Topic: WorldNetDaily
A Dec. 8 WorldNetDaily promo for Judith Reisman's anti-Kinsey screed "Sexual Sabotage" carries the headline "The father of child pornography."
Really? There was no child pornography before 1947? Is that what they're trying to say?
The article goes on to assert that, per Reisman, Kinsey is "not only a scientific fraud but a supremely sick and perverted human being – a sexual psychopath who reveled in the criminal molestation of hundreds of infants and children."
The problem is that Reisman has long engaged in shoddy research to promote her anti-Kinsey crusade, and there's no real reason to assume anything has changed in "Sexual Sabotage," despite WND's claim that Reisman's work is "frighteningly true."
The Kinsey Institute has responded to such claims: "Kinsey did not carry out any experiments on children, nor did he hire, collaborate, or persuade people to carry out experiments on children. He did not falsify research findings and he in no way condoned any sexual abuse."
The institute has even responded to the "Esther White" case, in which a woman claimed that Kinsey paid her father "to rape her and then report to him on the attacks." As we noted, the woman has offered no substantive evidence to back up her claims, and WND reporter Brian Fitzpatrick, who promoted the case in October, made no apparent effort to obtain the institute's side of the story. He could have pulled it off the website:
We have no reason to doubt that this woman was sexually abused. People may have used Kinsey's name to justify any sorts of behavior, but that is beyond the control of the researchers.
It is possible that this woman's father or grandfather wrote to Kinsey, as many people did, but he never encouraged any such behavior. Following that documentary, we checked through Kinsey's correspondence and could not find any that would match this story.
Kinsey did not ask people to fill out questionnaires or forms. There was no experimentation, and no one was 'recruited' to 'participate,' and certainly not to molest anyone. There is absolutely no evidence to support any of these claims. The research consisted of interviewing people about their sexual lives and relationships.
Nevertheless, WND promotes Reisman's version of Kinsey has some sort of superhuman villain: "Kinsey succeeded in promoting widespread sexual experimentation and immorality. He single-handedly gutted the tough laws that kept pornography and predators at bay in America."
Between Reisman's history of shoddy research and WND's wildly overblown claims here -- all designed to promote a special on Reisman's book -- there's really no reason to take any of this seriously, making WND's $4.95 offer perhaps still too much to pay for her screed.
