Kinsey, a biologist who had conducted specialized research on gall wasps, was one of the most important figures driving a new and radical vision of human sex and sexuality in the 20th century. He arrived in Bloomington as a biologist, but his dark legacy has virtually nothing to do with gall wasps and everything to do with the fact that he was a deeply tormented man given to multiple forms of sexual deviancy whose ambition was to destroy traditional sexual morality and to liberate humanity into a new sexual age.

If you are looking for Ground Zero in the sexual revolution, you might not think of America’s heartland, but you should. You should think of Indiana University and The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. Founded more than 75 years ago as the Institute for Sex Research, it was from the start a primary platform for the sexual revolution and the twisted vision of its founder, Alfred Kinsey.

The Kinsey Institute is in the news because Indiana’s legislature passed a funding bill, later signed by the state’s governor, that banned the Kinsey Institute from receiving state funds. Last week, Indiana University’s board bowed to student and faculty protests and voted to delay a vote on separating the institute from the university. IU president Pamela Whitten expressed continued support for the institute as a part of the university: “I look forward to our collaboration as we ensure that the Kinsey Institute continues as a beacon of academic freedom at IU for decades to come.”

Defenders attempt to dismiss concerns as based on conservative critiques. But it is for that reason that I rely on none of it. Everything that follows, as you’ll see, is based on my review of the primary source material. It reveals the Kinsey Institute as no “beacon” of academic virtue. In reality, the Kinsey Institute is a laboratory, museum, and library of what the radical philosopher Michael Foucault called “polymorphous perversity.”

Kinsey, a biologist who had conducted specialized research on gall wasps, was one of the most important figures driving a new and radical vision of human sex and sexuality in the 20th century. He arrived in Bloomington as a biologist, but his dark legacy has virtually nothing to do with gall wasps and everything to do with the fact that he was a deeply tormented man given to multiple forms of sexual deviancy whose ambition was to destroy traditional sexual morality and to liberate humanity into a new sexual age.

That new era of sexuality and sexual morality came packaged with the aura of science and Kinsey’s most famous work, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948, presented the American public with the argument, supposedly driven by scientific methodology, that sexual practices believed to be deviant were in fact normal.

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