SOURCE: "Kinsey's Challenge to Ethics and Religion," in Sexual Behavior in American Society: An Appraisal of the First Two Kinsey Reports, edited by Jerome Himelhoch and Sylvia Fleis Fava, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1955, pp. 226-36.

"Maybe it's true, but it's not good policy to broadcast detailed truth without some consideration of how people are going to use it." Such is a common reaction to Kinsey. It is not peculiar to traditionalists nor to those lacking reverence for modern science. For example, Margaret Mead, in an eloquent Appendix on "The Ethics of Insight Giving" says: "When one writes in a way that is easily accessible to all interested citizens, I believe one should put oneself in those readers' place, and not force them either to accept or to reject [or to choose which to do?] interpretations the implications of which they would not have chosen to hear had they been fully aware of them." "The sudden removal of a previously guaranteed reticence has left many young people singularly defenseless in just those areas where their desire to conform was protected by a lack of knowledge of the extent of non-conformity."¹ The most important aspect of the Kinsey studies is their challenge to re-examine the relation of science to ethics and religion and this connected issue of intellectual paternalism versus complete intellectual democracy.

The medieval harmony of science, ethics, and religion, documented by St. Thomas Aquinas, became more and more disturbed by the rapid development of science. In 1790 Kant seemed to solve the problem in a novel and revolutionary way, by making a complete separation of science and ethics. However the ethics which actually operate in our society have never yet been reduced to any single principle, but are based on several different types of thinking. Wayne Leys has done a great service to social science by making explicit these ethical thoughtways.² He compares Kant's ethic of pursuing an ideal of social relations with the casuist ethic of following precedents, the Bentham utilitarian ethic of estimating the pleasant and painful consequences to all affected, the Hegelian ethic of loyalty to the larger whole, or destiny toward which history moves, and the Deweyan pragmatic ethic of solving the essential problem. The last seems like a kind of negative, objectivist, practical utilitarianism: doing what will most reduce complaints and conflicts.

The alarm over the Kinsey reports seems to be based on a fear that our fellow citizens are largely guided by an extremely realistic form of casuistry which says, "When in Rome do as the Romans do—read their laws—but also notice which laws are enforced." It is well known, of course, that many a person will thus appeal to custom when what the Romans do fits in with his felt needs, but when it does not, he may turn to an idealistic, utilitarian, or even a Hegelian argument. This is one of the commonest types of rationalization.

F. S. C. Northrop vigorously opposes this type of casuistry which would derive ethics from actual practice. With Robert Hutchins he opposes "legal realism" and agrees that legal thinkers need an "idea of the good." Furthermore, Northrop sees a similar error in Hegelian and Marxian thinking. Hegel on the level of nations, and Marx on the level of classes, assume that in some important sense the "ought" can be derived from the "is." Yet Northrop rejects also the Kantian solution of making ethics independent of science. He believes that ethics can and should be derived from science. Not, however, from "social science," by which he seems to mean descriptive cultural sciences, but rather from "natural science," in which he seems to include biology and psychology.³ The Kinsey reports would belong mostly to Northrop's descriptive "social science." Biology, psychology, and studies such as Kardiner's⁴ which attempt to apply universal criteria to several cultures would seem to belong mostly to Northrop's "human and natural science," which he regards as a proper basis for ethics. However, while Kinsey's titles "Human Male" and "Human Female" seem to the anthropologist like a bit of ethnocentric conceit, there are many things in the reports which contribute to omnihuman natural science in Northrop's sense. Such for example are the data on the tremendous age, sex, and individual differences.

There is a job to be done, and Northrop has suggested what it is. It is to translate our factual knowledge about human sexuality into ethics, legislation, social policy, and religious guidance. The time has now come to do it. Not because Kinsey has told us anything so very surprising, anything that was not known, in rough approximation, before. Rather, because he has told it so statistically to so many people that now there may be enough steam up to do what should have been done a long time ago.

