49 - The Oneida Community Part III: Whoops, We’re a Sex Cult

Concluding our series on the Oneida Community we finally find John Humphrey Noyes and the rest of all those sexy bible "communists" moving to Oneida, New York and setting up their utopian estate. Or is it a corporation? Or is it a sex cult? Whatever it is (definitely a sex cult), things go off the rails. With early eugenics experiments, the ghoulish worship of capitalism and money, trying to erase the concepts of romantic love and families, and glorifying sex while heavily regulating it (all sexual "interviews" had to be approved by committee and recorded in a weird book), the Oneida Community goes full Brave New World. And they also introduce some objectively very good ideas about sexual health. Such is the duality of man.