Moral Combat

by R. Marie Griffith

  52. Wardell B. Pomeroy, Dr. Kinsey and the Institute for Sex Research (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 453.

  53. Genné and Genné, Christians and the Crisis in Sex Morality, 119, 120,

  54. Harvey Cox and Robert E. Fitch, “The New Protestant Debate over Sex,” Redbook (October 1964): 104, 56, 104, 105.

  55. W. Norman Pittenger, The Christian View of Sexual Behavior: A Reaction to the Kinsey Report (Greenwich, CT: Seabury, 1954) [originally a series of articles in Episcopal Churchnews, revised for publication as a book], 5.

  56. Norman Pittenger, Time for Consent: A Christian’s Approach to Homosexuality (London: SCM, 1967); Norman Pittenger, Making Sexuality Human (Philadelphia: Pilgrim, 1970); Norman Pittenger, Love and Control in Sexuality (Philadelphia: Pilgrim, 1974); Norman Pittenger, Gay Lifestyles: A Christian Interpretation of Homosexuality and the Homosexual (Los Angeles: Universal Fellowship Press, 1977). The quote is from Making Sexuality Human, 10. Pittenger’s views grew increasingly liberal over time, and he acknowledged his own homosexuality beginning in the mid to late 1960s.

  57. Pittenger, Making Sexuality Human, 62–63.

  58. Richard A. Norris Jr., “Memorial Eucharist for W. Norman Pittenger, Chapel of the Good Shepherd, The General Theological Seminary, The Feast of Lancelot Andrewes, 1997,” Anglican Theological Review 80 (Winter 1998): 6, 7.

  59. One useful source from the period is John H. Phillips, “Sex Education in Major Protestant Denominations,” National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. (1968).

  CHAPTER 5

  1. On Brown, see Jennifer Scanlon, Bad Girls Go Everywhere: The Life of Helen Gurley Brown (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Friedan’s life and impact are chronicled in Susan Oliver, Betty Friedan: The Personal Is Political (New York; Parson Longman, 2008).

  2. Cited in Jeffrey P. Moran, Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 160.

  3. Emily Hartshorne Mudd, cited in Rebecca L. Davis, More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010), 44.

  4. Kristin Luker, When Sex Goes to School: Warring Views on Sex—and Sex Education—Since the Sixties (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006), 61.

  5. Former student cited in Moran, Teaching Sex, 140.

  6. Quoted in Moran, Teaching Sex, 133.

  7. Moran, Teaching Sex, 150.

  8. Clara recounted her childhood, including her Southern roots and regular participation in camp meetings, in a remarkable unpublished manuscript, where she recorded family legends, her slaveholding grandfather, her Southern pride and practice of “rebel yells,” and the experience of going to camp meetings; see Clara Smith Steichen, “An Ozark Childhood,” n.d., State Historical Society of Missouri, Collection 3819, folder 1. The life of Edward Steichen (as well as more details about Clara gleaned from oral interviews) is recounted in Penelope Niven, Steichen: A Biography (Fort Washington, PA: Eastern National, 1997).

  9. Record of Calderone is located in “James E. Hazard Index: The Records of New York Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends,” Swarthmore College, accessed August 12, 2014, http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/friends/hazard/index.html.

  10. Mary Calderone, Friends and Womankind (Philadelphia: Friends General Conference, 1970), 7.

  11. Calderone gave this account of the conference’s genesis in an oral history interview: James Reed, “Interview with Mary Steichen Calderone, M.D.” (hereafter “Interview with MSC”), August 7, 1974, 15, Schlesinger-Rockefeller Oral History Project, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. The criminal nature of abortion at the time was summarized by the anthropologist M. F. Ashley Montagu in his “Introduction” to Mary Steichen Calderone, ed., Abortion in the United States: Report of a Conference Sponsored by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958), 3–5.

  12. Calderone, ed., Abortion in the United States, 180, 68, 4.

  13. Mary Steichen Calderone, “Illegal Abortion as a Public Health Problem,” American Journal of Public Health and the Nation’s Health 50, no. 7 (July 1960): 948–954; Calderone, “’I’m Only Half Here,’” American Journal of Public Health and the Nation’s Health 50, no. 9 (September 1960): 1368–1369.

  14. Statement no. 12 in “Birth Control in Comprehensive Health Care,” Journal of the American Medical Association 196 (June 20, 1966): 1084.

  15. Reed, “Interview with MSC,” 24.

  16. “Family Planning and Christian Ethics: Complete Text of Address by Dr. Mary Steichen Calderone, Medical Director, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., Before Plenary Session—North American Conference on Church & Family of the Canadian Council of Churches and the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., Green Lake, Wisconsin,” May 4, 1961, 179, M-125, Box 6, folder 85, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, 1904–1971, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

  17. Calderone to William Genné, May 11, 1961; Calderone to Dr. Evelyn Millis Duvall, May 12, 1961, M-125, Box 6, folder 85, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, 1904–1971.

