How Bad Science Helped Launch the 'Gay' Revolution
tim
By Robert H. Knight
Franklin Kameny of Washington, D.C., is often described as the "dean"
of homosexual activists. Mr. Kameny claims to have coined the term
"gay is good," and was instrumental in having D.C.’s sodomy law
repealed.
Recently, he made an amazing statement regarding one of the totems of
the sexual revolution, the claim that one in every 10 people is "gay."
Here’s his quote, from a letter in the September 6, 2002,
Washington Blade:
"I personally created the ‘10 percent figure’ in late 1960
for use in my position to the U.S. Supreme Court, in my own case. The
figure was based upon a reasonable and plausible, intentionally
conservative and understated interpretation of the Kinsey data, which
were the only statistics then available.
"The 10 percent figure subsequently achieved a life of its own, and
was universally accepted and used. Whatever its initial accuracy, I am
convinced it is much closer to reality than the ridiculously low
figure of 1 or 2 percent, derived from highly questionable and
unreliable research."
Mr. Kameny is right about the way the 10 percent myth was used.
Journalists, lawyers and educators began citing it without a hint of
skepticism. The result was the creation in the public mind of a false
"minority" group that began to co-opt the moral capital of the civil
rights movement. It didn’t matter that it was all based on bad
science.
Alfred C. Kinsey’s research, which helped launch the sexual
revolution, was utterly exposed in Dr. Judith Reisman’s and
Edward Eichel’s 1990 book Kinsey, Sex and Fraud: The
Indoctrination of a People (Huntington House-Lochinvar). The British
medical journal Lancet said the authors "demolish the two [Kinsey]
reports."
Kinsey deliberately weighted his samples with homosexuals, convicted
criminals and other unorthodox subjects. The authors also expose how
Kinsey used children in sex studies to concoct a theory of "child
sexuality" that is the guiding force today behind sex education
curricula promoted by Planned Parenthood and the Sexuality Information
and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS).
Studies published by the University of Chicago, Family Planning
Perspectives, the British Medical Journal, the National Health
Interview Survey of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, and many
others indicate an incidence of homosexuality of 1 to 2 percent in
Western countries.
Although the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy
of Science, initially supported the Kinsey research in the late 1940s
and early 1950s, a reassessment emerged in 1989. Here is an excerpt
from AIDS: Sexual Behavior and Intravenous Drug Use, edited by Charles
F. Turner, Heather G. Miller, and Lincoln E. Moses (National Academy
Press, National Research Council, 1989), p. 82:
"It has long been recognized that one of the greatest faults of the
Kinsey research was the way in which the cases were selected; the
sample is not representative of the entire U.S. population or of any
definable group in the population. This fault limits the comparability
and appropriateness of the Kinsey data as a basis for calculating the
prevalence of any form of sexual conduct."
The book also notes that Kinsey’s agenda for sexual liberation
tainted his research: "The very claim for the legitimacy of science in
the area of sexuality was an attempt to change the ‘rules of the
game’ that defined what conduct was normal and what was
abnormal.
"Kinsey went even further, however. He attempted to counter the
traditional religious view that sexual virtue was entirely composed of
heterosexual activity in the pursuit of reproduction inside the bonds
of marriage, as well as the orthodox psychoanalytic revision of this
traditional view, which admitted the existence of other forms of
sexual expression but treated them as either perversions from or
preludes to the sexual ‘normality’ found in mature
heterosexual committed relationships." (p. 86)
In 1997, in his book Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life,
biographer James H. Jones revealed Kinsey’s prodigious appetite
for sadistic varieties of homosexual sex, voyeurism and other
perversions, and how they inspired his social agenda:
"The man I came to know bore no resemblance to the canonical Kinsey.
Anything but disinterested, he approached his work with missionary
fervor. Kinsey loathed Victorian morality. … He was determined
to use science to strip human sexuality of its guilt and repression.
He wanted to undermine traditional morality, to soften the rules of
restraint. …Kinsey was a crypto-reformer who spent his every
waking hour attempting to change the sexual mores and sex offender
laws of the United States." (p. xii)
Based on his own imagination, Kinsey created his famous 7-point Kinsey
scale of sexuality, with heterosexuality at 0 and homosexuality at 6
(bisexuality being a "balanced" score at 3.5). He drew a line from 0
upward and rightward to make a perfect diagonal, as if human sexuality
could be precisely and geometrically charted. This entirely fabricated
"scientific" scale has been used in sex education books, court cases
and legislative hearings to contend that homosexuality and bisexuality
are normative. Kinsey concocted the scale even before he had done any
substantial interviewing of data subjects, according to his co-author,
Wardell Pomeroy.
Dr. Reisman, who has pursued the Kinsey myth for three decades,
authored another book in 1998, showing how Kinsey’s research
became the foundation for America’s sexual revolution. In
Kinsey: Crimes and Consequences (First Principles Press, 1998, 2000),
she also chronicled how Kinsey and his disciples systematically
weakened America’s sex offender laws by inserting the fraudulent
Kinsey data into cases, law review articles, and presentations before
state legislatures.