This task should be done gradually through discussion. In this writer's view the discussion should be in no way secret, however benevolent and high-minded; but it should be led by men and women of unquestionable honesty, devotion to the general good, and free from any concealed personal motive or bias. Given the present organization of our intellectual life, these discussion leaders should be clearly distinguished from the factual researchers, although both groups require intellectual and moral integrity.

The kind of discussion we need is well represented by Sex Ethics and the Kinsey Reports by Dr. Seward Hiltner,⁵ a clergyman and member of the University of Chicago theological faculty. Hiltner not only understands Kinsey's methods and results with uncommon acumen, but shows theoretical skill after the fashion of a Max Weber. He is interested in patterns, not of sex behavior and "outlets," but of sex attitudes and values. He constructs seven types, each logically consistent within itself, and most of them also well represented empirically. The first three are mass types correlated with Kinsey's three socio-educational levels: the "child-of-nature" attitude of the lower level, the "respectability-restraint" attitude of the middle level (especially before 1920), and the "romantic" attitude (romantic toward licit and illicit sex and not merely toward conventional courtship and choice of mate) of the upper level, now filtering down to other levels. Then there are three consistent patterns which Hiltner has observed among thoughtful individuals but which do not appear in the Kinsey data, either because Kinsey did not ask the necessary questions, or because the holders of these attitudes are too few. These are the "no harm" attitude, the "toleration" attitude, and the "personal-interpersonal" attitude. The last named is the one frankly admired by Hiltner. It is implied in the works of Erich Fromm.⁶

The person with this attitude "believes that the ordering of sex by society should be for the realization of personal and interpersonal values, not for the sake of control of such." It is neither legalistic nor libertarian, biologistic nor spiritistic, unreflectively conformist nor yet rebellious for the sake of proving non-conformity. "It does not consider naturalness or unnaturalness as adequate criteria."⁷ Hiltner measures all these six types against a seventh type as a standard. This is the Christian view⁸ of sex, which Hiltner derives, in an objective, scholarly manner, from the Bible and Christian history, but also "taking into account the modern knowledge." The Christian view turns out to be essentially the personal-inter-personal attitude with the addition of Christian theological support. It is summarized in five points, here condensed: (1) sex is good if it serves the fulfillment of man as a total being, i.e., God's will for man, (2) the aim of all human interrelationships is to foster love, (3) the aim of sex is toward a progressive integration of the several necessary levels of sexual function, (4) human sex requires both intensity and steadfastness with a proper relationship between them, (5) the good of any sex act always depends in some measure upon the inner meaning to the persons involved, but the sole ultimate standard is the judgment and love of God.⁹

How is this Christian view different from the traditional sex mores? For one thing, it is adequate and inspiring on the positive side, whereas the traditional code emphasizes the negative, and the concrete. Hiltner thinks that Kinsey has distorted the Judaeo-Christian view by reading it through the ideas of his subjects. He asserts that this Judaeo-Christian tradition assigns more positive value to the sex act itself, than is generally realized. He agrees in general with D. S. Bailey, an Anglican clergyman, who reads real flesh and not merely a symbol in the Biblical doctrine on "one flesh."¹⁰ These scholars both seem to feel that although the sex act should be kept within marriage, yet it has a God-sanctioned value which is not dependent upon marriage as an institution nor upon the intention to procreate.

John J. Kane argues that the Catholic attitude toward sex has been seriously misunderstood by many Catholics as well as outsiders. Actually it is warmer, healthier, more positive than it seems. Catholic thought is not responsible for the identification of sex with the obscene or pornographic. But there is a certain caution in verbalizing it. "Since conjugal love is both a legitimate and beautiful kind of love, and since it is expressed in sexual union, the marital sex union should also be considered in that light."¹¹ If this approach differs significantly from the approach of the other branches of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the difference, according to the present writer, involves a general tendency to leave many things publicly unsaid, to assume a benevolent, paternal control over the circulation of symbols and ideas. This may have had value in protecting the sex drive from fears and disgusts as well as guarding it against superfluous stimulation. This may account for a certain kind of healthymindedness in the Catholic attitude toward sex. The question is, can any such paternalistic control stand up indefinitely in the open ideological market of modern society, or must it be replaced by other controls?