  18. Reed, “Interview with MSC,” 28, 29.

  19. Ibid., 29.

  20. “The SIECUS Purpose,” SIECUS Newsletter 1, no. 1 (February 1965): 2. This purpose statement was frequently restated; see, for instance, SIECUS, Sexuality and Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), vii.

  21. SIECUS, Sexuality and Man, 122.

  22. Mary Steichen Calderone, ed., Manual of Contraceptive Practice (Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1964), xii; Calderone cited in Ruth Brecher and Edward Brecher, “Every Sixth Teen-Age Girl in Connecticut,” New York Times, May 29, 1966, SM4 (photo caption); Mary Breasted, Oh! Sex Education! (New York: Praeger, 1970), 256; Nat Lehrman, “Playboy Interview: Dr. Mary Calderone,” Playboy 18 (April 1970): 74–76.

  23. Reed, “Interview with MSC,” 44–45, 47. See also Nadine Brozan, “For Decades, a Voice of Reason on Sex,” New York Times, June 28, 1974, 39. Brozan wrote that Calderone “refuses to pontificate or moralize, despite the fact she decries sexual anarchy and sexual exploitation and is a proponent of marriage and fidelity.”

  24. Calderone, Friends and Womankind, 4; Mary Calderone, “Sex, Religion, and Mental Health,” Journal of Religion and Health 6, no. 3 (July 1967): 196; Mary Calderone, “Sex Education and the American Democratic Process,” Journal of Religion and Health 9, no. 1 (January 1970): 18, 19. See also Calderone’s Rufus Jones Lecture to the Friends General Conference: Calderone, Human Sexuality and the Quaker Conscience (Philadelphia: Friends General Conference, 1973).

  25. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965); “Let’s Talk Sex,” Washington University Magazine 36, no. 2 (Winter 1966): 43, 45, Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives, Washington University School of Medicine, Saint Louis, Missouri, digitalcommons.wustl.edu/ad_wumag/22.

  26. Calderone, cited in Moran, Teaching Sex, 169.

  27. See Moran, Teaching Sex, 171.

  28. Information on Hargis’s earlier career can be found in a number of sources. Richard V. Pierard, “Christian Crusade, 1948-1969,” in The Conservative Press in Twentieth-Century America, ed. Ronald Lora and William Henry Longton (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999), 471–478; Fernando Penabaz, “Crusading Preacher from the West”: The Story of Billy James Hargis (Tulsa, OK: Christian Crusade, 1965); John H. Redekop, The American Far Right: A Case Study of Billy James Hargis and Christian Crusade (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968). A few recent scholars have written briefly about Hargis; see, e.g., Tanya Erzen, Straight to Jesus: Sexual and Christian Conversions in the Ex-Gay Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 190–193. The Federal Bureau of Investigation kept extensive files on Hargis and the Christian Crusade; these are now publicly available in print and electronic form from the FBI: file 97-3475 (Hargis) and file 100-424820 (Christian Crusade). />
  29. Thomas H. Uzzell, “Billy James Hargis: A Pitch for God and Country,” Nation, February 17, 1962, 140–142; quotes on 142.

  30. Penabaz, Crusading Preacher, 63, 64.

  31. On Hargis’s brief stint at Ozark Bible College, see Penabaz, Crusading Preacher, 48–49. Arnold Forster and Benjamin R. Epstein, Danger on the Right: The Attitudes, Personnel and Influence of the Radical Right and Extreme Conservatives (New York: Random House, 1964), 86; Pierard, “Christian Crusade, 1948-1969,” 474. Carl McIntire has received significantly more scholarly attention than Hargis; see, most recently, Markku Ruotsila, Fighting Fundamentalist: Carl McIntire and the Politicization of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).

  32. For a contemporary assessment of his influence, see Forster and Epstein, Danger on the Right, 68–86.

  33. “What to Do About Pornography,” Christian Crusade 16, no. 2 (February–March 1964): 4–5.

  34. See the profile on Gordon Drake, titled “Open New Front in Battle Against Communism,” Christian Crusade 20, no. 3 (March 1968): 22–24.

  35. Gordon V. Drake, Blackboard Power: NEA Threat to America (Tulsa, OK: Christian Crusade, 1968), 182, 134, 137, 137–138, 135. Drake’s story, including his relation to Hargis and the impact of his writings on the Anaheim sex education controversy of 1968, has been recounted in Breasted, Oh! Sex Education!; and Moran, Teaching Sex, 179–184.