Kinsey’s legacy in the form of a cultural blitzkrieg against
sexual restraint – and therefore against marriage and family
— has been enormous. He just might be the most influential fraud
in American social history.
As far as "gay" activist Franklin Kameny’s boast of using the
Kinsey research as his lodestar, it’s a welcome and revealing
confession, although it is doubtful that Mr. Kameny would see it that
way.
Robert Knight is the director of the Culture and Family Institute, an
affiliate of Concerned Women for America. Knight wrote and directed
The Children of Table 34, a Family Research Council video documentary
about Alfred Kinsey.
Ninure Saunders
why...@soon.com (tim) wrote:
-How Bad Science Helped Launch the ‘Gay’ Revolution
-By Robert H. Knight
-
-<snip B.S.>
==============Begin article============
he beginnings or real research...
Today, a large body of published empirical research clearly refutes the
notion that homosexuality per se is indicative of or correlated with
psychopathology. One of the first and most famous published
studies in this area was conducted by psychologist Evelyn Hooker.
Hooker's study
Hooker's (1957) study was innovative in several important respects. First,
rather than simply accepting the predominant view of homosexuality as
pathology, she posed the question of whether
homosexuals and heterosexuals differed in their psychological adjustment.
Second, rather than studying psychiatric patients, she recruited a sample
of homosexual men who were functioning normally in society. Third, she
employed a procedure that asked experts to rate the adjustment of men
without prior knowledge of their sexual orientation
.
This method addressed an important source of bias that had been a feature
so many previous studies on homosexuality.
Hooker administered three projective tests (the Rorschach,Thematic
Apperception Test [TAT], and Make-A-Picture-Story [MAPS] Test) to 30
homosexual males and 30 heterosexual males recruited through community
organizations. The two groups were matched for age, IQ, and education.
None of the men were in therapy at the time of the study.
Unaware of each subject's sexual orientation, two independent Rorschach
experts evaluated the men's overall adjustment using a 5 point scale. They
classified two thirds of the heterosexuals and two thirds of the
homosexuals in the three highest categories of adjustment. When asked to
identify which Rorschach protocols were obtained from homosexuals, the
experts could not distinguish respondents' sexual orientation at a level
better than chance. The were experts who believe that homosexuality was a
mental illness, and yet they could NOT determine who was homosexual using
standard tests.
A third expert used the TAT and MAPS protocols to evaluate the
psychological adjustment of the men. As with the Rorschach responses, the
adjustment ratings of the homosexual and
heterosexuals did not differ significantly.
Hooker concluded from her data that homosexuality as a clinical entity
does not exist and that homosexuality is not inherently associated with
psychopathology.
Hooker's findings have since been replicated by many other investigators
using a variety of research methods. Freedman (1971), for example, used
Hooker's basic design to study lesbian and
heterosexual women. Instead of projective tests, he
administeredobjectively scored personality tests to the women. His
conclusions were similar to those of Hooker.
Although some investigations published since Hooker's study have claimed
to support the view of homosexuality as pathological, they have been
methodologically weak. Many used only clinical or
incarcerated samples, for example, from which generalizations to the
population at large are not possible. Others failed to safeguard the data
collection procedures from possible biases by the investigators for
example, a man's psychological functioning would be evaluated by his own
psychoanalyst, who was simultaneously treating him for his homosexuality.
Some studies found differences between homosexual and heterosexual
respondents, and then assumed that those differences indicated pathology
in the homosexuals. For example, heterosexual
and homosexual respondents might report different kinds of childhood
experiences or family relationships. It would then be incorrectly assumed
that the patterns reported by the homosexuals indicated pathology - even
though there were no differences in psychological functioning between the
two groups.
The weight of evidence
In a review of published studies comparing homosexual and heterosexual
samples on psychological tests, Gonsiorek (1982) found that, although some
differences have been observed in test results between homosexuals and
heterosexuals, both groups consistently score within the normal range.
Gonsiorek concluded that "Homosexuality in and of itself is unrelated to
psychological
disturbance or maladjustment. Homosexuals as a group are not more
psychologically disturbed on account of their homosexuality" (Gonsiorek,
1982, p. 74; see also reviews by Gonsiorek, 1991; Hart, Roback, Tittler,
Weitz, Walston & McKee, 1978; Reiss, 1980).
Confronted with overwhelming empirical evidence and changing cultural
views of homosexuality, psychiatrists and psychologists have radically
altered their views during the last two decades.
Removal from the DSM
In 1973, the weight of empirical data, coupled by changing social
norms and the development of an active gay community in the United States,
led the Board of Directors of the American Psychiatric Association to
remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM).
Their decision was supported in 1974 by a vote of the membership.
The APA membership voted 58% to 37% to remove homosexuality from the DSM
with 5% of the membership not returning their ballots. Even if all 5% of
the non voters felt homosexuality to be a mental disorder, that makes the
vote 58% to 42%, a difference of 16%. The 21% difference between the two
camps would be called a landslide if this were a political election.
The executive board of the APA agreed and voted unanimously 7-0 to
remove homosexuality from the DSM. In November 1974, months after the
conference and initial vote, the 13 member APA board of trustees voted
unanimously to uphold the members decision.
