ability to have children and create a family should no longer be determined by "sexuality, gender, or biology."

Same-sex couples or singles who cannot conceive offspring biologically are said to suffer "social infertility." Instead of adopting children, they may hire surrogate mothers or employ in-vitro fertilization and newer reproductive technologies to have children who perpetuate their own genetic heritage. This movement works for the end of legal limitations and for public funding, since these processes can be expensive and are not normally covered by medical insurance.

Advocates include Men Having Babies, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Fertility Within Reach and Affordable Families. For global contexting, see "The Pink Line: Journeys across the World's Queer Frontiers" by Mark Gevisser.

There's interesting hostility from some feminists, including Gloria Steinem and Deborah Glick, the first lesbian in the New York State legislature. They oppose legalization and liken the purchase of surrogate births to slavery as patriarchal exploitation of women that lowers their status.

The era of slavery on American shores began 400 years ago this year when the first boatload of slaves landed in Virginia and much has been written about that anniversary. But slave ships from Great Britain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands and other countries didn’t do their work unaided.

There were hundreds if not thousands of African middlemen who procured the slaves for these ships. Are they not just as guilty as the white merchants who put them on their ships? Do these middlemen have descendants and if so, do they feel any shame at what their ancestors did?

Armed with a journalism grant, a Nigerian journalist set out to find those descendants and what she found was published Sept. 20 in the Wall Street Journal headlined “When the Slave Traders Were African.”

Not only that, but many of those descendants are bringing their faith into the question. The segment I am reproducing is long, but the Journal’s paywall makes it harder for people to read it otherwise.

This August marked 400 years since the first documented enslaved Africans arrived in the U.S. In 1619, a ship reached the Jamestown settlement in the colony of Virginia, carrying “some 20 and odd Negroes” who were kidnapped from their villages in present-day Angola. The anniversary coincides with a controversial debate in the U.S. about whether the country owes reparations to the descendants of slaves as compensation for centuries of injustice and inequality. It is a moment for posing questions of historic guilt and responsibility.
But the American side of the story is not the only one. Africans are now also reckoning with their own complicated legacy in the slave trade, and the infamous “Middle Passage” often looks different from across the Atlantic.
Records from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, directed by historian David Eltis at Emory University, show that the majority of captives brought to the U.S. came from Senegal, Gambia, Congo and eastern Nigeria. Europeans oversaw this brutal traffic in human cargo, but they had many local collaborators. “The organization of the slave trade was structured to have the Europeans stay along the coast lines, relying on African middlemen and merchants to bring the slaves to them,” said Toyin Falola, a Nigerian professor of African studies at the University of Texas at Austin. “The Europeans couldn’t have gone into the interior to get the slaves themselves.
The anguished debate over slavery in the U.S. is often silent on the role that Africans played. That silence is echoed in many African countries, where there is hardly any national discussion or acknowledgment of the issue.

Beyond lingo, journalists must keep current on the frontiers of sexuality and reproduction

Do Africans need to repent for slave trade? This Wall Street Journal piece suggests they should