I was recently studying for an upcoming sermon in Romans 1 when I ran across a paragraph from the 1962 commentary on Romans by Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse, in which he acknowledged the sexual data of the Kinsey Reports as being scientific and factual. They were neither. But let me explain why these spurious books were the foundations of the sex revolution that swept through America in the 1960s and is the seedbed of sexual novelty that we are experiencing today.
Sex, Sex, and more Sex
In 1948 and 1953 a two-part cultural phenomenon took place in America with the publication of the monumental works of Alfred Kinsey on male and female sexuality, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female. One writer wrote “More than any other documents in history, they have shaped Western Society’s beliefs and understanding of what human sexuality is.”
The New York Times hailed Kinsey as the “father of the sexual revolution.” According to an article in Esquire magazine, Kinsey was the “patron saint of sex,” whose books set in motion “the first wave of the sexual revolution.”
The Kinsey Reports on sexuality inspired Hugh Hefner and his Playboy magazine—Hefner wrote in his first issue “We believe…we are filling a publishing need only slightly less important than one just taken care of by the Kinsey Report.”
What did Kinsey Claim?
The Kinsey books reported among other things that:
- Eighty-five percent of males in the U.S. have intercourse prior to marriage.
- Nearly 70% have sex with prostitutes.
- Between 30 and 45% of husbands have extramarital affairs.
- Thirty-seven percent of all males have homosexual experiences.
The Kinsey books exploded upon the culture. Writing in HARPER’S MAGAZINE, Albert Deutsch exclaimed, “The Kinsey survey explodes traditional concepts of what is normal and abnormal, natural and unnatural in sex behavior.”
Faulty Data
But there was only one small problem with the Kinsey Reports. They weren’t true. Kinsey skewed the studies, lied about findings, and at times, simply made up the data he published.
Between 1938 and 1963 over 18,000 people were interviewed for their sex histories. What came to light later was that they were not a random selection but rather were chosen only after being interviewed. Rather than a true sample of society, Kinsey and his team chose a large percentage of convicted sex offenders, prisoners, and prostitutes for their research.
Why did Kinsey do it?
Kinsey admitted that he set out to destroy the biblical Judeo-Christian view of marriage and sexuality, and he would do whatever it took to dismantle “traditional sexual values.”
According to the Irish Times, Kinsey believed in the rape of children, bestiality, filmed and enjoyed watching sexual sadomasochism, and along with his wife regularly had sex with their clients and researchers.
The Kinsey Report said, “All sex are outlets between…boy and dog, man and boy, girl or baby. There is no abnormality.” He believed that all incest and pedophilia benefited children.
Himself a pedophile, bi-sexual, and voyeur, Kinsey’s false reports and deceptive research has, according to Dr. Judith Reisman and Dr. John Court, and Dr Gordan Muir, been catalytic to “the rise of divorce, sexual promiscuity, sexually transmitted diseases, illegitimate births, cohabitation, pornography, homosexuality, sadomasochism, rape, child molestation and sexual crimes of all types, family breakup, endemic violence, etc. could all be attributed to the scandalous research undertaken by Kinsey.”
Live not by Lies
As we live in the aftermath of Kinsey’s books, what do we do now? If there ever was a time to discover truth, believe truth, live truth, and speak truth, it is now. Truth sets us free.
It was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) a Russian novelist, who said, “live not by lies.” A prominent Soviet dissident, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of communist political repression in the Soviet Union. He believed that the only way a nation can remain free is to always speak the truth.
It’s amazing the impact a lie can have. It was Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister of the Nazi Party in Germany who famously said, “It is vitally important for the State to use all of its power to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus, by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
“You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”
Pastor Steve