Subsequently, a new diagnosis, ego-dystonic homosexuality, was
created for the DSM's third edition in 1980. In 1986, the diagnosis was
removed entirely from the DSM. The only vestige of ego-dystonic
homosexuality in the revised DSM-III occurred under Sexual Disorders Not
Otherwise Specified, which included persistent and marked distress about
one's sexual orientation (American Psychiatric Association, 1987; see
Bayer, 1987, for an account of the events leading up to the 1973 and 1986
decisions).
Reparative Therapy
Some groups, mostly religious or affiliated with religious
organizations, have made the claim that they can "change' or
"repair" homosexuals. The major proponents of this line of thinking
is an organization called NARTH which advocates "reparative
therapy".
Examining the claims of NARTH, one finds that even their own
published data, scanty as it is, is internally inconsistent and
never actually claims to "cure" homosexuality, only to modify
homosexual behaviour. NARTH has never given a detailed account of
the clinical methodology used in their "treatments". NARTH have
never submitted any of their findings for publication in reputable
peer reviewed journal - rather the papers appear in the "vanity
press" or in publications with strong ties to religious organization
(for reviews, see Haldeman, 1991, 1994).
Another issue is the lack of adequate classification of the
patient's initial sexual orientation. Naturally it is easier for a
highly motivated bi-sexual to repress homosexuality and adopt a
heterosexual behaviour pattern.
There is also a complete absence of any long term follow up of
patients who have undergone this "reparative therapy", or any review
of patients by independent professionals. Without proper follow up
study, any claims made for the efficacy of the therapy are worthless
as there is no data available on the success rate.
The American Psychiatric Association's official web site [
http://www.psych.org/public_info/HOMOSE~1.HTM ] notes that:
"There is no published scientific evidence supporting the efficacy
of 'reparative therapy' as a treatment to change one's sexual
orientation.... There are a few reports in the literature of efforts
to use psychotherapeutic and counselling techniques to treat persons
troubled by their homosexuality who desire to become heterosexual;
however, results have not been conclusive, nor have they been
replicated."
"There is no evidence that any treatment can change a homosexual
person's deep seated sexual feelings for others of the same sex.
Clinical experience suggests that any person who seeks conversion
therapy may be doing so because of social bias that has resulted in
internalized homophobia, and that gay men and lesbians who have
accepted their sexual orientation positively are better adjusted
than those who have not done so."
Reading list
Hooker, E. (1957). The adjustment of the male overt homosexual.
Journal of Projective Techniques, 21, 18-31.
Berube, A. (1990). Coming out under fire: The history of gay men and
women in World War II. New York: Free Press
Gonsiorek, J.C. (1982). Results of psychological testing on
homosexual populations. American Behavioral Scientist, 25 (4),
385-396.
Ford, C.S., & Beach, F.A. (1951). Patterns of sexual behavior. New
York: Harper & Brothers.
Freedman, M. (1971). Homosexuality and psychological functioning.
Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.
Gonsiorek, J.C. (1991). The empirical basis for the demise of the
illness model of homosexuality. In J. Gonsiorek & J. Weinrich
(Eds.), Homosexuality: Research implications for public policy (pp.
115-136). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Reiss, B.F. (1980). Psychological tests in homosexuality. In
J.Marmor (Ed.), Homosexual behavior: A modern reappraisal (pp.
296-311). New York: Basic Books.
Bayer, R. (1987). Homosexuality and American psychiatry: The
politics of diagnosis (2nd Ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Haldeman, D.C. (1991). Conversion therapy for gay men and lesbians:
A scientific examination. In J. Gonsiorek & J. Weinrich (Eds.),
Homosexuality: Research implications for public policy (pp.
149-160). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Haldeman, D.C. (1994). The practice and ethics of sexual orientation
conversion therapy. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology,
62 (2), 221-227.
===============End article============
Ninure Saunders aka Rainbow Christian
The Lord is my Shepherd and He knows I'm Gay
http://www.geocities.com/ninure
The world's second most subversive document
http://www.geocities.com/ninure/declaration.html
-
Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches
http://www.ufmcc.com
To send e-mail, remove nohate from address
Marie C. Bennett
>How Bad Science Helped Launch the ‘Gay’ Revolution
>By Robert H. Knight
ROTFL! The Religious Right, subscribers of Cameronesque crap like
"gays don't live past age 40" and "lesbians are more likely to die in
car accidents", are whining about Bad Science? This is almost as
stupid as Christians claiming to be `persecuted' in the US. Hyprocrisy
never ends...
Pope Dilbert
"tim" <why...@soon.com> wrote in message
news:52f185ff.0209...@posting.google.com...
> How Bad Science Helped Launch the ‘Gay’ Revolution
> By Robert H. Knight
How bad lies and distorted fables sow the conservative's true colors!
Paul Duca
either...
Paul
James Smith wrote:
> Homosexual Abuse of Boys -- Reconsidered The taboo against sex with
> children continues to erode.
>
> By Mary Eberstadt
>
> Until very, very recently, public questioning of the social
> prohibition against pedophilia—to say nothing of positive celebration
> of child molestation—was practically non-existent in American life.
