It is the function of a scientist to discover the truth about that portion of the universe which is made of matter. It is not the function of a scientist to judge the esthetic or moral qualities of that universe.… [T]here is no right, no wrong, no beauty, no lack of beauty—nothing but the observed truth.… Any scientist who passes opinions on things spiritual or moral speaks as a theologian or as a mere man, and not as a scientist.

Alfred C. Kinsey, “A Scientist’s Responsibility in Sex Instruction”1

A YOUNG INDIANA SOLDIER ON FURLOUGH IN 1945 wrote to Indiana University zoology professor Alfred C. Kinsey in great distress. On a date with an older woman, the soldier had attempted oral sex. Indignant, “she told me how low, dirty, mean, and contemptible I am—a pervert. Am I a fit specimen of a man after such conduct? I want to be a normal man.”2 Kinsey reassured him that there was “nothing in your experience which is in any fashion unusual or abnormal,” explaining that he and other expert researchers had found such activity in 40–75 percent of married couples’ histories. In addition, it is a “basic biologic situation which occurs in all the other animals related to man.”3 Another youth, a Canadian drugstore clerk, wrote Kinsey in 1948, asking to borrow a copy of the recently published Sexual Behavior in the Human Male because he could not afford to buy it.4 And a marine recruit wrote from camp in North Carolina in 1953: “I was reading a book of yours and i was whant to no if you no whear i canget a book on marriage manuols. If you can help me, please let me no. I need one bad.”