To what extent should laws and public policy regarding issues of sex, sexuality or sexual health be influenced by cultural or religious beliefs and to what extent should they be influenced by the current state of scientific knowledge or technology?

Choose a topic within the realm of sex, sexuality or sexual health, perhaps federal and state policies regarding same-sex marriage or requiring insurance companies to pay for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PreP) drugs to prevent HIV transmission, and then discuss what you think our public policy should be on that topic given the current state of our scientific knowledge and our cultural or religious traditions.

Take a position and then write your answer in the form of a persuasive essay.
Guidelines for writing the paper:

Your paper should be approximately 500 words long (approximately two double-spaced pages using Times Roman 12 point font) written in the form of a persuasive essay.
You may support your position with reference to peer-reviewed papers. These papers must be properly cited and referenced following using APA format. If you use references, the reference section of your paper should be submitted as a document from the rest of your paper so that your references don’t artificially increase the similarity score of your paper as determined by turnitin.com (see below).
The maximum amount of similarity to other work, either written by yourself or someone else, is 10%.
Your essays will not be graded on the basis of whether the TAs and I agree with your opinion or not.
There are two parts to the assignment. Part 1 should be the body of your paper. Part 2 should be the reference section of your paper (if you choose to use references). Do not submit your essay and references (if you have any) together in one document. Doing so will increase the similarity score of your paper and may result in a lower score as a consequence.