> The reasons why are not opaque. To most people, the very word
> "pedophilia" summons forth a preternatural degree of horror and
> revulsion; and the criminal law that reflects those reactions has
> consistently treated the sexual molestation of minors as a serious and
> eminently punishable offense. So it is small wonder that, historically
> speaking, the taboo against using legal minors for sex was no more
> publicly controversial in the United States than the prohibitions
> against, say, cannibalism or bestiality. Those few partisans of the
> idea who did sometimes sally forth customarily found themselves
> regarded as the lowest of the social low, even by the criminal class.
>
> This social consensus against the sexual exploitation of children and
> adolescents, however—unlike those against, say, animal sex or
> incest—is apparently eroding, and this regardless of the fact that the
> vast majority of citizens do overwhelmingly abominate the thing. For
> elsewhere in the public square, the defense of adult-child sex—more
> accurately, man-boy sex—is now out in the open. Moreover, it is on
> parade in a number of places—therapeutic, literary, and academic
> circles; mainstream publishing houses and journals and magazines and
> bookstores—where the mere appearance of such ideas would until
> recently have been not only unthinkable, but in many cases, subject to
> prosecution.
>
> Dramatic though this turnaround may be, it did not happen overnight.
> Four years ago in these pages, in an essay called "Pedophilia Chic," I
> described in some detail a number of then-recent public challenges to
> this particular taboo, all of them apparently isolated from one
> another.1 Plainly, as the record even then showed, a surprising number
> of voices were willing to rise up on behalf of what advocates refer to
> as "man-boy love," or what most people call sexual abuse.
>
> Yet while the examples themselves were easy enough to document, their
> larger meaning seemed far from clear. Why, in a post-Cold War world
> bursting with real political controversies, were some people intent on
> insisting that the time had come to rethink an issue that most people
> already vehemently, passionately, agreed about? And why was the taboo
> against pedophilia under particular pressure in the mid-1990s, of all
> times—an interval when, readers will recall, public attention to the
> sexual abuse of girl children had simultaneously reached an all-time
> high? Perhaps, or so it seemed reasonable to speculate, all that
> really lay behind these efforts was just that familiar postmodern
> idol, shock value. Perhaps this "pedophilia chic," I guessed then, was
> simply "the last gasp of a nihilism that has exhausted itself by
> chasing down every other avenue of liberation, only to find one last
> roadblock still manned by the bourgeoisie."
>
> Four-plus years and many other challenges to the same taboo later, it
> is clear that this hypothesis got something wrong. For one thing, no
> sustained public challenges have arisen over other primal taboos. Even
> more telling, if nihilism and nihilism alone were the explanation for
> public attempts to legitimize sex with boy children, then we would
> expect the appearance of related attempts to legitimize sex with girl
> children; and these we manifestly do not see.2 Nobody, but nobody, has
> been allowed to make the case for girl pedophilia with the backing of
> any reputable institution. Publishing houses are not putting out
> acclaimed anthologies and works of fiction that include excerpts of
> men having sex with young girls. Psychologists and psychiatrists are
> not competing with each other to publish studies demonstrating that
> the sexual abuse of girls is inconsequential; or, indeed, that it
> ought not even be defined as "abuse."
>
> Two examples from the last few weeks will suffice to show the double
> standard here. In the November 12 New York Times Book Review, a writer
> found it unremarkable to observe of his subject, biographer Gavin
> Lambert, that when "Lambert was a schoolboy of 11, a teacher initiated
> him [into homosexuality], and he 'felt no shame or fear, only
> gratitude.'" It is unimaginable that New York Times editors would
> allow a reviewer to describe an 11-year-old girl being sexually
> "initiated" by any adult (in that case, "initiation" would be called
> "sexual abuse"). Similarly, in mid-December the New York Times
> Magazine delivered a cover piece about gay teenagers in cyberspace
> which was so blasé about the older men who seek out boys in chat rooms
> that it dismissed those potential predators as mere "oldies." Again,
> one can only imagine the public outcry had the same magazine published
> a story taking the same so-what approach to online solicitation,
> off-line trysts, and pornography "sharing" between anonymous men and
> underage girls.
>
> No: As was true four years ago, contemporary efforts to rationalize,
> legitimize, and justify pedophilia are about boys. Forget about
> abstractions like nihilism; what the record shows is something more
> prosaic. The reason why the public is being urged to reconsider boy
> pedophilia is that this "question," settled though it may be in the
> opinions and laws of the rest of the country, is demonstrably not yet
> settled within certain parts of the gay rights movement. The more that
> movement has entered the mainstream, the more this "question" has
> bubbled forth from that previously distant realm into the public
> square. It should go without saying, though under the circumstances it
> cannot, that many, many leaders and members of that movement draw a
> firm line at consenting adults, want no part of any such "debate," and
> are in fact disgusted and appalled by it. Then there are other
> opinions.
