Sermons by Reverend Don Beaudreault
DID YOU SEE THAT MOVIE?
Rev. Don Beaudreault
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
February 13, 2005
OPENING WORDS: "Sonnet #116" by William Shakespeare, read by Beth Leach
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove.
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
SERMON: "Did You See That Movie?"
Well did you? See that movie, I mean. You know, the one about .sex. The one called "Kinsey" which is the story of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, portrayed by Liam Neeson. And I do mean about sex, unlike the majority of today's movies that show "sex"- or whatever you choose to call what they are doing.
The latter portrayal of sex in all its lurid forms, is often gratuitous, that is to say, unwarranted and uncalled for (by the plot), but it is there in "surround sound" titillating or disgusting you because the movie moguls believe that this is what you, the American populace (and various international markets), desire. In a phrase: "sex sells." Although I personally know that most of us Unitarian Universalists would prefer staying home and cozying up to a good book. Dickens or Emerson.
How do I know this? Because when I am at the movies that show sex scenes, I never see you there! Of course, I am only doing research for my sermons via the big screen.
Anyhow, along comes "Kinsey" - the man and the movie. And the movie gets a local critic rating it as an "A-" which is about right as far as it goes concerning the overall quality of the movie. But personally, I would give it an "A+" because it spoke to me in very deep ways. Ergo, the sermon this morning, the day before Valentine's Day.
What made it so good?
It was so good because it was a well-scripted story based on historical evidence, complete with realistically portrayed emotions that were at times wonderfully understated. So un-Hollywood! No dangling body parts, so to speak - except in one scene where the dangling was most appropriate. But more of that anon. Let me leave you hanging for now.
"Kinsey" the movie was so good because it brought into sharp relief three qualities about a most remarkable and psychologically complex man. Alfred Charles Kinsey (1894-1956) was a man of intelligence, passion, and commitment - which, depending upon your viewpoint fifty years ago or now, made him either a first-rate savior or a first-rate sinner.
I prefer to think of him as a Unitarian Universalist - meaning a savior for many of our type, our "type" being people who want to know why we have to dot our "i's" simply because everyone else seems to be doing it. We even want to know concerning "i" dotting, as did Kinsey in regard to sexual practices if, indeed, everyone else is, in fact, doing "it." Are some refusing to "dot"? And if so, why not dot? Are some double dotting? And so on.
Let me remind you, if you don't already know it, that we Unitarian Universalists are heirs to Kinsey's work. Among our many denominational positions or programs over the decades in respect to acceptance of our sexual diversity, was the curriculum designed for our young people and their parents called "About Your Sexuality" - a no holds-barred educational methodology that was the first established by any religious group in the United States. That was more than 40 years ago. The heir to that program called "Our Whole Lives" includes people of all ages, because we Unitarian Universalists recognize that "sexuality" if not "sex" (the two are not always related), does not have to stop when you retire.
And hopefully, you are practicing what I am preaching - although if you wanted to merely read about the subject of "sexuality" you would have to look elsewhere than in our Sarasota libraries, given the reality that a perusal of our local card catalogue reveals only four items listed under the subject of "sexuality" - all referring to Kinsey.
At least there are 852 so-called "results" when you search under the heading "sex" - although most of them refer to some less than joyful aspect of "sex" - like "addiction," "violence," and "crime."
I doubt if things are that different in other public libraries across America.
Back to Kinsey. And why he and the movie are so important.
For me, Alfred Kinsey, was a torchbearer of knowledge and reason. But how misunderstood he was and is by those who think they know about sexuality - and especially about what is good for everyone else (including their own children and other people's children).
You have heard their comments in our local newspaper. Words like:
Oh, no! You can't teach my child sex education in school! That's the work of the devil! Planned Parenthood is the spawn of Satin.
(My words, paraphrasing such thinking.)
Joe McCarthy tried to tell Kinsey to be quiet. We, today, have lots of Joe McCarthys, don't we? People of the Dark Ages, telling others to be quiet; telling us to be quiet. Telling us that we are not free to explore what might or might not be true.
