Evangelist Billy Graham released from hospital

Richard Nixon visiting Billy and Ruth Graham
at their Montreat, N.C. home in 1960. Graham
later urged Gerald Ford to pardon Nixon after his
disgraceful fall from favor and resignation.

After a six-day bout with pneumonia, Evangelist Billy Graham, 93, has been released from Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina.
     In the 1950s, Graham was instrumental in destroying future research of famed sex researcher Dr. Alfred Kinsey, whose book Sexual Behavior in the Human Male revealed that extramarital and premarital sex were more prevalent than generally believed; that nearly all males, especially teenagers, masturbated and that masturbation did not cause mental illness; and that one in three men reported having at least one homosexual encounter in their lifetimes.
     Graham was quoted in American Heritage as stating: "It is impossible to estimate the damage this book will do to the already deteriorating morals of America."
     From faqs.org:

     In August 1954, the Rockefeller Foundation, under increasing political pressure, announced its decision to cease funding for Kinsey's Institute. The nonpolitical Kinsey was now branded a subversive and accused of furthering the Communist cause by undermining American morals. He responded to these attacks byworking even more diligently. The Institute turned its focus to a large-scale study of sex offenders, and Kinsey seemed determined to carry on. But the incessant criticism and lack of support took their toll. He wrote a scathing letter to Rusk, excerpted in American Heritage, pointing out that, "to have fifteen years of accumulated data in this area fail to reach publication would constitute an indictment of the Institute, its sponsors, and all others who have contributed time and material resources to this work."

     Kinsey searched in vain for new sources of funding. He was troubled by insomnia and began taking sleeping pills and other medications. In 1955, he traveled to England and Europe, where he lectured on various topics and studied local sexual morés. Upon his return, he developed heart trouble and was hospitalized several times. In the spring of 1956, despite his poor health, hetraveled to Chicago to conduct his final interviews, subjects 7,934 and 7,935. On August 25, 1956, at the age of 62, Kinsey died of pneumonia and heart complications.

Graham broke through in the late 1940s, after becoming the pet of publishing magnate and noted philanderer William Randolph Hearst who noted approvingly the tone of Graham's narrative about the Cold War as a showdown between good and evil, and his belief that communists were Satan-worshippers. "Either communism must die or Christianity must die," Graham said. Hearst sent a memo to all of his papers' editors, ordering them to "puff Graham." Prior to that, Graham had been just another traveling evangelist, holding meetings in half-empty tents.