>
> I
>
> Let us begin with one recent public challenge to the taboo against
> pedophilia that did garner the public attention it deserved, albeit
> belatedly, and which demonstrates both the boy-specific character of
> today's revisionism and the gulf between popular and other views of
> the subject. This was the episode that began with the publication in
> July 1998 of an essay in the American Psychological Association's
> (APA) prestigious Psychological Bulletin called "A Meta-Analytic
> Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College
> Samples" and co-authored by Bruce Rind (Temple University), Robert
> Bauserman (University of Michigan), and Philip Tromovitch (University
> of Pennsylvania).
>
> The density of its professional jargon and 30-plus pages aside, the
> argument of "Meta-Analytic" was straightforward enough: that the
> common belief that "child sexual abuse causes intense harm, regardless
> of gender" was not supported by the studies the authors cited; that,
> to the contrary, "negative effects [of child sexual abuse] were
> neither pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted much
> less negatively than women." The article also criticized the
> "indiscriminate use of this term [child sexual abuse] and related
> terms such as victim and perpetrator," suggesting instead that the
> child's feelings about sex acts with adults should be taken into
> account, and that "a willing encounter with positive reactions would
> be labeled simply adult-child sex."
>
> What was equally radical about "Meta-Analytic," though less discussed
> at the time, was its specific comparison of pedophilia to "behaviors
> such as masturbation, homosexuality, fellatio, cunnilingus, and sexual
> promiscuity." All such, the authors noted, "were codified as
> pathological in the first edition of the American Psychiatric
> Association's (1952) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
> Disorders"; and all are so codified no more. What this analogy tacitly
> suggested, of course, was the assurance that pedophilia, too, would
> someday take its place at the liberationist table. In the meantime, as
> the authors put it, "This history of conflating morality and law with
> science in the area of human sexuality by psychologists and others
> indicates a strong need for caution in scientific inquiries of sexual
> behaviors that remain taboo, with child sexual abuse being a prime
> example [emphasis added]."
>
> As MIT psychologist G.E. Zuriff observed later in an essay for the
> Public Interest, "It is not difficult to see how these ideas would
> antagonize not only Dr. Laura [Schlessinger] but the public at large."
> For although the incendiary potential of asking people to give
> pedophilia a second look may or may not have been grasped by the APA
> authorities who accepted the article for publication, no such
> ambiguity marked the reaction of the lay public. Most people were made
> aware of "Meta-Analytic" in March 1999, when Schlessinger devoted the
> first of two radio talks to attacking the article, and their own livid
> view of the matter was made known in the course of a multi-dimensional
> public uproar that took months to die down. The denouement was a
> series of unusual events, including a public castigation of the
> American Psychological Association by majority whip Tom DeLay; a House
> vote to condemn the "Meta-Analytic" essay itself (355-0, with 13
> abstentions); and a highly unusual public rejection by the APA of the
> piece's conclusions, along with a promise to acquire an independent
> evaluation of the article.
>
> In retrospect, there were two significant and little-noticed facts in
> all this. One was not so much the schism that this controversy
> revealed between elite-therapeutic and popular thinking about
> pedophilia, but rather that the schism itself had gone unnoticed for
> so long. For shocking though it may have been to the general public,
> "Meta-Analytic" was in fact only the latest in a very long series of
> professional attempts to revise therapeutic conceptions of boy
> pedophilia, attempts of which most lay readers remain quite ignorant.
>
> Professionals in the field know better. Fifteen years ago, for
> example, in his careful research volume Child Sexual Abuse, noted
> authority David Finkelhor was already drawing attention to the "body
> of opinion and research [that] has emerged in recent years which is
> trying hard to vindicate homosexual pedophilia." To read Finkelhor's
> sources on the subject—or, for that matter, to read the notes in the
> heavily sourced "Meta-Analytic" itself—is to see exactly what he
> means. In their call to redefine "abuse" as "contact," for example,
> Rind, Bauserman, and Tromovitch were merely resurrecting research and
> conceptual work stretching back over two decades; similarly, their
> distinctions between boys' and girls' supposed experiences of abuse
> have a pedigree that begins with Kinsey and branches out dramatically
> in professional publications of the last 25 years. The authors of
> "Meta-Analytic" may have made their points boldly enough to get
> noticed; but that is the only academic novelty to which they could
> truly lay claim. The real news about the normalization of pedophilia
> displayed in "Meta-Analytic" was that nothing about it was
> conceptually new.
>
> The second peculiarity of the outrage over "Meta-Analytic," which also
> went unnoticed at the time, was that it was not, in fact, universally
> shared. The notorious North American Man-Boy Love Association
> (NAMBLA), predictably enough, cheered the study as "good news." Less
> explicable was the reaction within the gay press, which not only
> failed to distance its movement from the study, but went on to
> excoriate the APA's critics (particularly Laura Schlessinger). This
> was the same approach taken, independently, by at least two
> mainstream—and relatively conservative—gay journalists.
>
> Writing in the New York Times Magazine, prominent author and activist
> Andrew Sullivan complained about the "sour reception" that had greeted
> the study. After all, he wrote, Rind et al. had found that "lasting
> psychological trauma among adult survivors of abuse, particularly for
> men, was much less than feared." This, according to Sullivan, should
> be "a reason for relief." Instead, and what he evidently found
> disagreeable, "outraged members of the religious right accused the APA
> of tolerating pedophilia" and "launched a crusade to punish the
> organization." He concluded sarcastically: "That'll teach them to look
> on the bright side."
