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Hollywood has been known to offer us ethically misguided heroes in the past. James Bond, for example. But Kinsey may take us to a new low. To make matters worse, this individual's outrageous exploits weren't fiction, even though the movie that pays tribute is full of half-truths.

Director Bill Condon's film celebrates a "scientist" whose research-gathering methods involved child molestation, shoddy experiments, and survey methods that break the rules of credible investigation. From these methods, he came to champion all manner of sexual misbehavior as acceptable animal behavior.

Liam Neeson is earning Oscar buzz for his performance as Kinsey, and Laura Linney's winning raves for her role as his wife. Most mainstream critics, apparently unconcerned that the film is a whitewash of a fraud, are calling this one of the best films of the year.

But religious press critics are doing what they can to draw attention to the film's tendency to cover up details that expose Kinsey for the deceiver and manipulator that he was.

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. (Crosswalk), president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, offers an extensive account of Kinsey's work and influence in his assessment of the film. "The movie is really not a true portrait of Alfred Kinsey at all. The real Alfred Kinsey was a man whose own sexual practices cannot be safely described to the general public and whose interest in sex was anything but objective or scientific."

Tom Neven (Plugged In) addresses ways in which Kinsey's research was flawed, pointing out the poor and selective surveys he conducted. "People willing to talk to a total stranger about their sexual behavior … can hardly be considered a representative sample of the American public. Moreover, Kinsey used questionable statistical analyses to reach his conclusions."

He also analyzes the problems with the movie, which he says are "too vast to itemize." He calls it "propaganda" and says, "The film completely glosses over the immoral and damaging methods Kinsey and his associates used in the course of their research. [The book] Sexual Behavior in the Human Male … contains studies about the sexual response of infants, toddlers and other children. (Kinsey's assistant Wardell Pomeroy has basically admitted that the studies involving children were derived from Kinsey's own experiments.)" He also points out that Kinsey and his wife were "serial adulterers," while the film only acknowledges single affairs. And he concludes that the worldview of the film is "insidious. It says 'science' (as defined by its practitioners) is the only way to know truth; all else is mere opinion and superstition."

Morality in Media President Robert Peters (Christian Spotlight) says, "In Kinsey's mind, man was merely an animal with a high degree of intelligence; and at the end of the film, in the midst of the credits, we are treated to scene after scene of animals having sex. In Kinsey's mind, apparently no sex was abnormal; and among the types of sex that Kinsey is shown engaging in or endorsing in the film are adultery, bisexuality, homosexuality, group sex, pornography, sadomasochism, and swinging."

He adds, "In the film Kinsey interviews a man who molested hundreds of children, but there is no other indication (unless I missed something) that Kinsey's data about child sexuality came from pedophiles."

David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) says, "Defenders will view the picture as a sober portrait of the man credited with emancipating sex from the shackles of Puritanism. Conversely, critics will question not only the movie's accuracy, but the appropriateness of celebrating a man who many blame for jump-starting the sexual revolution by redefining societal mores and jettisoning inhibition and traditional morality to the relic heap of Victorian prudery."

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November (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48