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May 2, 2005
SIECUS has been at the forefront of
attacks on abstinence education this past year. Precious inches in
mainstream newspapers have granted special privileges to claims by
SIECUS that abstinence education is harming children.
Abstinence educators have used this as
a positive opportunity to direct people to medically accurate
information supporting their curricula as well as to research proving
the successes of abstinence programs. Yet an obvious question
remains. Who is SIECUS?
The Sexuality Information and
Education Council of
the United States (SIECUS) had its official beginning in 1964. But
its history is best understood by going back to the 50s when two
influential people were stirring the beginnings of the American sexual
revolution.
In 1948,
Sexual Behavior in the Human Male was published by Alfred Kinsey.
It spent 43 weeks, just short of one year, on The New York Times
bestseller’s list. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,
followed in 1953.
At the publication of his books,
Alfred Kinsey became a cultural icon validating virtually uninhibited
sexual behaviors of all kinds. Only decades after his ideas had made
their way into mainstream media and college courses did the truth
about his so-called research come to light.
Fully documented today by reputable
researchers, Kinsey has been shown to be a man driven by his own
extreme sexual urges to rewrite definitions of healthy human sexual
behavior by manipulating data and violating basic tenets of sound
research. For a starter, to “prove” “open minded” acceptance of data,
members of Kinsey’s staff were expected to engage in homosexual,
adulterous and promiscuous sex. Things got worse.
Under Kinsey’s firm guidance,
pedophiles were coached on how to record molestation of children, data
from prostitutes was generalized to represent sexual behaviors of
married women, and male data relied heavily upon prisoners including
sex offenders. Still locked behind closed doors at Indiana
University, this data was “analyzed” by a Kinsey team lacking any
experience in statistics and has ever since been unavailable for
independent analysis by outside experts.
As Americans were eagerly reading
Kinsey, a New Yorker was building an enterprise that would change the
face of America and sex forever. In 1953, Mary Calderone began work
as medical director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
Politically a libertarian, she pushed
for non-judgmental attitudes about sex.
In her preface to Sexuality and Human Values, a Siecus book she
edited, Calderon had little good to say about religion, characterizing
it as a “mythology” or “shibboleth” set “to hem sex in with attitudes
and restrictions that prevent its full flowering.” She exhorted
scientists and religionists to “make it possible for human beings to
realize their erotic potential in full and responsible conscience.”
Given an emphasis on eroticism, it is
not surprising that Calderone was also a strong advocate for
abortion. Editor of Abortion in the
United States (1958), she
pleaded for years with the American Medical Association (AMA) to
establish a Task Force Report and Resolution dealing with the
responsibility of physicians to be a source of population control.
Kinsey and Calderone,
each working to unlock “erotic potential” as the goal of normal sexual
behavior absent the “repressive” norms of traditional morality and
accommodated by legal abortion, needed only one thing to break the
bonds of sexual restraint. It arrived in 1960.
Frank B. Colton, a
biochemist with G.D. Searle and Company, directed research leading to
the discovery of Enovid, the first oral contraceptive. In 1960, a
drug supposedly designed to help married couples plan their families,
leapt across this artificial barrier and exploded full force into the
American culture.
Only four years after
arrival of the birth control pill, SIECUS was born. Mary Calderone
left her position with Planned Parenthood to become both the executive
director and secretary of SIECUS. Wardell Pomeroy, co-author of the
Kinsey books on sexual behavior, joined the group of founders on the
SIECUS Board.
Given the history of
the founders of SIECUS, it is no surprise to learn where their seed
money came from. Years later Christie Hefner wrote, “Through the
Playboy Foundation, Hefner put his money where his mouth was. It
made the initial grant to establish an Office of Research Services”
for SIECUS in the late 60s.
At its initial press
conference on January 9, 1965, Mary Calderone stated SIECUS would
“perhaps take positions on problems of sexuality in America.”
Indeed, it did back then. And it does today.
If you want to
understand the positions SIECUS takes today on abstinence education,
there is no better way to illuminate their statements than with the
light of Alfred Kinsey, Wardell Pomeroy and Mary Calderone. Like
dominoes, in a predictable chain-reaction, one push toward “erotic
potential” in 1964 has led today to an automatic reaction against
abstinence.
Return next week to
get a closer look at the ideas that formed SIECUS and defined the
“erotic potential” at the core of its existence: SIECUS Redefines
Humanity.
Copyright © 2005 Jane Jimenez
November 19, 2004
KINSEY: Brave New World?
Reisman, Judith A., PhD.
Kinsey: Crimes & Consequences, 2nd. Ed. Crestwood, KY: The
Institute for Media Education, Inc. Available at
www.amazon.com
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