Pure Sex

The sexual revolution of the 1960s only happened because of the teaching and claims of many predecessors. How do their claims stand up?
Gertrude Himmelfarb aptly describes the sexual atmosphere of the Bloomsbury Group as 'not only homosexual but androgynous, near-incestuous, and polymorphously promiscuous'. If their exploits had been known at the time, or even in the decades following, perhaps historians and commentators would not have been so quick to characterise Blooms-bury as embodying 'a life of rational and pacific freedom' or of 'reason, charity and good sense'.
Did Bloomsbury pursue this lifestyle of astonishing promiscuity because they had coolly decided that it was the logical way to create the good society based on reason, charity and good sense? Or did the sexual possibilities that rejection of God would open up have more than a passing influence on their judgment?
Much the same pattern can be seen among the other pioneers of modern sexuality. In each case, it has now be-come clear that personal factors, especially sexual preferences and practices, had an enormous influence on the development of their theories, and a correspondingly detrimental effect on the quality of their research.

Freud

In Freud's case, the origins and driving forces behind his now largely discredited theories have been the subject of numerous recent studies.(1)
Was it his obsessive need for intellectual fame that led him to devise such an extravagant theory, and to portray himself in messianic terms as the hero-saviour of humanity? Or was it his affair with his wife's sister, Minna Bernays, that drove him to construct a psychological theory to explain why all of us are supposedly motivated to commit incest?
Many of Freud's theories are such that they are impossible either to prove or disprove, dealing as they do in the realm of assertions, impressions and interpretations. The same cannot be said, however, for Margaret Mead. It is now well known that her Samoan research was deeply flawed, and that some of her key informants did not tell her the truth. As Australian anthropologist Derek Freeman has shown (2), the real Samoa was very far removed from Mead's paradise of free love. It was, in fact, a society with strict sexual conventions, which jealously guarded the virginity of young girls, and severely punished adultery. Against Mead's contention that 'the idea of forceful rape or of any sexual act to which the participants do not give themselves freely is completely foreign to the Samoan mind', Freeman demonstrated from police records that the rate of rape in Samoa was actually one of the highest to be found anywhere in the world.
Bertrand Russell was a supporter of Mead, and a close associate of the Bloomsbury group, and in their work found support for his own utilitarian sexual ethic. However, Russell, too, was not developing his philosophy in an atmosphere of detached speculation. In fact, as Ray Monk's recent massive biography makes plain, Russell's life was characterised by a long series of adulterous affairs with an extraordinary degree of selfishness, deceit and cruelty. (3)

The Kinsey report

In providing a very detailed account of Russell's life, with its many hypocrisies and deceptions, Monk frankly acknowledges: 'I am aware that the personality thus revealed is one that many will find repellent, but it has not been my aim to present him in an unfavourable light.'
When we come to Alfred Kinsey, the pattern is sadly the same. It is now clear that Kinsey himself was a homosexual, and a masochist (in the sexual sense) who, as he grew older, pursued an interest in extreme forms of sexuality, with an increasing compulsiveness. (4) At the time of his famous report, Kinsey had begun conducting (and participating in) sexual experiments in his attic, filming members of his staff having sex with each other, and with his wife, and also filming exhibitions of gay sex, especially of the sadomasochistic variety.
Kinsey, there seems little doubt, had powerful personal reasons for pursuing sex re-search, and for attempting to demonstrate that there was no such thing as 'deviancy'. Not surprisingly, as with Mead, personal bias led Kinsey to scientific sleight-of-hand, if not outright fraud. The details of Kinsey's work have since been seriously undermined. Judith Reisman is one of a number of recent critics who argue that Kinsey's research was both fraudulent and criminal.
His sample of American males, although large, was hardly representative of the population as a whole. 26% of Kinsey's subjects, for example, were 'sex offenders'; a further 25% were in prison; among the rest, pimps, male prostitutes and frequenters of 'gay bars' were over-represented. There is little doubt that sexually promiscuous males, especially homosexuals, were massively over-represented in Kinsey's sample, but this is something that Kinsey repeatedly denied or attempted to obscure. Thus Kinsey's contention that 10% of the population is predominantly homosexual is a massive exaggeration. A barrage of more recent studies have put the figure at around 1% for men, and less than half that for women - and this after 30 years of gay activism to make being homosexual a socially acceptable lifestyle.(5)
Moreover, alarming questions have been raised (and not answered) about the methods of Kinsey's research into pre-adolescent orgasm. The Kinsey Report contains detailed statistics on the nature of orgasms among 929 male subjects, ranging in age from five months to 14 years. Of course, the question is: how were these figures obtained? How was Kinsey able to report, for example, on the ten year-old boy who had 14 orgasms in a 24-hour period, or the four year-old subject who was able to be stimulated to 26 orgasms in a 24-hour period, or the 11 month-old who had 14 orgasms in 38 minutes?
Reisman provides evidence that Kinsey recruited and trained paedophiles to conduct this research on his behalf, and that their contact with the children concerned sometimes took places over months and even years.

God and sex?

The story of 20th century sexual morality is the story of a society gradually working out the implications of God no longer being in the picture.
Yet the rejection of God and the eventual widespread acceptance of sexual liberation are not quite so simply related to each other as that. For which came first? A rejection of God leading to sexual promiscuity? Or a desire for promiscuity leading to a rejection of the God who would condemn such promiscuity? Or are the two so closely tied together it is impossible to say?
One thing can be said - the steadily growing argument for sexual liberation, conducted throughout the 20th century by the likes of Bloomsbury, Freud, Mead and Kinsey, now looks increasingly like a hurriedly stitched together covering of fig-leaves to hide a lost innocence.

1 Richard Webster, Why Freud was wrong (London: Fontana, 1996).

2 Derek Freeman, Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1983).

3 Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude (London: Jonathan Cape, 1996).

4 James H. Jones, Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, (Norton, 1997).

5 Andrew Shead, Homosexuality and the church: history of the debate in B.G. Webb (ed.), Theological and Pastoral Responses to Homosexuality (Explorations 8), (Adelaide: Openbook, 1994).

* This extract from Pure Sex, recently published by St. Matthias Press at £4.99, is available from bookshops or PO Box 665, London SW20 8RL (0181 942 0880).