>
> Another writer outraged over the outrage about "Meta-Analytic" was
> respected reporter and political analyst Jonathan Rauch. In his
> commentary on the controversy published in the National Journal, Rauch
> roundly defended the study. It was the critics of the "Meta-Analytic"
> piece, Rauch wrote, who were "turning out stomach-churning stuff." The
> vote in Congress—as opposed, say, to what Rind et al. had written—was
> "faintly sinister." Like the authors of the piece itself, Rauch
> advocated that, in the name of "science," researchers should "abandon
> the current custom of referring to all adult sexual encounters with
> minors, regardless of the circumstances, as 'child sexual abuse,'"
> because they could "perform finer-grained analyses if they used
> 'abuse' to denigrate injurious or unwilling encounters. Other
> encounters," Rauch echoed, "could be called 'adult-child sex' or
> 'adult-adolescent sex.'"
>
> To his credit, Rauch did report that "in 1989, when he was 23 and just
> out of college, Bauserman [one of the Meta-Analytic authors] published
> a cross-cultural comparison of attitudes toward man-boy sexual
> relations in a Dutch journal called Paidika." This journal, in Rauch's
> description, "had taken pro-pedophilia stands"—something which he
> admitted "raises red flags."
>
> But at the same time Rauch, like Sullivan, avoided the real issue at
> hand—that "Meta-Analytic" quite obviously aimed at de-stigmatizing boy
> pedophilia itself. Even more startling, though, was his bland
> depiction of Paidika. This is not exactly a journal in which
> pro-pedophile ideas have somehow surfaced accidentally. It is a
> publication dedicated to the phenomenon of "boy-loving," the most
> prominent such "scholarly journal" in the world, whose long-time
> editor, the late Edward Brongersma, was a convicted pedophile as well
> as the author of a two-volume pedophile classic, Loving Boys. (To
> describe this as a journal which "had taken pro-pedophilia stands" is
> akin to describing The Weekly Standard as a magazine where
> conservative arguments have reportedly appeared.) And, of course, the
> qualifier "23 and just out of college" served to soften Bauserman's
> earlier appearance in Paidika, suggesting it was an excess of youth.
>
> Both Sullivan and Rauch are not only prominent gay journalists but
> also leading proponents of the worldview to which the gay rights
> movement owes much of its recent and stunning political success—the
> argument that, as Sullivan's Virtually Normal puts it, "homosexuals .
> . . have the equivalent emotional needs and temptations of
> heterosexuals." Both writers are also members of the Independent Gay
> Forum, an institution aimed at "forging a mainstream identity"; and
> both have frequently broken ranks with the leftists and radicals who
> dominate gay activism. That two such mainstream authors should mock
> the public outcry against that APA article illustrates something
> noteworthy: that in place of a social consensus against pedophilia per
> se, a separate option—call it anti-anti-pedophilia—appears to have
> taken root. According to that view, the problem is less sex with
> minors than the people who declare themselves against it—Dr. Laura
> fans, congressmen, dissident therapists, religious types, and anyone
> else who does not grasp the necessity of putting words like "child
> sexual abuse" in quotes.
>
> II
>
> In some of the clinical and therapeutic literature on pedophilia, it
> has become customary to distinguish between "ephebophilia," or sexual
> attraction to postpubescent children and teenagers, and "pedophilia"
> proper, meaning attraction to prepubescent children. Both forms are
> exhibited more than occasionally in another part of the written world,
> namely gay fiction. "Fiction" here emphatically does not mean
> pornography as such, but the kind of literature authored by
> self-consciously gay writers, published by reputable houses, and
> reviewed respectfully in the mainstream press. Again, it must be
> emphasized that numerous gay authors of note do not positively portray
> sex between adults and minors, and ipso facto are not part of this
> discussion.
>
> Plenty of authors do cross the line, though. "Gay fiction," Philip
> Guichard complained in an article for the Village Voice last summer,
> "is rich with idyllic accounts of 'intergenerational relationships,'
> as such affairs are respectfully called these days." Over four years
> ago, "Pedophilia Chic" quoted passages from the works of several
> acclaimed authors—including Edmund White, the late Paul Monette, and
> Larry Kramer—which frankly and often sympathetically portrayed men
> seeking and having sex with underage boys. Today there are many more
> such examples to be found in gay fiction, all verifiable by a trip to
> the local chain bookstore.
>
> Last year, for example, St. Martins Press published a novel called The
> Coming Storm by Paul Russell, a professor of English at Vassar and the
> author of three previously well-received works of fiction. The drama
> of this tale revolves around something that remains an imprisonable
> offense in almost every state—a sexual "affair" between a troubled
> 15-year-old boy (Noah) and his 25-year-old gay boarding school teacher
> (Tracy). (The age of 15, incidentally, is no definitive limit in
> Russell's narrative. In the course of the book, Tracy also fantasizes
> about 14-year-old boys.)
