Editorial: Kinsey conniptions / Holy wrath hits film on the famed sex researcherMonday, November 29, 2004Pittsburgh Post-GazetteAlthough the presidential election apparently turned on a narrowly defined set of moral values, and the Bush campaign actively recruited evangelical church congregations, liberals are regularly told that thrusting religion squarely into the democratic process is nothing to worry about. But they better be worried: The battleground of the cultural wars is as close as the local multiplex.
The latest example is the film "Kinsey," starring Liam Neeson as the famed sex researcher who published authoritative studies on human sexuality in 1948 and 1953. According to early reviews, the movie (which opens in Pittsburgh Dec. 24) is a serious work. A New York Times critic said that although it has "its share of carnality," it is a "wise and witty biography ... above all, an intellectual turn-on."
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But expect no intellectual turn-ons in any conversation with the movie's critics. Alfred Kinsey's so-called sins were not his moral failings (the wildest of the claims about him, including complicity in child abuse, are ably rebutted on the Kinsey Institute Web site, www.kinseyinstitute.org).
His real offense, then as now, was to treat sexuality as a matter of scientific inquiry rather than biblical fulmination. He dared to look into part of the human experience that hitherto had been taboo. Those who protest this film can't stand that basic fact -- which they might even admit if they counted intellectual honesty among their moral values.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04334/418572.stm