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Some of it IS willful ignorance:'don't confuse me with the facts...', some is apathetic ignorance--following the issues takes time and thought,

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and then there's the other half of the normal curve.

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BTW, what is it that makes Christians (all three descendants of ancient judaism, actually) so obsessed with sex?

To some degree, most societies are; it is a very powerful life-force, if not, as in Freud's theories, the dominant one, and hard to separate from survival of the species. The feminist view, which holds a lot of validity, also suggests that, especially in the cultures you mention, the sexual taboos keep women in their place: barefoot and pregnant. The U.S. culture is even more ambivalent about it than most; it's used to sell everything from cars and blue jeans to toothpaste, and these days you can find any deviation or degradtion of it you care to imagine online, but we are if anything becoming even more ambivalent and confused about it as a result. As I think you're suggesting, that ambivalence and fear is at the root of a lot of the cultural values clashes; it's not just Viet Nam we're refighting in a new form, it's the 60's and the Sexual Revolution.