Taxpayer-Funded Sex Research Undermines Biblical Values, Says Pro-Family Spokesman
by Jenni Parker and Bill Fancher
February 4, 2004
(AgapePress) - The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has come under fire for using taxpayer funds for its controversial studies focusing on such things as pornography, transvestitism, and senior intimacy.
In recent months, certain programs of the NIH have been the subject of close scrutiny, not only by pro-family groups, but also by members of the United States Congress. Last July Pennsylvania Representative Patrick Toomey offered an appropriations bill amendment on the House floor in an effort to halt the funding of a number of the Institute's grants. Most of the research areas being challenged by the proposed amendment were related to sexual dysfunction or sexual behavior, and concerns were expressed about the morality and the fiscal responsibility of allocating more than $1.5 million for such projects.
"We in Congress have a responsibility to oversee all expenditures of taxpayer dollars. When money is going to study the sexual habits of older men or transgender Native Americans versus trying to solve life-threatening diseases, Congress must step in," Toomey said. Although his amendment failed by two votes, the Republican congressman applauded the willingness of his colleagues to launch a probe into the matter of NIH oversight.
However, Bob Knight of the Culture and Family Institute feels the NIH has yet to be reined in. He has repeatedly expressed disappointment at the Bush Administration's continued funding of sex research, and says it is anybody's guess what the NIH will ask taxpayers to subsidize in the coming year.
One division of NIH spent nearly $150,000 to fund a study that paid women to watch pornographic videos in order to gauge what types of material the women found sexually arousing. Another typical Institute project had a three-year mandate to study "the sexual behavior of aging men." Although many pro-family advocates have found these programs questionable, NIH director Dr. Elias Zerhouni defends such sex studies as legitimate and beneficial research.
Bob Knight | |
Knight says Zerhouni's defenses are no surprise. "This is a textbook example of government bureaucrats misspending taxpayer money and then digging in their heels defending it, no matter how ludicrous it seems," the Culture and Family Institute spokesman says. "Once it came to light that they were paying women to watch pornography, one would have thought they would back off; but no -- they're going right to the mat over it."Knight notes that there are plenty of precedents for this kind of pseudo-science, going back to Alfred C. Kinsey's publications on male and female sexuality in 1948 and 1953 -- books known collectively as the "Kinsey Report," which effectively redefined sexual normalcy in America. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male provided scientific support for the now-discredited assertion that 10% of the population is homosexual. But Kinsey was unmasked as a charlatan, largely due to the work of Dr. Judith Reisman, co-author of Kinsey, Sex and Fraud and Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences.
"Ever since the Kinsey studies came out on sex in the 1940s, we've seen a lot of bad research done in the name of research on sex," Knight says. "This is just another round of it. There's no conceivable good to come out of this other than a lot of money for the researchers themselves, and a way for groups to misuse this to forward their agenda."
Knight contends that behind much of the so-called scientific research being funded in the U.S. today is an effort to use science to undermine biblical values in society. At the same time, he notes that the very nature of that research often carries a corrupting influence. A Washington Times report once quoted Knight as saying that federally subsidized sex research turns "Uncle Sam into a taxpayer-funded Peeping Tom."
