This article examines cultural aspects of sexuality and reviews the contributions of social science research to this field of knowledge. Two features are emphasized: (1) the social construction of sexuality, which produces immense cross-cultural diversity and (2) the extent to which societal preoccupations with sexuality are often about much more than sex itself, providing fertile data for social analysis. The article is organized into six substantive sections representing significant domains of scholarship in this area. These sections focus on premarital sex, marriage, extramarital sex, gender and sexuality, non-heterosexuality, and the global AIDS epidemic.