Sexuality and Global Forces: Dr. Alfred Kinsey and the Supreme Court of the United States

For the past five years, I have been privileged to serve on the Board of Governors of the Kinsey Institute. I have been surprised to find how modestly the Institute is funded and how modestly it is often appreciated for its enormous impact on our world in one of the pivotal ideas of our time.

In the remainder of these remarks, I will say something about Dr. Kinsey and his research. I will then contrast some of the early decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States on issues relating to homosexuality with the approach embraced more recently by the majority in Lawrence. My central thesis is not that Dr. Kinsey, or his Institute of Sex Research at Indiana University, single-handedly revolutionized the values of contemporary Western societies toward homosexuality or other sexual issues. But it is that Kinsey’s research profoundly shifted the debate in the United States and in other Western countries. Moreover, research within the area that Kinsey and his colleagues undertook at Indiana University should be seen as very important to the true fault line that exists in the world today. If progress is to be made in human civilization, it must come on issues such as gender equality, rights to divorce and contraception, and attitudes toward homosexuality. If the world is to become a more tolerant and safer place, this is where progress must be achieved. This is why Kinsey is important not only to America and its law. The subject matters of the research into human sexuality address an important fault line in our world and are therefore very important for the future of the planet and of our species.