WASHINGTON (AP) – The House handed a narrow defeat Thursday to conservatives who wanted to forbid the National Institutes of Health from giving grants to researchers conducting four sexual research projects, including studies of older men and of San Francisco’s Asian prostitutes and masseuses.

The 212-210 vote derailed an effort led by Rep. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., to block the grants for next year, which are expected to total $1.4 million.

The debate recalled fights waged in Congress a decade ago over arts projects financed by the National Endowment for the Arts. Conservatives led by former Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., argued that taxpayers should not finance objectionable works of arts, a controversy that resulted in the endowment revamping the way it decides which projects to back.

“I ask my colleagues, who thinks this stuff up?” Toomey said of the sexual research projects he singled out. “These are not worthy … of taxpayer funds.”

Opponents said it would be dangerous precedent for lawmakers to kill the projects.

“We have no business making political judgments on those issues,” said Rep. David Obey, D-Wis. The National Institutes of Health receive 120,000 grant applications a year, awarding funds to about one-third of them, said Rep. Ralph Regula, R-Ohio.

According to Toomey’s office, the grants and their estimated cost next year are:

• Mood arousal and sexual risk taking, $237,000, conducted by the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind.

• Sexual habits of older men, $69,000, at New England Research Institutes Inc. in Watertown, Mass.

• Drug use and HIV-related behavior by San Francisco’s Asian prostitutes/masseuses, $641,000, University of California-San Francisco’s Department of Medicine.

• American Indian and Alaskan Native lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and “two-spirited individuals,” $500,000, University of Washington in Seattle.

AP-ES-07-10-03 2045EDT