Kinsey, Sex, and Lies: What They Didn’t Teach You in Sex-Ed Class

Article   -   8min read

The November, 2004 release of the film, Kinsey, starring Liam Neeson, brought the issue of human sexuality to the forefront of the national consciousness . . . as if we needed the prod. Sex educator Dr. Gary Schubach praised the screenplay by commenting, ” . . . we need more, not less, of the kind of straightforward sexual research that Kinsey stood for.” 1

Many cultural observers consider Alfred Kinsey the “Father” of the sexual revolution — the 1960s social tsunami that changed the way we thought about sex. Prior to that time, sex was not mentioned in polite society, children were thought to be in a period of sexual latency, and practices such as pre- and extra-marital sex, homosexuality, adult sex with children, and human sex with animals were considered to be a perversion of the natural order, immoral, and even criminal.

Sex according to Kinsey

But Kinsey’s two reports, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), claimed to present evidence contradicting the traditional view. By taking the sexual “histories” and experiences of thousands of men, women, and children, Kinsey and his team of researchers revealed the prevalence of sex outside of marriage, the ability of children as young as 2 months old to experience sexual stimulation, and the high incidence of homosexuality (noting that 10% of males had only same-sex relations for at least 3 consecutive years).

The scientifically presented format of these reports drowned out concerns of critics. Who can argue with science? And many national media outlets gushed with enthusiasm. Soon after the publication of Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, Harper’s exclaimed, “The Kinsey survey explodes traditional concepts of what is normal and abnormal, natural and unnatural in sex behavior.” 2

Taking Kinsey’s conclusions at face value, psychologists, sexologists, and educators went about redefining what is acceptable sexual behavior and revising what was taught to the nation’s school children concerning these matters. The result has been “comprehensive” sex education that introduces young children to Heather Has Two Mommies and teaches teens the virtues of “safer” sex.

Now that fifty years has passed, what are we to make of this social experiment in sexual liberation? The startling discovery is that Kinsey’s research turns out to be a house of cards resting on dishonest research, fraud, and outright lies.

Kinsey’s Deceptions

First, Kinsey was not an honest researcher. The fact is, he used faulty methods for gathering statistics. Kinsey’s reports claim to be representative of a cross-section of the nation. In actuality, his team interviewed a disproportionate number of prisoners, pimps, prostitutes, pedophiles, and unmarried adults. These demographics were nowhere close to reflecting the sexual habits of the average individual of the 1940s. Subsequent research has invalidated, for example, Kinsey’s figure of 10% of the population being homosexual. The actual percentage, based on numerous current studies, is in the 1–2.5% range.

Second, and even more significant, the majority of those interviewed had volunteered to reveal their sexual histories to an interviewer. Well-known psychologist Abraham Maslow pointed out to Kinsey at the time that using volunteers would bias the results toward the non-normal end of the behavioral scale. In fact, research already published demonstrated that those who are uninhibited enough to talk about their private lives to a stranger also tended to be involved in unconventional sexual practices. But Kinsey brushed aside these facts and downplayed the idea of volunteer bias in his published reports.

Third, some of the information Kinsey reported could only have been gathered through criminal activity! There is no other way to explain his tables detailing the timing, number, and frequency of sexual climaxes observed in children between the ages of 2 months and 14 years. As it turns out, buried in the report, Kinsey admits that these statistics were taken from the personal diaries of pedophiles (although Kinsey did not use that term).

More recently, members of the medical and psychological community have examined these tables and commented that not only is it illegal to treat children in this way, but abusive and inhumane, since “a significant number of the children would have had to be forcibly held down,” and “the emotional trauma involved could have been extremely serious, perhaps even fatal in some cases.” 3 Yet, there was no effort on Kinsey’s part to follow-up on his “research” with these children to determine if damage had been done.

