1947: American biologist and Hoboken native Alfred C. Kinsey founds the Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University. Kinsey’s research brings human sexuality to the dinner table. Parents suffer from chronic indigestion ever since.
1970s: Hugh Hefner erects the Playboy Club in Vernon. Today, only the building and tales remain.
1982: Voorhees resident Beverly Whipple, professor emeritus at Rutgers and certified sex counselor, explores female anatomy in The G-Spot and Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality. The spot was named for Ernst Grafenberg, who became the first modern physician to expose the elusive erogenous zone central to female sexual pleasure, leading women everywhere to say, “Bless you, Dr. G.”
March 27, 1998: Sildenafil created to treat high blood pressure and angina at Pfizer lab in England. Help for hearts? Hardly, but unexpected upside occurs south of the belt buckle. Viagra becomes first E.D. pill to earn FDA approval (and a big thumbs-up from guys everywhere).
1999-2007: The Sopranos brings the Bada Bing! to TV. Now global citizens make pilgrimages to Satin Dolls, the actual Lodi gentlemen’s club that Tony and the boys called home.
Feb 20, 2004: The Liberty Spa in Jersey City is busted for providing $500 “treatments” to thousands of well-heeled clients. The police got wise when they saw a stream of men in suits going in on their lunch hours and exiting without any evidence of getting “mani-pedis.”
August 12, 2004: McGreevey drops the “I am a gay American” bombshell and announces his resignation at a news conference in Trenton. The good news: He’s found a great guy.
February 19, 2007: Moments after the state’s civil-union law goes into effect, Steven Goldstein and Daniel Gross of Teaneck, together for fourteen years, stand before family and friends to become the first same-sex couple granted the state’s legal rights of partnership.
August, 2007: The Garden State-based Northeast Anthropomorphic Association holds a convention at the Ramada Inn near Newark Liberty Airport. The nonprofit group caters to “furries”—people who enjoy wearing costumes resembling a team mascot during sex. Gives new meaning to the term, “party animal.”
November 2, 2007: By law, state pharmacists must fill birth control pills and emergency contraception prescriptions regardless of their personal religious and philosophical beliefs.