Think about what Kinsey endured in his own life, as he led the world into an awareness of what human beings really do and think about sexuality. These words from his biographer, James H. Jones:
Confronted by a nation awash in what (Robert Latou) Dickinson had called "hush and pretend," Kinsey pleaded for an end to hypocrisy and for a new ethic of tolerance. What people did in the privacy of their bedrooms was their own business and should not be subjected to social or legal sanctions.
Reducing and abolishing rigid controls on human sexual behavior was thus the great cause of Kinsey's life.More than any other figure of his day, he set Americans to thinking about how much authority society should exercise over intimate matters. Those who believed that people's private behavior should be strictly regulated tended to view Kinsey with anger and dismay, while those who thought that people should have more freedom found his message congenial. (Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life, pp. 772-773)
What made Kinsey this way? Certainly, he was fashioned out of the times in which he was born and raised. Despite the fact that Billy Graham was to condemn him as the American who did more to undermine morality than anyone else, Kinsey grew up in an evangelical Methodist family, with a father who commanded authority from everyone else in that family. In truth, there was no escaping religion - or his father's expectation of obedience.
I for one believe that such an upbringing makes for a good Unitarian Universalist. And so the theological seed was sown for Kinsey - so to speak.
As for sowing a different kind of seed - there was none of that allowed for the young Alfred - although he broke those rules whenever he could get away with it. But at what great price? The price of inordinate guilt! All in the name of religion! As his biographer Jones puts it in reflecting on what Kinsey must have been struggling with:
How could he be a Christian and surrender to the "heinous sin of self-abuse?" How could he be attracted to other boys and still be both moral and masculine? (p. 79)
I feel that we cannot underestimate how strongly such a restrictive perspective on Christianity influenced him. This caused Kinsey's life-long passion to use his intelligence in furthering his commitment to study human sexuality - to justify his natural impulses and actions.
It's a wonder he did not become a Unitarian Universalist minister!
Instead, he studied zoology, becoming an expert on the differences of gull wasps. This scientific awareness of diversity in nature, created an objective, non-moralistic stance concerning human sexuality. In interviewing thousands of people from a wide spectrum of life, he would make them feel comfortable because of his non-judgmental attitude. That is also what he trained his researchers to do as well.
In reality, and in the movie, those who were interviewed often exhibited the natural joy they had concerning their sexual practices. What a difference between this and the repressed attitudes that most people back then and now carry with them on the subject of sexuality. How much joy is lost on the human species - perhaps more on the American variety than on most other varieties. So very steeped are we in this damnable "Protestant Ethic."
That ethic had its first good shake, rattle, and roll when, as Scott McLamee writes in his article "Alfred Kinsey and the Gull Wasp of Desire" (Salon, Nov. 5, 1997):
This epoch of libidinal prohibition lasted until Jan. 4, 1948. The following day, Professor Alfred C. Kinsey of Indiana published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Whereupon, as the expression has it, the earth moved.
At first glance, the "Kinsey report" -- as the book was instantly dubbed -- made an improbable candidate for the bestseller list. Issued by a publisher specializing in medical texts, it was thick and somewhat forbidding. Its pages were packed with graphs and statistical matrices; the prose was definitely that of a scientist writing for an audience of his peers. Kinsey was a biologist at Indiana University. Until the first week of 1948, his professional reputation rested firmly upon decades of research into the taxonomy of the gall wasp -- an insect he had studied with exceptional patience, thoroughness and attention to variety.
But it was precisely its scientific, morally neutral handling of data that made Sexual Behavior in the Human Male such an explosive book. As far as Kinsey was concerned, the species "man" was an orgasm-seeking mammal. In 10 years of research, the professor and his staff interviewed some 12,000 men and women, using a questionnaire that gathered more than 200 separate items of information about their sexual histories.
