Birds do it, bees do it ...: infamous researcher Alfred C. Kinsey gave us lots of sexual information, but 50 years later Americans are still woefully ignorant about sex and love.

IF THE BLUE STATES GET THEIR REVENGE AT THE OSCAR Bill Condon's Kinsey should beat out Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, provoking a host of red state sermons about the godless Sodom known as Hollywood If Gibson's film brings home more gold, blue state pundits will rail about a Heartland that celebrates violence but faints at the first mention of sex.

Over half a century after Sexual Behavior in the Human Male made an obscure Indiana University biology professor the most infamous man in America, Alfred C. Kinsey and his ideas remain flashpoints in the culture wars fracturing churches, courts, and Congress. If America is a nation divided against itself, sexuality is the seam of that tear, and Kinsey is a film each side will view through their own set of rose- or navy-colored glasses.

While Gibson's Passion served up supersized portions of blood and guts, satisfying even the hungriest appetites for cinematic violence, Kinsey is not really a very sexy movie. Instead, Condon's brainy, riveting, and not infrequently comic tale of America's most celebrated sex researcher is, like its protagonist, understated and reserved. The passion of this film--and there is a great deal of it--is cerebral, not sexual. It is not so much the genitals that are being unleashed here as it is the mind.

Liam Neeson's Kinsey is no Romeo or Lothario. Nonetheless, this buttoned down, bow-tied son of a Methodist lay preacher has an insatiable, almost unholy appetite. He wants to know. He wants to uncover and discover the truth about our sexuality, and he is not satisfied with the ignorance and pabulum being passed on to his students nor intimidated by puritanical forces being marshaled against him. With the plodding obsession of an entomologist who has catalogued a million gall wasps, Kinsey sets out to study the broad terrain of human sexuality, to pull back the curtain of myth and misinformation and let in the light of day.

What he discovers is surprising and, depending on your point of view, disturbing or liberating. Human sexuality is not nearly as neat or tidy as we might have hoped, and our sexual appetites and behaviors do not fit into the cookie-cutter forms handed down from one generation to the next. Masturbation, homosexuality, and pre- and extramarital sex are far more common than we had thought, and even within the confines of the marital bed there is much more variety in our sexual conduct than anyone had believed.

Still, Condon's film, which has a point of view, is not a simplistic morality tale of science over superstition. Kinsey, like most zealots, is a complex, driven, and flawed creature, haunted and traumatized by a brutal and withholding father. And if he uncovers an extraordinary amount of clinical truth about the varieties of human sexual behavior, he repeatedly displays an almost willful blindness regarding the relational, emotional, and moral meaning of human love, bonding, and attachment.

BUT KINSEY IS NOT SIMPLY THE TALE OF A PASSIONATE researcher driven by and wrestling with his own demons It is also the story of a society desperate to understand and master its own sexuality. It is the story of millions of individuals trying to make sense of their sexuality while being blindfolded by ignorance. Kinsey was not a prophet calling people to practice a wide variety of sexual behaviors. He was a researcher who invited tens of thousands of Americans to tell him the truth about their sexual lives and in this way discovered that normal human sexuality was a great deal more varied and complex than we thought.

As a political and social drama Kinsey uncovers both our hunger to understand our sexuality and our desire to control it. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male became a runaway best-seller because millions of people wanted to know about their sexuality, wanted good solid information about things their parents, pastors, and even hygiene teachers kept shrouded in mystery or myth. And Kinsey found himself in the path of a huge societal backlash because people were afraid that such knowledge would render sex, or the young people who wanted it, uncontrollable.

Fifty years after Kinsey provoked the wrath of mainstream America we find ourselves in a parallel universe where the cultural wars over sex and sex education are as fresh as the evening news. Last summer the presidential campaign, which might have been about an unjust war, spiraling debt, or global warming, spent an inordinate amount of print and airtime debating civil unions and gay marriage; meanwhile, Catholic bishops, still mired in their own sexual scandal, warned pro-choice Catholics to stay away from the Communion rail. No doubt most of the moral values that led millions to support President Bush were about these sexual issues.

And, surprisingly enough, 50 years after Kinsey, sexual ignorance continues to be a major problem in America. In spite of the sexual revolution and decades of media infatuation with all things sexual and romantic, Catholic moral theologian Christine Gudorf reports in Body, Sex, and Pleasure: Reconstructing Christian Sexual Ethics (Pilgrim) that Americans remain woefully ignorant about our sexuality.

In one study only one fifth of Americans knew the correct answer to two thirds of the questions in a basic sex test. Only one urban school in 10 teaches students about pregnancy or contraception before high school in spite of rising levels of pregnancy among younger girls. And, according to one research group, only three states and the District of Columbia have adequate sex and AIDS education programs.

Gudorf argues that this sexual ignorance is chosen. Although most Americans favor some form of sex education, complaints and opposition from an outspoken minority have prevented adequate sexual education from reaching millions of our young. This sinful societal ignorance about our own sexuality results in numerous harms, Gudorf says, "including sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancy, and sexual dysfunction."

Adolescents are too often unprepared for the onset of puberty and unnecessarily disturbed by their first period or nocturnal emission. Too many young women are frightfully ignorant about the ways they can and cannot get pregnant, and both boys and girls know too little about their susceptibility to sexually transmitted diseases. Moreover, gay and lesbian teens need to understand that their experience of difference does not make them bad, abnormal, or ill.

Adults also have too little information about sexuality, about how to give and receive sexual pleasure from each other. Nearly a quarter of women struggle with anorgasmia, the absence of orgasm, and most men experience periods of impotence, while millions of others suffer from premature ejaculation. Each of these problems inhibit or diminish a rich sexual life and could be significantly reduced through better education.

JUST HAVING GOOD INFORMATION about human sexuality will not solve all our sexual woes or resolve the culture wars over sexuality. Good sexuality also depends on our understanding the human, personal, emotional, relational, and moral meaning of our sexual acts and appetites, and our church and tradition (as well as philosophy and psychology and sociology) have essential things to teach us about these dimensions of our sexuality. After all, we are seeking far more than just to be efficient lovers.

Still, Catholic sexual ethics is based largely on a notion of natural moral law, which teaches that we can understand our duties as sexual beings by looking long and hard at our nature as humans. Science is one important way we come to know our own nature.

By closely examining a good deal of new evidence about the shape and scope of human sexuality, Kinsey and other researchers have invited all of us to rethink a number of traditional beliefs and norms regarding "normal" or "natural" human sex and have raised many uncomfortable but important and ultimately unavoidable questions. To be true to our nature as humans it will not be enough to unleash our hearts. We will need to unleash our minds.

By PATRICK MCCORMICK, professor of Christian ethics at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.