report, but mostly by the needs of men, the best minds of the Church need to be challenged to this search for the will of God.

This is not an exclusive assignment for specialists only. The church school teacher and the Christian parent cannot avoid the subject of sex. 'Their attitude toward that subject more than any specific information which they may provide becomes the formative influence in the life of children. One of the startling disclosures of Dr. Kinsey's interviews was the number of women who named the Bible as their first source of sex information. When we give the Bible to children and young people, we place in their hands some very confusing sex information! Dr. Kinsey's findings have brought out into the open what many Bible readers privately have suspected. Now Bible teachers will need to be prepared to explain sexual behavior in biblical males and females! Are there portions of the Bible that ought not be made available to children? Is the development of Christian character advanced or retarded by reading the entire Bible from "cover to cover?"

Focus of attention upon these problems will create another opportunity for stressing the historical approach to Bible study. A historical interpretation of the Bible not only enables us to deal with undesirable sexual behavior in the

Bible, but it provides the basis for rejecting proposals of similar sexual behavior for our time.

The questions asked by Dr. Kinsey concerned individual behavior, but by its very nature, sex is social, involving a person's need of and dependence upon others. A "realistic sex standard" must always consider inter-personal relationships: it cannot be based solely or mainly upon individual wishes or needs. The wide publicity given the Kinsey report will stimulate much discussion of the sexual relationship between men and women. Could there be a better opportunity to interpret Christian love in terms of the intimate relationships of men and women? Recent books by Dr. Paul E. Johnson, Dr. Derrick Bailey, Dr. Seward Hiltner, and others are very helpful. However, every Christian shares in this creative challenge as he forms friendships, dates his girl friend, marries and becomes a parent.

The Kinsey report will take its place in the long search of man for a fuller understanding of himself. In this quest, true religion has never suffered. The Kinsey report includes information directly useful to the Church in planning helpful services. Its greatest service, however, may well be the development it makes necessary in Christian thought and growth. In this sense it is a challenge to be welcomed.

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mattachine REVIEW

Some Myths About

the Sex Offender

BY PAUL W. TAPPAN, PH.D., JUR. SC.D.. Professor of Sociology and Lecturer in Law, New York University

VERY CONCEIVABLE approach has been recommended from some quarter in recent years to "meet the sex problem." Most of these have been tried somewhere, either legally or extralegally increased publicity, the death penalty, doubling the prison sentence, life terms, denial of parole, police registration, psychoanalysis, castration, sterilization, shock treatment, state hospital custody for life or for indeterminate periods, brain surgery, group therapy, and many others.

Some "authorities," confused in their attempt to resolve at once problems of sex control that have beset man throughout the span of human history, recommend in one overheated breath the greatest possible severity of punishment for all sex deviates and in their next impetuous exhalation declare that the problem is medical and must be turned over at once and in its entirety to the psychiatrists.

These varying approaches to the handling of the sex offender problem stem from differing notions held about the sex offender, many of them fallacious and without the support of systematic studies in the field of medicine, psychology, and sociology. Some of the more commonly cherished but quite erroneous views about the sex offender are the following:

1. That tens of thousands of homicidal sex fiends stalk the land.-In fact the vast majority of the sex deviates are minor offenders, most of whom never come to official attention (e.g., there are 60 million homosexual acts performed in the United States for every 20 convictions for homo-