Postmodern Sociology and Critique of Permissive Sex

QUESTION: Postmodern Sociology – Critique of Permissive Sex

ANSWER:

Postmodernists did not invent sexual liberation, but are riding the crest of the wave started by others. Many cultural observers consider Alfred Kinsey the father of the sexual revolution—the 1960s social tsunami that changed the way we think about sex. Kinsey’s two reports, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), presented evidence contradicting the traditional view of sex and marriage. The scientific format of these reports drowned out concerns of critics—who can argue with science? The result has been comprehensive sex education that introduces young children to Heather Has Two Mommies and teaches teens the virtues of “safer” sex.¹

Postmodern Sociology – The Lies of the Sexual Revolution
Now fifty years later, the startling discovery is that Kinsey’s research turns out to be a house of cards resting on dishonest research, fraud, and outright lies. 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.

Second, 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.

Third, some of the information Kinsey reported could have been gathered only through criminal activity! As it turns out, buried in the report, Kinsey admits that some of his statistics were taken from the personal diaries of pedophiles (although Kinsey did not use that term).

Fourth, and more telling, was the naturalistic worldview at the root of Kinsey’s research (the same naturalism that is foundational to Postmodernism). Kinsey, like current-day Postmodernists, blurred the line between behavior and morality by assuming that human behavior is no different in kind than animal behavior. 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, whatever a person does sexually is natural, whatever is natural is permissible, and whatever is permissible is good, even for children.

Postmodern Sociology – Ideas Have Consequences
As we are fond of saying, “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 STD’s, both of which were treatable with penicillin. But today, that number has blossomed to over 24, with over a dozen having no cure!² The capstone of this proliferation of disease is HIV, a virus that can be passed on through homosexual sex acts which, thanks to Kinsey’s mainstreaming of homosexuality, has also been on the increase.

In contrast to the view of sexual license that Kinsey promoted, a 1996 study published by researchers at The University of North Carolina supports the traditional view of sex. The study 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.³

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.”⁴

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 marital 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.”⁵ 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.

Notes:

Rendered with permission from the book,Understanding the Times: The Collision of Today’s Competing Worldviews(Rev. 2^nd ed), David Noebel, Summit Press, 2006. Compliments of John Stonestreet, David Noebel, and the Christian Worldview Ministry at Summit Ministries. All rights reserved in the original.

¹ Heather Has Two Mommies attempts to show grade school children that a lesbian couple can provide the same love and care as a heterosexual couple. “Safer” sex is now the term of choice when teaching teenagers the advantages of using a condom during intercourse, since this form of birth control and disease prevention was found not to be entirely “safe.”

² For these and other statistics, see Meg Meeker, Epidemic: How Teen Sex is Killing Our Kids (Washington, DC: Lifeline Press, 2002).

³ 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.

⁴ Edward O. Laumann, et al., The Social Organization of Sexuality (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 364.

⁵ Genesis 2:24.