Spoiling the Party for Alfred Kinsey at SFSU
by Michael Balcome-NY, NY
The other week, San Francisco State University was sponsoring a seminar celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Alfred Kinsey’s pioneering work in the study of human sexuality, Sex and the Human Male. Experts from around the world were invited to take part in a discussion on the future of human sexuality. All speakers were supporters of Kinsey’s work.
The PLA decided to hold an event of our own, protesting Kinsey and demanding that the university present a more balanced curriculum concerning their human sexuality studies program, which was way too liberal and pro-homosexual. At the same time, PLA sent in several members to sit in on the seminar to take the opportunity to ask questions of the panel.
Our Goals
1) Heavily impact the seminar at SFSU (we wanted to make a little trouble);
2) Stand up strongly for PLA values and speak out to the campus community;
3) Get 210 signatures of supporters who agreed with our demands and 40 signatures of those who would be interested in actually involving themselves with future activities of the PLA;
4) Have media attendance at the event and make the evening news;
5) United the members internally through the preparation and actualization of this project.
Our Demands for the School
1) That a class be included in the human sexuality cluster concerning the benefit of marriage; and that this should be taught by a person who believes and practices that lifestyle.
2) That it is not necessary in an academic setting to deal with sexually explicit material-especially visual material. It simply should not be done.
3) That both liberal and conservative viewpoints should be represented in sexual education classes-especially in the readers.
4) That the proposed B.A. and M.A. programs be evaluated by a balanced committee.
5) That student evaluations of class content should be required and be accessible to the public.
6) That material discussing abstinence as a positive alternative for physical and emotional health be present at sex resource centers on campus.
Preparation
We had one week to prepare, and focused a lot of time on reaching out to community members and possible interested groups and organizations which could support our efforts. One group, First Principles Press, Inc., aided us by sending out an e-mail to all of its interested constituents, informing them of the SFSU event as well as the PLA rally.
Beverly Sheldon, of the Traditional Values Coalition, also contacted us, requesting information about the seminar and about the SFSU Sex Ed curriculum. She also sent a representative from the area to attend the program. The Coalition works on a political level to make it difficult for such sex "research" to get public funding.
Judith Reismann, a scholar who has written two books criticizing Kinsey’s work, attended the event incognito, and called us Monday morning offering congratulations and requesting information about SFSU’s curriculum. She is pretty much one of the biggest activist honchos against the Kinsey ideology. Richard Sweeney, an independent Christian in communication with Reismann, also received the e-mail and contacted us, saying he’d like to attend. He was very supportive and audiotaped the entire event.
Mother Wright, the "Mother Teresa of Oakland," attended the rally as a guest speaker, along with Christine Froehlich, president of WFWP here in the Bay Area. We garnered student support as well. Two groups, the Muslim Students Association and the Mandarin Evangelical Students Association, agreed to co-sponsor the event publicly. We also had a guest speaker from City College, and Rev. Angela from the Church of Christ, who testified to the benefits of abstinence and then performed a powerful hip-hop dance of her own creation.
We also had some of our own talent from the CARP house performing during the rally. Grace Hill was our emcee. Jennifer Perry, as PLA president at SFSU, spoke and presented our demands. Catherine Wright and company performed a skit outlining the falsehoods of Kinsey’s research. Several of our brave brothers, David, Odilon and Geoffrey, performed the infamous STD dance. Mark Lukyn rapped, and the students loved it.
We had a very good number of students in attendance. Some were antagonists. A couple of representatives of the campus Socialist Party tried to hold a gay rights demonstration, but quickly abandoned that attempt because we weren’t addressing homosexuality as a main issue.
Odilon, Gundi and Raquel were heading up a booktable next to the stage, which was constantly crowded with people wanting more information. Many of these people were oppositionists looking for ammunition for a later kill, but all in all, we were able to talk to a lot of genuinely interested students.
If there was one weakness in our program, it was that there was not a strong enough emphasis on getting signatures or phone numbers from people. We were better off in the area of making personal connections with our guest speakers and supporters.
Our Impact
The PLA had a significant impact on the Kinsey seminar. Catherine stood up in front of the panel and openly criticized the whole event as biased, and denounced the entire Sex Ed studies program as one-sided and inaccurate. She pointed out the panel speakers were freely admitting that some of Kinsey’s information was faulty. Where do we draw the line? Wouldn’t it be safe to say that more of his work might be faulty? She proposed that one way to help remedy the situation would be to interview the incest victims and other subjects of Kinsey’s "research" as to what actual outcome these actions brought about.
The experts "freaked out" and were running scared. Other supporters of our cause stood up and challenged Kinsey’s accuracy and methods, which helped to rout the speakers from a previous sense of safety, and imagine support from all sides. We successfully angered a lot of people, and all took notice of our presence.
One of the highlights of the day was that KRON, Channel 4, was present at the event. Later that evening, the 6pm News aired a clip of the SFSU event. Catherine was shown commenting on how Kinsey’s work increases divorce, STDs, family breakdown, etc. A clip of our rally outside was shown, with a great shot of our STDs jumping around. The news clip was objective and rather supportive.
Follow-Up
We are still in contact with all of the groups that helped us during the week. Many have requested information about the PLA. We were invited to attend several churches in the area, including the Church of Christ in Oakland and San Francisco, and a Southern Baptist church in Berkeley. This past Sunday we sent several CARP members to the first two churches.
We are holding a follow-up PLA meeting on Friday, Nov. 20 to try to share our vision about the Alliance, get some advice and describe plans for future events. All local contacts are invited. We hope to inspire these community members to join our efforts. In preparation for this meeting we will be creating a new PLA pamphlet and a short video describing Bay Area PLA activities.
We Can Do A Lot!
Everybody worked hard and united together. Probably one of the biggest successes we had in this rally was vision. In the course of two weeks we had personally talked to some of the biggest honchos in the war against Kinsey, we had the Sexuality department shaking in their shoes and treating us with utmost politeness, and we had gotten on the evening news. Suddenly we realized what kind of impact we could make. It was crazy. The human sex department seemed to have experienced a lot of impact from the efforts of "us little kids." It was really beyond what we had expected.
Now our desire is to share our vision with other like-minded organizations; if we can get large numbers of people to these events, we can be really powerful, scare the pants off the sex people, and ignite a national spiritual revival. Big thinkers, aren’t we? We actually believe this.
Our next task is to create some more recent information about Bay PLA, our local programs, local vision, etc. We are also interested in creating an issue-oriented PLA video-testimonies, some education about the opposition, practical advice, and the vision. We feel that if we can create quality information about the issue, it will help a lot in networking and perhaps even getting some financial support.
We were all very happy. It was good to see everyone pumped up the night before, as we counted down to rally time. We now know how little we can do in a week, and will expect much more in the future. As Jin Hun Nim told us on the phone a few nights ago, "Always think four or five steps ahead. You can do more." And we will!