The popular belief in a negative relation between sexuality and religion seems supported by Kinsey's findings that religiously active persons are on the average sexually less active—within marriage as well as illicitly! This difference occurs within all three faiths and is greater than any difference between the faiths as such. Such a correlation must be explained by factors other than the content of ancient Hebrew law or of the words of Jesus. From the very numerousness and detail of the sexual prohibitions in Leviticus, without any general, blanket prohibition of sex outside marriage, one can make certain inferences as to what was not forbidden. But also in the words of Jesus one can find no authority for the official modern Anglo-American respectable middleclass definition of sex morality as sex within marriage only and even there excluding certain "perversions" and "excesses." The moral theme of Jesus was loving kindness, humility, and forgiveness in interpersonal relations in general. He said little about marriage and sexual relations specifically. Apparently he accepted the sex and marriage mores of his culture, but opposed the drastic punishments prescribed by Mosaic law. When a woman was taken in the very act of adultery, he said: "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her." This is also what the Kinsey Reports seem to say implicitly, between the lines, and this is perhaps the reason why some people fear them. In the biblical case, however, Jesus then added privately to the woman, "Go and sin no more." (John 8:1-11)

The Christian ethic exalts love and peace and therefore in general condemns giving offense. This policy necessarily implies the avoidance of sexual behavior which gives offense in the community and culture in which one lives. But it does not define for all cultures and for all eternity what shall be offensive and what shall not. It does not concretely define "lust," "purity," "adultery," and so on, but leaves these concepts free to change their concrete objective meaning, provided there is sufficient scientific support and democratic agreement on the changes, and no unfair advantage taken through deception, concealment, and hypocrisy. Mormon polygamy proved itself intolerable to the American culture and value system, even when it was segregated in Utah. But to show that it was unchristian, it would be necessary to show that it was more selfish, cruel, unfair, or deceitful than arrangements recognized as Christian.

Hiltner's Christian view, or in purely humanistic terms, his personal-interpersonal attitude, emphasizes "man as a total being." Two serious problems will arise: one has to do with the individual man as a total being, and the other with the total population of men as endowed with the same human needs and intrinsic worth.

In the total of needs, drives, and interests which make up the individual man, there is a class of defensive drives such as anger-and-aggression, and fear-and-escape. In a sense these are antagonistic to the rest of the personality; they are necessary evils, weapons held in reserve against emergencies, and they operate through a branch of the nervous system which is antagonistic to the branch concerned with hunger, sexual excitation, and the routine bodily processes. Anger does sometimes become linked with sexual desire, and the result may be sadism. Do we want more of that? Do we want to encourage the very natural linkage of sex with jealousy, a partly defensive emotion, because of the useful weapon this gives against sexual infidelity; or would we minimize jealousy as an evil and try to find adequate substitute weapons? We do wish to link sex more closely with tender love toward the mate, a linkage which seems to be deficient in some persons and cultures. Yet we sometimes seem to fear that tenderness toward other love-objects such as children, one's own sex, or the spouse of one's friend, might lead to erotic feeling.

Perhaps no group of drives plays so large a part in the higher development of man as do the exploratory drives of curiosity, acquisition, construction, aesthetic creation, and the like. The full story of man as a total being is not understood until we recognize that man strives to make new connections, craves new experiences, strives to enter all fields he can within the limits of time, energy, and empirically adequate safety. When George Mallory, who perished in the 1920s trying to climb Mt. Everest, was asked why it was so important to climb that dangerous and desolate mountain, he replied, "because it's there." No man seeks adventure in all fields, but given enough men, all possible fields will be invaded. This is not an approval of any particular adventure, but a human fact to be reckoned with. Denis de Rougemont seems to recognize that sexual adventure provides some positive values which cannot be dismissed merely by calling them bad names. His answer is that marital fidelity is also a value, a faith chosen for its own sake, and to choose it means to renounce the values both of "spontaneity" and "manifold experience."¹²