  36. Gordon V. Drake, “NEA and Sex Education,” Christian Crusade 20, no. 7 (July 1968): 7–8, quote on 8.

  37. See Gordon V. Drake, “Touch and Tell: A New Kind of Religious Service,” Christian Crusade 21, no. 6 (June 1969): 13; and Gordon V. Drake, “Sneak Attack on American Morals,” Christian Crusade 21, no. 7 (July 1969): 14–15; Gordon V. Drake, “Sexual Revolution in America,” Christian Crusade 21, nos. 8–9 (August–September 1969): 28.

  38. Gordon V. Drake, Is the School House the Proper Place to Teach Raw Sex? (Tulsa, OK: Christian Crusade Publications, 1968), 2, 3, 4. For contemporary critical discussions of Drake’s book and the larger context of this debate, see Luther G. Baker Jr., “The Rising Furor over Sex Education,” Family Coordinator 18, no. 3 (July 1969), 210–217; and Breasted, Oh! Sex Education!

  39. Moran, Teaching Sex, 181; Drake, Raw Sex, 15, 17–18, 17, 20.

  40. Drake, Raw Sex, p. 31; Breasted, Oh! Sex Education!, p. 242.

  41. Drake, Raw Sex, 31, 33.

  42. “Statewide Family, Schools and Morality Seminars,” Christian Crusade 21, no. 1, 2 (January–February 1969): 22.

  43. “David Noebel’s March Speaking Tour,” “Drake in Eastern States,” Christian Crusade 21, no. 3 (March 1969): 6D. For the national press reaction see, for instance, John Leo, “Fight on Sex Education Is Widening,” New York Times, May 20, 1969, 49; Fred M. Hechinger, “Storm Over the Teaching of Sex,” New York Times, September 7, 1969, E11; and Douglas Robinson, “Sex Education Battles Splitting Many Communities Across U.S.,” New York Times, September 14, 1969, 1.

  44. Breasted, Oh! Sex Education!, 23.

  45. Quoted in ibid., 47. The Anaheim sex education controversy has received much attention, and Breasted’s account is the most thorough; other accounts appear in Moran, Teaching Sex; Janice M. Irvine, Talk About Sex: The Battles over Sex Education in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); and Luker, When Sex Goes to School.

  46. Breasted, Oh! Sex Education!, 89.

  47. Ibid., 125.

  48. Moran, Teaching Sex, 184–185.

  49. Breasted, Oh! Sex Education!, 85, 86.

  50. Recounted in ibid., 219. Hargis, leery of alienating local supporters who might hold a range of views on this issue, urged Drake to drop the suit, but to no avail. Drake would ultimately leave the Christian Crusade over this conflict.

  51. [Drake,] SIECUS—Corrupter of Youth (Tulsa, OK: Christian Crusade, 1969), 16.

  52. Breasted, Oh! Sex Education!, 234, 235.

  53. Letter to Mary Steichen Calderone, May 13, 1983, 83-M184, Container 1, folder 12, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, 1904–1971.

  54. Letter to Mary Steichen Calderone, postmarked August 1, 1969; letter to Calderone, December 1968, 73-150-81-M35, T50, Box 1, folder 11, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, 1904–1971.

  55. Gary Allen, “Sex Study: Problems, Propaganda, and Pornography,” American Opinion (March 1969): 1–20; quotes on 5, 7.

  56. Ibid., 19, 20.

  57. It’s Time to Save Our Schools, distributed by the United Klans of America, Inc., Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Greenwood Indiana. In Federal Bureau of Investigation files on Christian Crusade, 1969(?).

  58. Hargis, Sex Revolution in the United States, 29.

  59. The first SIECUS Officers and Board of Directors are listed in the SIECUS Newsletter 1, no. 1 (February 1965): n.p. (last page); see the shifts and additions that had already been made by the fall of that year in SIECUS Newsletter 1, no. 3 (Fall 1965): 8.

  60. Interfaith Commission on Marriage and Family Life, “Interfaith Statement on Sex Education,” by the National Council of Churches, Synagogue Council of America, and United States Catholic Conference, approved for release June 8, 1968. Calderone cited this document to counter her conservative Christian critics; see, for instance, a display ad published in the New York Times in 1969 that quoted the statement at some length (New York Times, October 16, 1969, 37).

  61. Lehrman, “Playboy Interview,” 70, 237.

  62. SIECUS, Sexuality and Man, 160–161, 161, 162.

  63. Calderone, Human Sexuality and the Quaker Conscience, 18, 17; Mary S. Calderone, ed., Sexuality and Human Values: The Personal Dimension of Sexual Experience (New York: Association Press, 1974), 10.

  64. Lehrman, “Playboy Interview,” 70; Calderone to Father John C. Knott, April 19, 1962, MC179/M–125, Box 12, folder 203, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, 1904–1971.

