Browsing my gay studies bookcase, I opened my copy of the Kinsey Report again because I wanted to see if I had snagged a first edition. But there is no printing information on the copyright page. Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. It’s an old original hardback edition though, that I found ages ago in a second hand bookstore in Havre De Grace, along with a copy of “Homosexualities” by Bell and Weinberg, another book routinely lied about by the culture warriors.

I open it up to look at the copyright page…then I read the first paragraph of the Preface…

Seen from the four points of the compass a great mountain may present aspects that are very different one from the other – so different that better disagreements can arise between those who have watched the mountain truly and well, through all the seasons, but each from a different quarter. Reality, too, has many facets – some too readily disputed or denied by those who rely only on their own experience. Nor can science itself rightly lay claim to finality, or the complete comprehension of reality, but only to honesty and accuracy of the additional facets, it may be permitted to discover and report. I say “may be permitted” since the human race is familiar with the suppression of truth in both small matters and great. The history of science is part of the history of the freedom to observe, to reflect, to experiment, to record, and to bear witness. It has been a perilous, and a passion of history, indeed, and not yet ended.

-Alan Gregg, Preface to Sexual Behavior In The Human Male by Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy and Clyde E. Martin, 1948.

The struggle between science and dogma in one paragraph. It could be about anything, not simply the explosive topic of that study. It could be the opening lines to a study on evolution, or the geologic history of planet Earth. “The history of science is part of the history of the freedom to observe, to reflect, to experiment, to record, and to bear witness.” Whatever the specific thing is that MAGA want to suppress, at rock bottom it is always this freedom to observe, reflect, experiment, record and especially to bear witness. It is always basically about that.