Kinsey's outstanding discovery about sex differences is that males are erotically stimulated by a much greater variety of objects and mental images than are females. He thinks this is due to some biological difference. Hiltner is inclined to question this interpretation. That there is such a biological difference, however, is suggested by Slater and Woodside. "If the race were so constituted that female orgasm occurred before male, she might very well thereupon terminate coitus before the chance of conception had occurred. A male constitution that provided for ejaculation at the earliest possible moment after intromission would be a selective advantage."¹³ More generally, we may theorize, nature is wasteful, and reproduction may be best assured by having an excess of male excitement present all the time, at the same time that the female, for short periods, may seem almost insatiable. Clearly ethics cannot be derived simply from natural law any more than it can from existing custom. But, on the other hand, an ethic of human fulfillment would continually seek harmless ways to use rather than waste, to integrate rather than to keep separate, the various and abundant potentialities of man.

Kinsey's findings bid us define more carefully the "single standard of morals." The goal worth striving for is not an equalizing of the average behavior of the two sexes, but honesty and justice in the way that society evaluates and treats this behavior. A double standard of sex morality has existed in ancient Greece, in modern Japan and modern America. But the role of the Greek hetaira, the Japanese geisha, and the Japanese prostitute were more honest and just than the role of the American prostitute.

The other serious problem is the problem of humanity as a whole population. Does the Christian view of sex hold that persons, when they cannot achieve the ideal, should renounce sex altogether? Must sex be used only during some limited period of one's life time, depriving especially men in youth and women in older years, often at the very times they are strongest in biological drive? Strange to say, these absolute deprivations would be much easier to endure were it not for the existence of a rather elastic supply of surplus sexuality in the nondeprived people of the opposite sex. Conversely, the surplus sexuality of these latter would not bother them so much were it not for their knowledge of the absolute deprivations existing among potential partners. One might almost say that sex, like "nature," abhors a vacuum, and that this characteristic is likely to increase the more we rationalize (in Max Weber's sense) and civilize our sexuality.

The problem is not a simple choice between two alternates. At least four distinct values are involved: (1) sexual exclusiveness, (2) permanence of marriage or intimate relationships, (3) male initiative in courtship and economic production, (4) better intersexual balance and wider satisfaction of the biological sex need. Any three of these might be attained better by sacrificing, or honestly subordinating and risking, the fourth. The least discussed possibility, though not necessarily the most hopeful, is the subordination of value three. That is, if boys were to marry soon after sexual maturity, taking wives a few years older, expecting more economic responsibility and courtship initiative from the girls, much of the problem as Kinsey portrays it might be relieved, and there would also be less widowhood.

But perhaps there are weightier considerations than these. If so, they will endure the strain of public exposure and discussion. Sex may be a dangerous thing, but now that we have radioactive dust floating about, any alarm over the insidious consequences of the "Kinsey bomb" should seem to be somewhat amusing.

Indeed it is possible that more honest and humane sex mores would help to reduce interpersonal and international tensions and thereby decrease the chances for world destruction. Let no one imagine, however, that such an improvement could be achieved by complete "sex freedom." Without mores, sexual privileges, like land and gold, might become the object of unbridled competition and fighting, or else revert to some grossly undemocratic pattern of "haves" and "have-nots" such as we see among animals and undemocratic human societies. Sex anarchism may argue that sex is not like land and gold because the supply always equals the demand—in fact the supply is ipso facto the demand. But this argument ignores the universal human, and even animal, tendencies to pre-empt more than one's share, to perceive gradations of the object, and to struggle for the "better" grades. The way to better social arrangements lies not in scrapping what we have already achieved but in building upon it.

The mores are standards by which we judge behavior. The suggestion of this chapter is not to reverse the relation, not to judge the mores by our actual behavior, but to judge our sex mores by the standard of our more general, comprehensive mores. Let the standard of chastity be judged by the standard of charity, and not by the standard deviation!