  65. Calderone to Sister Mary Nora, June 26, 1956, MC179/M-125, Box 12, Folder 203, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, 1904–1971.

  66. Calderone to Jack Heber, June 3, 1958, MC179/M-125, Box 12, Folder 203, Mary Steichen Calderone Papers, 1904–1971.

  67. Ibid.

  68. Mary Calderone, Phyllis Goldman, and Robert P. Goldman, Release from Sexual Tensions: Toward an Understanding of Their Causes and Effects in Marriage (New York: Random House, 1960), 3 (and 236), 238, 102, 220, 38, 93. For an interesting analysis of George Kelly’s use of fear (along with that of other American Catholic priests writing about marriage in the twentieth century), see Timothy Kelly and Joseph Kelly, “American Catholics and the Discourse of Fear,” in An Emotional History of the United States, ed. Peter N. Stearns and Jan Lewis (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 259–279.

  69. Calderone, “Family Planning and Christian Ethics,” 2.

  70. Earl Ubell, “New Council Reflects Rising Sex Concern,” Los Angeles Times, January 24, 1965, 19.

  71. Ibid.

  72. Reed, “Interview with MSC,” 31.

  73. Leslie Woodcock Tentler, Catholics and Contraception: An American History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), 178; Peter McDonough, Men Astutely Trained: A History of the Jesuits in the American Century (New York: Free Press, 1992), 433, 435.

  74. Father John L. Thomas, S.J., Ph.D., “Sexuality and the Total Personality,” SIECUS Newsletter 1, no. 3 (Fall 1965): 1.

  75. John L. Thomas, “The Role of Woman,” Commonweal, May 18, 1956, 171, 174, 172; “Some Moral Guidelines in Sex Education: An interview with Father John L. Thomas, S.J.,” Catholic School Journal (March 1968): 26; McDonough, Men Astutely Trained, 438.

  76. John L. Thomas, S.J., The American Catholic Family (Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1956), 8, 33, 44; Thomas, “The Role of Woman,” 173; John L. Thomas, S.J., “The Catholic Position on Population Control,” Daedalus 88 (Summer 1959): 444–453, quote on 445. On “headship,” see Thomas, American Catholic Family, 303–304, where he defines the husband’s headship as “functional,” a status that “flows from and is limited by his role as protector and provider
of the reproductive unit” (304).

  77. John L. Thomas, “The Catholic Position on Population Control,” 445; Thomas, “A Sociologist Looks at the Future of the American Catholic Community,” Social Justice Review 140 (September–October 1982): 142, 159, 143, 142–143.

  78. George Hagmaier, C.S.P., and Robert W. Gleason, S.J., Counselling the Catholic: Modern Techniques and Emotional Conflicts (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1959), 9.

  79. Hagmaier and Gleason, Counselling the Catholic, 9, 10.

  80. Father George Hagmaier to the Superior General, the General Council, and the Director, Paulist Institute for Religious Research, February 4, 1969, Paulist Archives, Paulist Fathers General Office, New York.

  81. Paul Robichaud, C.S.P., ed., “George Glein Hagmaier,” Paulist Archives Newsletter 1, no. 2 (September 1990): 3.

  82. Mary S. Calderone, “Report on: Colloquium on the Sexuality of Woman,” typescript manuscript, 3, John T. McGinn, C.S.P. papers, Paulist Archives.

  83. Ibid., 5, 6.

  84. On the impact of Humanae Vitae’s forceful linkages among contraception, abortion, and sexuality, see Robert N. Karrer, “The National Right to Life Committee: Its Founding, Its History, and the Emergence of the Pro-Life Movement Prior to Roe v. Wade,” Catholic Historical Review 9, no. 3 (July 2011): 535.

  85. Tentler, Catholics and Contraception, 266. For an excellent analysis of official Catholic documents such as Humanae Vitae that focus on the regulation of sexuality, marriage, gender relationships, and reproduction, see Aline H. Kalbian, Sexing the Church: Gender, Power, and Ethics in Contemporary Catholicism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005).

  86. Reed, “Interview with MSC,” 28 (emphasis in original).

  87. “ND Counsels Wedding Game Preparation,” Observer, March 1, 1968, 2; Pat Gafney, “Sex Is Sex Is Sex,” Observer, March 15, 1968, 2, http://www.archives.nd.edu/Observer/v02/1968-03-15_v02_053.pdf. See also the program brochure: “1968 Notre Dame Marriage Institute,” University of Notre Dame Department of Information Services Records (hereafter cited as UDIS) 44/39, Folder: Marriage Institute 1955–1979, University of Notre Dame Archives (hereafter cited as UNDA).