Sex, academia and your life

"Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things.” Psalms 119:18.\nRather than conserving this Judeo-Christian tradition of examining world’s bounties, it seems that many who label themselves “conservative” today are more accustomed to closing their eyelids and surrendering to fantasyland, especially when the subject at hand is human sexuality. \nDisturbingly, this tendency sometimes gives rise to suggestions that academics, such as those at our own fine Kinsey Institute, should be sacked. But because it generates and diffuses knowledge about a matter central to all our lives, the Kinsey Institute is not at all a filthy institution. Even if one wishes to claim that sex is for some reason disturbing, unpleasant or best excluded from life until marriage, the sheer amount of time humanity spends engaged in the act should warrant careful study of a topic so affecting our lives.\nHowever, let us entertain the assertion that it is preferable to cease studying sex until we are inside marriage’s confines. As we make these explorations, we must keep in mind that, much like fiction, buying into this eccentric claim requires that we knowingly put aside doubt. One great hope of those who want to reduce the flow of knowledge seems to be that when the quantity of information decreases, there will be a corresponding reduction in the total quantity of sex had.\nYet, sex research describes rather than proscribes the quantity of a population’s sexual activity, a figure governed instead by hormone release. On the other hand, because scholarly research does increase our knowledge of the matter, research serves to increase the quality of the choices we make regarding sex. For some, the best choice may, in fact, be to abstain from sex. Nonetheless, making this decision when it is reinforced by research is far more reliable than making the choice on an arbitrary basis, as facts actually compel people to value their decision.\nIt is also difficult to believe that some sort of “gift” is enhanced through the skewing of human biology, another fanciful claim. History shows us that, in the absence of science, theology has cooked up any number of useless notions and petty laws when people didn’t understand enough about their bodies to protest. And if seeing women beaten and raped because a cleric’s centuries-old holy text portrays this as the best way to deal with public sexuality, then perhaps you would find that Tehran is more amenable to you than Bloomington.\nAfter seeing the negative effects of shunning knowledge, one can hardly conceive of it as the present it is sometimes made out to be. My hope is that those who install the Ten Commandments on courthouse lawns and find themselves enamored by their nativity sets will remember in future holiday seasons that knowledge rather than ignorance is the biblical gift.