Her Kinsey Obsession

Bill Condon's new movie, "Kinsey" may have reawakened America's interest in the largely forgotten but influential post-War era sex researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey, but for Judith Reisman, he has been a singular obsession for decades. Reisman has cast herself as the anti-Kinsey, a self-styled moral monger in an existential – and admittedly personal – battle with the forces of cultural decay and sexual permissiveness. In her writings and lectures, Reisman conjures a dark world in which Playboy magazine insidiously pushes kiddie-porn, where homosexuals crusade for the hearts and behinds of America's youth and "erotoxins" as powerful as crack cocaine fill the somatasensory cortexes of porn watchers. From Reisman's writings and lectures, one could get the impression that this world is entirely the creation of Kinsey, the Master of Perverts.

While Reisman's ideas have naturally endeared her to a Who's Who of ornery theocrats and survivalist militia types, in recent years she has found herself kibitzing with the likes of GOP senators and Bush administration officials. Though the "Dr." that precedes her name on her book and her web site is practically cosmetic, earned with a degree in communications, this November she provided expert testimony on Capitol Hill for Republican Sen. Sam Brownback on the scientific perils of pornography. There, she also lobbied for the reintroduction of a bill that would mandate an investigation into her claim that Kinsey sexually abused children during his research. Through friends in the Justice Department, Reisman has helped push for an increased focus on prosecuting porn. And she is a favorite speaker at conferences of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, a federally funded non-profit which provides technical assistance to controversial abstinence-only programs in public schools. As Reisman gathers influence in Republican-dominated Washington, her work is bearing an increasingly apparent mark on the Christian right's political agenda and by extension, on the White House's social policy.

"As president and founder of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, Judith Reisman has affected my life personally through the enormous amount of scientific research she's done – and without Judith's impact on my life, I don't believe the abstinence community would have been impacted," Abstinence Clearinghouse founder, Leslee Unruh, told me. The Abstinence Clearinghouse, advised by members of conservative Christian groups like Focus on the Family, Concerned Women for America and Coral Ridge Ministries, is funded in part by the Department of Health and Human Services. As the spearhead of the abstinence-only movement, its primary task is to design and disseminate curricula to public schools which administer abstinence-only courses.

Unruh is a retired businesswoman and anti-abortion activist who says she "has a common sense background" in the sexual health field. Thanks to her friend Reisman, she says, she has come to understand that "Kinsey is very responsible for the destruction of my parents' generation." Through Abstinence Clearinghouse, Unruh sells Reisman's book, "Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences," which accuses Kinsey of everything from pedophilia to Nazism, and publishes a pamphlet, "Casualties of Kinsey," supporting the theory that Kinsey molested child research volunteers. Reisman is also a featured speaker at Clearinghouse conferences.

"I think Judith Reisman is starting to have an impact with people in the abstinence community because I've pushed to have her at our conferences, and they just love her," said Unruh.

So how did a little old Jewish lady like Reisman earn rock-star status on the right? How did a red diaper baby active in the Labor Youth League in the 1940's come to blame Kinsey for all of America's social ills? And how did the daughter of Yiddish-speaking immigrants begin equating Kinsey with the Nazis who liquidated much of her extended family in Europe? The answer, or at least, hints of it, lies in her personal history, a story with no shortage of startling twists, turns and tragedies. Though she refused to tell her tale to me, rejecting e-mail and phone requests for an interview, Reisman has recorded it in a self-published 1998 essay, "A Personal Odyssey to the Truth."