I mentioned briefly here that Focus on the Family has been orchestrating a national smear campaign against legendary sexuality researcher Alfred C. Kinsey — and against the new movie Kinsey.
The Focus campaign appears to be bearing fruit: Protests are ready for launch against theaters that dare to show the film, according to 365gay.com. The Liam Neeson movie apparently portrays Kinsey as a troubled man — but not as the "Josef Mengele" that Robert Knight and James Dobson demand.
Dobson and Knight’s message to modern-day sex researchers: Obey us, or be likened to Nazis and harassed accordingly.
It really is a culture war over there. The religious extremists really don’t want to give an inch and seem to be attacking on all fronts at all times. I really don’t understand this rabid need to attack Kinsey: he was just some guy that compiled data, published some books and held some open-minded views on sexuality. It seems like politics and religion have collided and everything these people view as controversial is subject to this type of crusade. I hate to sound smug, but sometimes I’m glad there’s an ocean seperating me from them.
It is the typical anti-science silliness from these people. They don’t like Kinsey’s results, so, instead of attempting to find evidence to refute the results, they attempt to attack the person who put forward the results, and, if that fails, suppressing them.
They have been trying to do this with Kinsey’s results for a number of years by attacking him. “Dr.” Judith Reisman has led almost a jihad against the Kinsey Institute over the last 20 years or so–her story is quite interesting. I discovered, while discussing the issue just this afternoon on the NYTImes gay rights board, an article from an on-line magazine that calls itself Catholic Culture entitled Kinsey’s Secret: The Phony Science of the Sexual Revolution. The article claims that Kinsey’s work was the cause of the sexual revolution, but completely ignores the development of the birth control pill, which was released circa 1959. That was the real cause of the sexual revolution.
The anti-science silliness is spilling over into issues relating to Darwinian evolution and even the Big Bang. Frankly, and possibly hopefully, this will lead to a demise of public education in the US. We have been making plans to move to Germany, anyway. The Europeans are laughing at the US over these issues.
The Guardian today also had an article about the more wider implications that many conversvatives don’t want any research into sexuality:
“We know the formula for sexual health, which is sex within a monogamous, lifelong relationship,” said Reverend Peter Sprigg, director of marriage and family studies for the Family Research Council, a conservative lobbying group based in Washington.
“Studying permutations of it is an effort like Kinsey’s to change the sexual mores of society, so that what most people consider deviant behaviours look more normal.”
– Sex pioneer Kinsey’s biopic stirs up the right [guardian.co.uk]
One wonders what they are so worried people might find out?
Quote:
We know the formula for sexual health, which is sex within a monogamous, lifelong relationship,” said Reverend Peter Sprigg, director of marriage and family studies for the Family Research Council, a conservative lobbying group based in Washington.
/Quote
So… why are these dangerous hypocrites against marriage or civil unions for gays?
I think their real reason is marriage for gays doesn’t fit in with their concept of a final solution to the homosexual question.
>I think their real reason is marriage for gays doesn’t fit in with their concept of a final solution to the homosexual question
Die Endloesung.
Sends a chill up one’s back, nicht wahr?
It seems to me that, in addition to the birth control pill, Hugh Hefner had a LOT more to do with the sexual revolution, including talking about what people were doing anyway, than Kinsey did.
What the anti-gay right really doesn’t want anyone to know is that all these “deviant” sexual practices – and we ain’t just talking homo sex here – were being enjoyed by a whole heck of a lot of people for a whole heck of a lot of years when everyone was pretending that sex didn’t really exist. That is what Kinsey, and so many others really did, is blow the lid off the lie of the 50s that only “perverts” did certain things. So they try to discredit him to continue telling their good subjects how wonderfully “moral” they are for not doing those icky things.
Problem is, the sheer amount of research Kinsey did nearly guarantees a certain accuracy to his data. He interviewed THOUSANDS of men and women, from across social spectra. Most research relies on dozens or, at most, a few hundres subjects, yet the results are considered conclusive.
The main discreditor to Kinsey is that his sample was biased, and that he talked to too many “deviants” when gathering his data. Even if this were true – the only effect would have been to overestimate the amount of people doing specific sexual things – so his basic message of “Wow! there’s a lot of non-procreative-within-arriage sex going on than anyone knows” still stands up.
From the Nov. 22 edition of The Washington Post:
Conservative Christians Protest Movie on Kinsey
Dobson and FotF is tryin to make Kinsey all about promoting pedophilia. My partner’s father was a professor at Indiana University during the 1950’s and the tenure of Alfred Kinsey. His mother who is still alive and 85 describes the couple as very non-descript, average university types who lives centered around academia. To suggest that Kinsey encourged and even procured children for experiments with his staff members is preposterous.
She chuckles when she reads such absurd articles written by people who knew nothing of the Kinseys. If just proves how far the religious right will go to promote their own agenda.