Page 33 - Push Back

The National Public Radio program 81 Words, is divided into two parts. Ira Glass, the host of the
show, introduced the second act of this presentation with the following words.

Ira Glass: Coming up, the scientific evidence that homosexuals might not be sick.

Despite the promise of “scientific evidence,” Alix Spiegel shares that there were only two studies
that existed that supported the GayPA’s normalization of homosexual behavior. Both studies are
highly suspect. One was a study done by Evelyn Hooker. The other is the infamous Kinsey
Report Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, published in 1948. Alix Spiegel provides the
following narrative.

Aside from Hooker, psychiatrists who wanted to change the DSM really only had one other
scientific study on their side: Alfred Kinsey's famous 1948 sex survey, which found that a
whopping 37% of all men had had physical contact to the point of orgasm with other men. A
finding which, besides shocking the hell out of 63% of the American public, seemed to suggest
that homosexual acts were too common to be considered a disease.
[Source: Ibid]

If you are shocked by the claim that 37% of men in the 1940s in America had experienced sexual
orgasm with another male, you should be. Kinsey’s report came under immediate criticism
regarding its methodology.

Academic criticisms were made pertaining to sample selection and sample bias in the reports'
methodology. Two main problems cited were that significant portions of the samples come from
prison populations and male prostitutes, and that people who volunteer to be interviewed about
taboo subject are likely to suffer from the problem of self-selection. Both undermine the
usefulness of the sample in terms of determining the tendencies of the overall population. In
1948, the same year as the original publication, a committee of the American Statistical
Association, including notable statisticians such as John Tukey, condemned the sampling
procedure. Tukey was perhaps the most vocal critic, saying, "A random selection of three people
would have been better than a group of 300 chosen by Mr. Kinsey." Criticism principally
revolved around the over-representation of some groups in the sample: 25% were, or had been,
prison inmates, and 5% were male prostitutes.[citation needed] Psychologist Abraham Maslow
asserted that Kinsey did not consider "volunteer bias." The data represented only those
volunteering to participate in discussion of taboo topics. Most Americans were reluctant to
discuss the intimate details of their sex lives even with their spouses and close friends. Before the
publication of Kinsey's reports, Maslow tested Kinsey's volunteers for bias. He concluded that
Kinsey's sample was unrepresentative of the general population.
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_Reports#Criticism]

There is no mention in the NPR program that there was any criticism of the Kinsey report.
Instead, we find this statement immediately following the mention of it.

In spite of all this work, psychiatry continued to maintain that the homos were sick and
steadfastly refused to reevaluate the DSM.