SOURCE: "Kinsey's Challenge to Ethics and Religion," in Sexual Behavior in American Society: An Appraisal of the First Two Kinsey Reports, edited by Jerome Himelhoch and Sylvia Fleis Fava, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1955, pp. 226-36.

In the following essay, Folsom considers Kinsey's work as a long overdue statistical examination of human sexuality and a harbinger of related works in ethics, philosophy, and religion.

"Maybe it's true, but it's not good policy to broadcast detailed truth without some consideration of how people are going to use it." Such is a common reaction to Kinsey. It is not peculiar to traditionalists nor to those lacking reverence for modern science. For example, Margaret Mead, in an eloquent Appendix on "The Ethics of Insight Giving" says: "When one writes in a way that is easily accessible to all interested citizens, I believe one should put oneself in those readers' place, and...