On September 23, the Museum of Sex will open in New York. Catholic League president William Donohue has a few words to say about it:
“A more apt name for the Museum of Sex (MoSex) would be Museum of Smut (MoSmut). Not for nothing has the New York State Board of Regents refused to recognize its legitimacy, saying that its name makes ‘a mockery of museums.’ Moreover, many of those who are either featured as heroes by the museum, or are in one way or another associated with it, exhibit pathological characteristics. Consider the following.
“Heroes include white racists (Margaret Sanger and Victoria Woodhull) and an advocate of man-boy sex (Al Goldstein). The historian advisory board includes a defender of sadomasochism (George Chauncey), an author who glamorizes prostitutes (Patricia Cline Cohen), a professor who argues that transvestites and ‘street queens’ are pioneers (Martin Duberman), a scholar who has been implicated in research that gave pregnant women male hormones without their knowledge (June Reinisch) and a writer hailed as a ‘lesbian matriarch’ (Joan Nestle).
“Those listed as ‘Friends’ of the museum include pornographers (Betty Dodson, Candida Royalle, Annie Sprinkle and Veronica Vera), an ex-priest turned sexologist (Robert Francoeur), a minister who maintains that swinging is ‘family-forming behavior’ (Ted McIlvenna) and an author whose understanding of the cultural corruption of Weimar Germany still allows him to defend decadence (Mel Gordon).
“If the museum’s officials were honest, they would include a death chamber that would acknowledge all the wretched diseases that promiscuity has caused. And they would give due recognition to the role that promiscuity has played in creating poverty (it’s called illegitimacy). But instead we can look for the museum to celebrate public sex (see its website and click on ‘1001 Nights,’ the map of Manhattan and then Rockefeller Center to learn of the virtues of gays having sex in public). In short, the museum celebrates smut as sex, hence the name MoSmut.”