Kinsey’s Worldview

Fourth, and more telling, was the naturalistic worldview at the root of Kinsey’s research. Kinsey blurred the line between behavior and morality by assuming that human behavior is no different in kind than animal behavior. Kinsey wrote, “It is difficult to understand why a child, except for its cultural conditioning, should be disturbed at having its genitalia touched . . . or disturbed at even more specific sexual contacts . . . [T]he emotional reactions of the parents, police officers, and other adults who discover that the child has had such a contact, may disturb the child more seriously than the sexual contacts themselves.” 4

Based on this view, there is no moral value attached to the various kinds of sexual acts that are available to the human species. Thus, since there is no God-given moral compass, whatever a person does sexually is natural, whatever is natural is permissible, and whatever is permissible is good for the child.

However, not everyone was swept away by the Kinsey tsunami. In addition to critiques by other professionals, Gershon Legman, a working associate of Kinsey, saw through the scam, characterizing Kinsey’s reports as “pure propaganda” and an attempt to “respectabilize homosexuality and certain sexual perversions.” 5 This is a scathing evaluation coming from one who had first-hand knowledge of what went on behind the scenes.

Kinsey’s Consequences

As has famously been said, “Ideas have consequences.” And, as it turns out, the results of Kinsey’s ideas have led many down a destructive path. One result has been the skyrocketing incidence of sexually transmitted diseases over the past 50 years.

In Kinsey’s day, there were only two known STDs, both of which were treatable with penicillin. But that number has blossomed to over 24 today, with over a dozen having no cure! 6 The capstone of this proliferation of disease is HIV, a virus very effectively passed on through homosexual sex acts which, thanks to Kinsey’s mainstreaming of homosexuality, has also been on the increase.

What has remained underreported in the mainline press is that STDs have reached epidemic proportions, affecting one out of every five adolescents. 7 And yet, the interesting fact is that all this disease could be virtually eliminated in one generation by simply cooperating with the moral principle of expressing sexual intimacy only within the bonds of a monogamous marriage.

Kinsey Refuted

In contrast to the view of sexual license which Kinsey’s promoted, a 1996 study published by researchers at The University of North Carolina supports the traditional view of sex. It was found that lower sexual activity among adolescents is correlated with higher levels of well being. For example, sexually active girls are over three times as likely to report depressive symptoms than those who abstain, and sexually active boys are over twice as likely to report depressive symptoms. In fact, these two groups report higher incidence of suicide attempts; boys in particular are at 8 times the risk for a suicide attempt if they are sexually active. 8

In addition, according to a study published in 2000 by Edward Laumann and colleagues, “a monogamous sexual partnership embedded in a formal marriage evidently produces the greatest satisfaction and pleasure.” 9 Further, religious women are more likely to report being sexually satisfied than non-religious counterparts. These women are the ones more likely to have waited until marriage before they have sex.

What we find, then, is a wholesale repudiation of Kinsey’s assumption that humans are simply sexual animals living in an amoral world. On the contrary, true science confirms that sexual intimacy finds its highest fulfillment in a monogamous marriage relationship with the prospect of producing children.

As the Bible eloquently states, “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.” 10 This is not only the religious view, but the one view that assures the ultimate happiness of individuals as well as a sure foundation for a healthy society.

Resources for Further Study

Footnotes

  1. Review of Kinsey, http://www.doctorg.com/kinseyfilm.htm, accessed 02/15/2005.
  2. Kinsey, Sex, and Fraud: The Indoctrination of a People, Judith A. Reisman et al, (Lafayette LA: Huntington House, 1990), p. 2.
  3. Ibid., p. 40.
  4. Alfred C. Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), p. 121, quoted in Ibid., p. 76.
  5. Gershon Legman, The Horn Book, (University Books, 1964) pp. 125–126, quoted in Ibid., p. 34.
  6. For these and other statistics, see Meg Meeker, Epidemic: How Teen Sex is Killing Our Kids (Washington, DC: Lifeline Press, 2002).
  7. See Ibid.
  8. Robert E. Rector, et al. “Sexually Active Teenagers Are More Likely to Be Depressed and to Attempt Suicide”, http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/cda0304.cfm.
  9. Edward O. Laumann, et al, The Social Organization of Sexuality (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000) p. 364.
  10. Genesis 2:24