>
> The Coming Storm became the object of effusive praise by award-winning
> reviewer Dennis Drabelle in the Washington Post Book World (August 15,
> 1999). The Coming Storm, Drabelle enthused, "takes off from a
> sensational subject—forbidden sexuality—to arrive at unexpected
> heights and subtleties." It "persuades the reader" that "the sexual
> relationship between Noah and Tracy is not only not harmful to either
> but a boon to the precocious junior partner, who becomes a better,
> more engaged student after the affair gets under way." What is
> "troublesome" about the book, according to Drabelle, is not that
> anyone is "corrupted" by what happens ("no one is"), but that "it is
> apt to be stereotyped, not least by the legal system that makes it a
> crime [emphasis added]."
>
> This cheerleading for the sexual molestation of teenagers in the
> Sunday pages of one of the country's major newspapers did not pass
> without comment. One reader berated Drabelle in the letters column for
> "strongly implying that child abuse, when it takes place between two
> males, should no longer be viewed by the public as either a social
> offense or a crime."3 Yet as even a partial survey of related
> literature shows, what is truly anomalous about this case—of a
> mainstream reviewer in a mainstream family newspaper ratifying sex
> between grown men and boys—was that anyone bothered to be bothered
> about it at all. Other writers, including prominent writers among
> them, have gone further still, and with even less consequence.
>
> Consider David Leavitt, one of the best known of contemporary gay
> authors, whose numerous novels and short stories, among them The Lost
> Language of Cranes and, most recently, Martin Bauman; or, A Sure
> Thing, are routinely reviewed in the better journals and magazines. In
> fact, it would be hard to think of a gay fiction writer more
> consistently represented in mainstream publishing.
>
> For that reason, it is all the more surprising to read what this
> ostensibly mainstream author chose to write in his introduction to the
> equally mainstream Penguin Book of International Gay Writing (1995,
> edited by Mark Mitchell). There, in the course of describing what the
> anthology includes, Leavitt notes matter-of-factly that "Another
> 'forbidden' topic from which European writers seem less likely to
> shrink is the love of older men for young boys." He then draws
> attention to one particular book excerpted in the volume, When
> Jonathan Died, by Tony Duvert. "The coolly assured narrative" of this
> work, Leavitt informs, "compels the reader to imagine the world from a
> perspective he might ordinarily condemn." Duvert, writes Leavitt,
> "offers us a homosexual Lolita—one in which the child is seducer as
> much as seduced."
>
> The object of this praise by one of America's leading gay novelists,
> appearing in one of publishing's most prestigious book series, is the
> tale of a man and boy who are living together in Italy. The scene
> selected is sexually graphic. And the age of this child, whom Leavitt
> considers "seducer as much as seduced"? He is—page 427 in the hard
> cover edition—"hardly seven."
>
> Another seemingly representative collection of gay literature, this
> one on the shelf at Barnes & Noble and also apparently selling without
> comment, is The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read, an
> Anchor Book published by Doubleday in 1998. Its editor/author, Robert
> Drake, is a novelist and editor of other anthologies who has won the
> Lambda Literary Award. Like the Penguin anthology edited by Leavitt,
> Drake's book too strives for canonical status, aspiring to offer a
> roadmap to the most important texts of gay history.
>
> As it turns out, several of the texts that editor Drake thought worth
> including feature scenes of man-boy sex—again, what most of the rest
> of the public calls abuse or molestation. One work is something called
> The Carnivorous Lamb by Agustin Gomez-Arcos, described as a book about
> an incestuous relationship between a boy and his older brother (to
> Drake, "the best, most complex yet satisfying novel of filial love
> ever written"). Another text, this one by writer Matthew
> Stadler—described as the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship for his
> first novel—is called The Dissolution of Nicholas Dee. This book, says
> editor Drake, "is an operatic adventure into the realms of love,
> personality, ambition and art . . . a pure joy to read." Its
> protagonist is "a pedophile's dream: the mind of a man in the body of
> a boy." Drake also excerpts and discusses William S. Burroughs's
> nightmarish The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead, the pederastic violence
> of which defies description. Yet this work, according to Drake, "tears
> straight to the heart of one of the greatest sources, community-wide,
> of 1990s gay angst: What to do with men who love boys?"4
>
> Still another example of how standards are being lowered by a major
> publisher and respected writer—this one from academia and available at
> Borders—is A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition, published
> in 1998 by Yale University Press. This book, "the first full-scale
> account of gay male literature, across cultures, languages and from
> ancient times to the present," is authored by Gregory Woods, described
> on the jacket as "the foremost gay poet working in Britain today." It
> includes a longish chapter on "Boys and Boyhood" which is a seemingly
> definitive account of pro-pedophile literary works, ranging over texts
> from the platonic Death in Venice to the noir likes of the
> aforementioned Tony Duvert. Nothing is questioned, much less
> condemned, in the course of Woods's account of these works. The only
> moral ambiguity that occurs to him concerns not the boy but the man in
> the equation. Woods concludes: "By playing [i.e., having sex] with
> boys, the man remains boyish. Whether you regard this as a way of
> retreating from life or, on the contrary, as a way of engaging with it
> at its most honest and least corrupted level, depends on which writer
> you consult at any given time [emphasis added]."
