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.

Poly parenting — That term for new family configurations is coined by Debora Spar, former president of Barnard College now teaching at the Harvard Business School and the author of "Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny." She explored the future possibilities in a New York Times article. 

People have "already changed how we procreate and with whom. We have separated sex from reproduction and multiplied the various pairings that can together produce a child," she writes. Two men plus surrogate, or two women plus sperm donor, can sire their own genetic offspring. That could be but the beginning. 

IVG (in vitro gametogenesis), thus far successful only in mice, could be applied to homo sapiens. Stem cells from human skin would be manipulated to produce genetic eggs and sperm and "dismantle completely the reproductive structure of heterosexuality." Genetic material from platonic groups of friends could create offspring with three or four genetic parents. Couples could conceive their own grandchildren. This would scuttle "norms of marriage and parenting" that have stood for thousands of years. Welcome to the "world of fluid parenting," 

CRISPR — (Clustered Regular Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats using the "Cas9" enzyme). This item is a follow-up. Back in 2018, balloting by colleagues in the Religion News Association designated the Pennsylvania grand jury report on molesting Catholic priests the story of the year. But The Religion Guy insisted first place belonged to announcement of the first human babies born through CRISPR, which raised the prospect of manipulating human genetics to produce "designer babies." 

This month, microbiologists Jennifer Doudna of the University of California, Berkeley, and Emmanuelle Charpentier of Germany's Max Planck Institute, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for heading up the 2012 CRISPR discovery. Their technique allows relatively easy and inexpensive editing of human genes by changing DNA sequences. This holds great promise for treating patients with genetic diseases or fabricating, say, disease-resistant plants or superior livestock.

But the 2018 announcement caused a furor and sent Chinese researcher He Jiankui to prison due to alarm over applying CRISPR to alter human germ cells that will be passed on to future generations. This could rid humanity of, say cystic fibrosis, but in theory also encourage the rich and powerful to breed offspring for athletic prowess or brainpower. Doudna herself is worried about such implications but does not advocate legal prohibitions.  

In addition to the Brave New World aspect and "playing God" with the human race, careful ethicists object when the subject of experiments is not allowed to give consent, which is necessarily the case with CRISPR babies. Others worry about damaging side effects in the children or object to the destruction of human embryos involved.

As the science rushes onward, religion and culture have barely kept up and more journalistic work is needed.

Gay Reparations — Next spring, Oxford University Press will launch a new and newsworthy debate by publishing "The Case for Gay Reparations" by Omar Encarnacion, a Bard College political scientist. This is a takeoff on the demand for Black reparations over slavery, Jim Crow segregation and other past discrimination, which the Democratic Party is committed to study under its 2020 platform. Expansion into LGBTQ grievances may seem fanciful, but the book will devote a chapter apiece to such programs already under way in Britain, Germany and Spain. 

Proposals would make amends not only for centuries of prejudice against gays and lesbians but include transgender persons and the more recent "gender identity" movement. Examples of compensation ideas are money, pro-LGBT changes in laws such as barring "conversion therapy," historical education or new monuments to honor past victims and heroes.

As with Black reparations, there'd be obvious and complex logistical problems deciding who is guilty, who pays and who deserves how much and why.