Catholic Outreaches Plan Protests to 'Kinsey' Film
When the “Kinsey” film, a controversial movie about the sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, debuted over the weekend for select screenings, representatives from Catholic Outreach didn’t barricade the entrance to theater but simply handed out informational pamphlets to let viewers know another side of the film.
“Our goal is to respond to the events that is happening in the popular culture and to respond, you must experience,” Lisa Wheeler of Catholic Outreach told The Christian Post. “We understand that people have free will. But we want them to have the whole story.”
Alfred Kinsey, an etnomologist, is often credited as the "father of the sexual revolution." Some say his work helped open up discussion on the taboo topic of sex while critics say his research is flawed and immoral for covering up child sex abuse and pedophilia.
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The movie opened for screenings at five locations over the weekend, two in New York City and three in Los Angeles. Bill Condon, the writer and director of “Kinsey,” and Laura Linney, the actress who played Kinsey’s wife in the film, appeared Friday at a private screening at The University of Indiana, where Kinsey taught.
At one screening in New York City, Catholic Outreach handed out, “The Kinsey Corruption: An Exposé On The Most Influential ‘Scientist’ Of Our Time” booklets, written by Susan Brinkman, a correspondent for The Catholic Standard & Times of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, based on the research of Dr. Judith Reisman, one of the leading critics of Kinsey’s work.
However, since the lines to the screening were moved inside, Catholic Outreach didn’t hand out as many as they had hoped, according to Wheeler, noting that the group was also threatened with arrest.
Wheeler told a similar story for the screening at the University of Indiana where heightened security for the appearance of the two celebrities prevented Catholic Outreach from protesting the movie.
But Wheeler said she was not surprised by what happened. She said during one screening Reisman attended, the movie was stopped after 20 minutes and accused the proponents of the film for stopping the film because they discovered Reisman in the audience not because of technical difficulties as they claimed. When Reisman flew to Los Angeles for a second screening, it was abruptly cancelled without explanation, according to Wheeler.
“Alfred Kinsey was someone who believed children could be sexual from infant. Even an areligious person’s stomach would turn if they said an infant was sexual,” said Wheeler.
She said the protest should not just been seen as an attack from the religious right but a revealing of the truth. Wheeler admitted that the Catholic Church also has some problems of its own.
“As Catholics, we have been criticized, --and rightly so—for the actions of some of our priests in committing horrific crimes against children,” she said.
However, she noted the irony that some Hollywood people leading criticism of the child sex abuses in the Catholic Church would make a film that is lionizing a man who used child sex abuse in his research.
Wheeler also had a theory on the child sex abuses in the Catholic Church. She said she didn’t think it was a far leap to say that the line of thinking of children as sexual beings which resulted from Kinsey’s work, published in the 50’s, had seeped into religious schools and seminaries where the priests were studying.
By next weekend, “Kinsey” will open in 35 theaters then 500 by Christmas, reported Wheeler.
“And we’ll be there,” she said. “We want the Truth to come out.”
