While there have been many sociological studies on the scientific and popular understanding of sexuality over the last century, none has seen as dramatic developments and consequences as the 1948 study by Alfred C. Kinsey. Karin Carter-Smith explains that the “Kinsey Report” confronted “many medical and social beliefs about homosexuality and female sexuality.” While Kinsey’s research is viewed as a transitional moment in research on human sexuality, Carolyn Sprague, in her essay on the sexual revolution in the twentieth-century, says that current research reveals how American society’s attitudes about sex had already been changing for many decades. Sharon Link and Noelle Vance initiate a series of essays on how contemporary science monitors the development of sexual orientation. “Medical science, theologians, legal doctrine and cultural norms,” Vance comments, “have all played a role in influencing how sexual orientation and/or same sex relations are perceived.”