That part of Kinsey's research that is depicted in the movie as more than just a "dangling" participle - that to which I referred earlier - occurs in a classroom composed of mostly heterosexual couples at Indiana University. Remember that this was more than a half century ago. And voila! This was a lecture - with slides. (Unlike the slides we showed you this morning.) I mean slides - of rather primary body parts (male and female), some of them dangling.
Enough said about specifics. But let me add that the gasps from the actors who played those Indiana University students pretty much matched those from the movie audience amidst whom I sat. Or was that merely my own gasp?
Still, this movie was about sex; it was not a movie that showed sex - in the good, old American let's shock you tradition of gratuitous sex on the big screen. Although it did "kinda" show sex here and there - but it was relevant sex! You see, there was a point to the scene in the classroom: to educate us - all of us, the people in the classroom, and those of us in the theatre. To educate us, thereby liberating us.
Scott McLamee continues with:
At a pricey $6.50 per copy, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, quickly sold its first printing of 20,000. Within a few months, 200,000 copies sold in hardback in the United States alone. The book was soon translated into eight foreign languages.The critical reception was slightly more equivocal; a few colleagues expressed reservations about Kinsey's research...
Five years later, his report on Sexual Behavior in the Human Female was greeted with great media fanfare, if not quite so much enthusiasm as the first report. Cold War tensions had something to do with it. Kinsey's inquiry into what women were doing in bed caused the Rev. Billy Graham to worry for the country's moral purity. Some junior McCarthyites came sniffing around, wondering if Kinsey might not have been the dupe of secret communists on the staff of the Rockefeller Foundation. He began to have trouble funding his Institute for Sexual Research. The final years of his life were often stressful and unhappy.
One scene from the movie that is relevant to this aspect of the discussion occurs near the end of the movie when Kinsey is quite dejected about his lack of funding for his work. He also is disheartened because he feels that he is far behind in his research. At this point he interviews a lesbian, who, in telling her own story, tries to tell him that he has saved her life and the lives of countless others - lives similar to hers, and different. That because he has proven the great diversity of human sexuality, no one now needs to have shame or guilt or fear. Kinsey hesitates in accepting her appreciation, playing the ever hard-working perfectionist - in truth, such a quality did eventually lead to his early death.
Truly, this woman's gratitude was indeed, my own, and should be yours and everyone else's as well. For Alfred C. Kinsey was truly a great liberator. He liberated all of us through knowledge - and knowledge is power, to be sure, but we must have it - and we must fight the forces of ignorance with it. And may it be our tool, and not our weapon. Kinsey the man and the movie, show us all how crucial comprehensive sexual education is - it always has been, and now, with the scourge of AIDS and other pandemic diseases it is even more so.
No, it's not all about sexuality! It's about intelligence, passion, and commitment. It is about honoring the human being - you and me and our neighbor - by allowing us to know and care and act to improve our lot in the world. It is about moving us out of the dark ages of ignorance and superstition when it comes to anything and bringing us into the light of knowledge and reason - an existential state that does not preclude the expression of our deepest emotions.
Kinsey never met his goal of collecting 100,000 interviews, but when he died in 1956, an editorial the New York Times praised him as:
first, last, and always a scientist.
And Clara Kinsey, his ever-supportive wife - indeed, a woman of great intelligence in her own right - told the readers of McCall's that her husband's work represented:
an unvoiced plea for tolerance.
I imagine that Kinsey would have been content with both those evaluations.
Other obituaries compared him to Galileo and Darwin - both of whom have had their research contested by some of today's religious groups - all of which need to be educated.
So as we continue to liberate ourselves through ongoing education, let us attempt to liberate others in the same way. Let us do it with the spirit of love and tolerance - but firmness of conviction as well! Let us build upon what such great teachers as Alfred Charles Kinsey has taught us, and let us move into a more illuminated future.
CLOSING WORDS:
Love doesn't make the world go 'round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
Franklin P. Jones
Religion has done love a great service by making it a sin.
Anatole France