We may find that the most basic question is whether we shall choose, or perhaps are irrevocably committed to what Wilhelm Reich calls a sex-affirming, or a sex-denying, culture.¹⁴ The answer to this might not make much practical difference for the immediate future. A sex-denying culture may permit much sexual activity for the sake of reproduction, health, tender love, and other values. On the other hand a sex-affirming culture may regulate and restrain sex a great deal to prevent excesses of reproduction, of sexual competition or fighting, or to prevent disease, poverty, or other evils. Granted that sex with tenderness, aesthetic embellishment, and so on, is always better than the sex which is like a glass of water to a thirsty man, granted that sex like all other drives must be restrained where it hurts other persons or other interests, yet the crucial question still remains. Namely, does the sexual act in and of itself have any independent value, or only an instrumental, derivative value? If it has independent value, then the burden of proof lies upon those who would restrain it. If it has only instrumental value, the burden of proof is upon those who would permit it. This question is especially debatable because of a curious biological paradox: sex is one of the strongest impulses yet also the impulse which can be deprived with least harm! Consequently sex is, of all human drives, the one most susceptible to regulation by cultural values.

If one accepted Sorokin's great super-classification of value systems into the Sensate, the Idealistic, and the Ideational,¹⁵ and believed that our present culture is too sensate, he might logically choose the sex-denying policy. But if so, he should also logically deny aesthetic satisfactions and creature comforts as independent values. This is approximately the position of early Puritanism and of Communism in its present phase. To produce fanatically, not in order to consume, but for the sake of production itself and of national strength, is fully as ideational as the value system of the Medieval world although the ideas are different.

But Sorokin's way is not the only way in which values can be classified. We might think of values as expressive versus receptive, or of giving versus getting. Our present sex morality seems to be tied up with a fundamental semantic assumption that the sex act, apart from procreation or marriage, is of the nature of getting: sensations for the male; sensations, economic rewards, or nothing at all for the female. But the act, whether licit or illicit, is also a giving of intense satisfaction to another human being, commonly with reciprocation, sometimes long-craved and long pleasantly remembered. This fact is verbally emphasized in some cultures which anthropologists regard as rather sex-affirming. It is soft-pedaled in our culture, except in very intimate or lately in clinical conversation, despite the fact that our religion exalts giving in general. Yet this is logical. If the thing given has no value apart from some approved context, then, apart from that context, it is not a gift. However, neither do we rhapsodize upon sexual pleasure given to the marital partner.

This analysis will not decide the question, it merely points up its essential nature.

NOTES

¹ Margaret Mead, Male and Female, New York: William Morrow and Co., 1949, p. 450.

² Wayne Leys, Ethics for Policy Decisions, New York: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1953.

³ F. S. C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1946, pp. 245, 256-258.

⁴ Abram Kardiner, et ai, The Psychological Frontiers of Society, New York: Columbia University Press, 1945.

⁵ Seward Hiltner, Sex Ethics and the Kinsey Reports, New York: Association Press, 1953.

⁶ Erich Fromm, Man for Himself, New York: Rinehart and Co., 1947; Psychoanalysis and Religion, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951.

⁷ Hiltner, Sex Ethics and the Kinsey Reports, p. 177.

⁸ The Jewish view seems to be incorporated within this.

⁹ Hiltner, Sex Ethics and the Kinsey Reports, pp. 179-180.

¹⁰ D. S. Bailey, The Mystery of Love and Marriage, A Study in the Theology of Sexual Relations, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1952. See Genesis 2:24 and Ephesians 5:31.

¹¹ John J. Kane, Marriage and the Family, A Catholic Approach, New York: Dryden Press, 1952, p. 258.

¹² Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1940, p. 290.

¹³ Eliot Slater and Moya Woodside, New Patterns in Marriage, London: Cassell and Co., 1951, p. 175.

¹⁴ Wilhelm Reich, The Function of the Orgasm, New York: Orgone Institute Press, 1942.

¹⁵ Pitirim Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, New York: American Book Co., 1937.