Kinsey
A film starring Liam Neeson as the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey was released in Britain a week ago. The subtitle to the film, ‘let’s talk about sex’, acknowledges the key role Kinsey played in lifting the lid on sexual taboos and behaviour that America had previously been reluctant to discuss. My intent in this doctrine slot is not to critique the film. I haven’t seen it and have no intention of doing so. It’s simply to arm ourselves with some information about this man and his work so that we can get involved in any discussion that might perhaps take place at work, the pub or in the gym.
Kinsey’s Background
Alfred Kinsey was born into a Methodist family with an authoritarian Father and a withdrawn Mother. His childhood was miserable and one in which dating, Sunday newspapers and movies were deemed inappropriate for the people of God. It was certainly not an environment in which to learn much about God’s good gift of sex. In 1938 he became a zoologist at the University of Indiana, specialising in the study of insects. He later married a chemistry student Clara McMillen. The early days of marriage were beset by sexual problems. Ignorant about such matters they sought a scientific solution through the advice of a straight talking gynaecologist. This convinced Kinsey that students were not getting sufficient information on an important subject he undertook to provide a course about the facts of life. Emboldened by his success Kinsey sought and secured funding and began a nation-wide survey on sexual behaviour. Instead of letting people assume what normal sexual activity should be he was determined to find out what people were actually doing. He’s most famous for his two publications Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (1948) Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female (1953) These became known as the Kinsey report. The key findings from his research were 85% of white American men had had pre-marital sex 50% had had extra-marital sex 69% had visited prostitutes 37% of men had had at least one homosexual experience 10% of men were more or less exclusively homosexual He concluded that Americans were far more sexually adventurous than anyone had previously been willing to admit.
There are 3 things however that the film will not make clear and undermine the version of events prominent in the media.
1. His research methods were seriously flawed
In the film Kinsey is portrayed as a man who undertook serious scientific research
He used non-representative samples.
It’s true that he took a large sample of American males. However, they were hardly representative of the population as a whole. As one reviewer put it, ‘people who will willingly talk to a total stranger about their sexual behaviour from normal marital intercourse to sex with babies and animals can hardly be considered representative’. But 26% of his sample were sex offenders, an additional 25% were also in prison and promiscuous males and sexual deviants were also over represented. A raft of recent surveys have concluded that the number of homosexual males is nearer 1%.
He was complicit in the sexual abuse of babies, toddlers and other children.
He eagerly solicited information from a serial child molester and attempted to pay him for further research. The Kinsey report contains detailed statistics on the nature of orgasms among 929 male subjects, ranging in age from 5 months to 14 years of age. The obvious question is how these figures were obtained. Judith Reisman a critic of Kinsey has provided evidence that Kinsey recruited and trained paedophiles to conduct research on his behalf, and that their contact with the children concerned sometimes took place over months and even years.
2. His personal behaviour was sexually deviant
From a very early age he had engaged in deviant sexual acts. Kinsey engaged in homosexual acts, serial adultery and in sado-masochistic self-abuse. He encouraged his wife to participate in extra marital affairs. He encouraged and recorded others involved in similar activities. By the time of his report he had begun conducting and participating in sexual experimentation with his staff and in the filming of hundreds of people. Although the film doesn’t hide the tryst involving his wife and a fellow researcher it presents this as a unique event. It was however one of countless episodes.
In the film Kinsey is portrayed as a man of science forced into the study of sexual behaviour by his own marital difficulties and the ignorance and superstition of society. But it ignores a more obvious motivation for Kinsey’s research. Because of his own preference for sexual experimentation he had strong reasons for pursuing sex research and for demonstrating that there was no such thing as deviancy. Al Mohler, the American Theologian and Broadcaster has written, ‘According to this popular and pervasive mythology, Alfred Kinsey was a scientist who brought his rigorous scientific skills and objective scientific interests to the study of human sexuality. The real Alfred Kinsey was a man whose own sexual practices cannot be safely described to the general public and whose interest in sex was anything but objective or scientific’.
3. His abiding legacy is destructive immorality
In the film Kinsey is depicted as a man who forced a sexually repressed and censorious society to acknowledge that things happened in bedrooms. He lifted the covers on the sexual habits of Americans and in so doing made the activity that he reported normal. As a secular journalist put it, ‘people who see the sexual revolution as a giant step forward and those who see it as the beginning of America’s descent into moral degeneracy agree on one thing: Alfred Kinsey was the man who got it all started’. It’s probably worth saying that the reticence of our Grandparents generation and perhaps that of our parents to talk about sex has not been hugely helpful. In that sort of environment misinformation, speculation and confusion can flourish. But in reality are we better off as a result?
He undermined Christian morality
Kinsey once wrote to one of his associates, ‘the whole army of religion is our central enemy’. He knew what he was doing. His biographer James Jones writes, ‘He wanted to undermine traditional morality, to soften the rules of restraint and to help people develop positive attitudes towards their sexual needs and desires. Kinsey was a crypto-reformer who spent every waking hour attempting to change the sexual mores and sex offender laws of the United States’.
He encouraged progressive immorality
The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction is still in existence. All around us we see the effects of the sexual revolution. Half of marriages end in divorce, a quarter of the rising generation has been aborted and we’re swimming in sexual imagery and exploitation. Sex has been separated from love and marriage. As one writer put it, ‘Kinsey’s legacy is that he played a role in unleashing epidemic levels of STDs, rampant divorce, massive numbers of out or wedlock births, the breakdown of the family, abortion and the destruction of marriage’. That’s some legacy. But don’t expect to find any of that in the press.
How should we respond?
We ought to arm ourselves with the facts. You may want to get Pure Sex by Jensen and Payne available at the bookstall.
We ought to watch ourselves. Bare in mind these words from Galatians 6, ‘keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted’. The sexual permissiveness of our society can inform our own understanding of what’s acceptable Christian behaviour more than God’s will in the Bible. We can use the extreme behaviour of others to play our own immorality on side and so we need to be careful.
We ought to pray for our world. We’re caught up in the whirlwind that he sowed. Our sexually superheated society is the place where we’re seeking to help mend people suffering the consequences of damaging sexual bahaviour. We’re all sexual sinners to one degree or another and we mustn’t be hypocritical and I suspect that praying preserves us from that.
Further Reading
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Pure Sex, Payne and Jensen, Matthias Media
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‘Kinsey as He Really Was – What You Won’t See in the Movie’, A. Mohler, www.albertmohler.com