>
> III
>
> As for the related matter of gay non-fiction, here too, judging by the
> public domain, the subject of boy pedophilia has a manifest niche.
>
> One book only recently available in the "gay studies" section of a
> Borders in downtown D.C., for example, is a peculiar classic of a sort
> entitled Male Inter-Generational Intimacy: Historical,
> Socio-Psychological, and Legal Perspectives, edited by the
> aforementioned pedophile icon Edward Brongersma and two colleagues.
> This book, according to one of its jacket endorsements, "shed[s]
> critical light on the broad spectrum of man-boy love and its place in
> ancient and contemporary societies." In other words, it is a series of
> briefs using scientistic polemics in an effort to rationalize the
> sexual molestation of boy children. The article abstracts speak for
> themselves. ("Pedophilia is always considered by mainstream society as
> one form of sexual abuse of children. However, analysis of the
> personal accounts provided by pedophiles suggests that these
> experiences could be understood differently." "The incidence of
> violence is very low in pedophile contacts with boys. The influence
> can be strong in lasting relationships; it can either be wholesome or
> unwholesome." And so on.)
>
> Of course, this opus that "gay studies" bookshelves now reserve space
> for did not spring from nowhere. The book itself grew out of two
> issues of the American Journal of Homosexuality (Vol. 20, Nos. 1/2,
> 1990) dedicated to the pondering of "male inter-generational love."
> Here again, an ostensibly mainstream gay vehicle was put to the
> service of advocating pedophilia. In fact, the case of the Journal of
> Homosexuality is particularly interesting as a case study of how a
> pernicious idea can spread. The editor of this reputable gay journal,
> John P. DeCecco, is a psychologist at San Francisco State University.
> DeCecco is favorably quoted in the introduction to Male
> Inter-Generational Intimacy for having praised the "enormously
> nurturant relationship" that can result from pedophile-boy contact.
> DeCecco is also on the editorial board of Paidika.
>
> As one would expect, such cross-pollination in gay fiction and
> criticism is verifiable many times over via the inhuman efficiencies
> of cyber-correlation. It was not immediately obvious, for example—in
> fact, it came as a surprise—that typing "Paidika" into an ordinary
> search engine would turn up a reference to Gay Men's Press
> bestsellers; but it did not take long to see why. For one of the books
> on the Gay Men's Press bestseller list turns out to be Dares to Speak:
> History and Contemporary Perspectives on Boy-Love, edited by Joseph
> Geraci—all of whose chapters but one appeared originally in Paidika
> itself. Another book on the same bestseller list is Some Boys,
> described as a "memoir of a lover of boys" that "evokes the author's
> young friends across four decades and as many continents." Another on
> the same list is For a Lost Soldier by Rudi van Dantzig, advertised as
> involving sex between an 11-year-old boy and a Canadian soldier in
> Holland in 1944. There are more.
>
> Surfing also makes plain that the better-known gay organizations, all
> of whom stand dead set against any conflation of homosexuality and
> pedophilia, are nonetheless sending mixed messages about what is and
> is not off-limits for the underage. Most of them, for instance, now
> have "youth sections" on their websites for and about legal minors.
> The justification for this heightened attention to the young is to
> ameliorate the angst of gay teenagers. At the risk of stating the
> obvious, though, it is hard to see how this purpose is served by
> encouraging boys to act and think sexually at ever younger ages, which
> is an all but unavoidable side effect of the type of "outreach" these
> sites engage in.
>
> Consider, for example, the website of PFLAG (Parents, Families and
> Friends of Lesbians and Gays), one of the more respected gay rights
> organizations in the country. It is just a click of the mouse from
> PFLAG's "useful links" to a site where one can read the "coming-out"
> stories of children aged 10, 11, and 12. Similarly, the "youth"
> section of GLAAD's publication list (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against
> Defamation) simply assumes that minors are sexually autonomous—and
> active. One piece ("Landmark Survey Shows Gay Youth Coming Out Earlier
> than Ever") notes approvingly that most children now "realize" their
> orientation at age 12. Another piece, "Lesbian and Gay Youth Find Safe
> Place in Cyberspace," counsels: "Don't believe much of the hype about
> how cyberspace is populated with pedophiles." These citations are
> taken from just the first two pages of GLAAD's 15-page list of
> publications for and about "gay youth."
>
> At OutProud—another site recommended and linked by leading gay
> organizations—visitors are routed to a comic strip called "Queer
> Boys." It features two boys who are said to be 16 and look younger.
> They set off for Manhattan ("Let's run away to New York, where it's
> safe to be Queer!!" "Kewl!"), where they triumph over evildoers (i.e.,
> parents and reparative therapists) and find happiness at last thanks
> to the habitués of a bar in the West Village. ("A gay rock club!
> That's so cool! Damn! I wish we were old enough to get in!!" says one
> of the boys. "Damn those politicians! Damn them all to hell!!" replies
> the other.)
>
> For a final example of how pedophilia is being defined down, consider
> XY magazine—which would doubtless have run afoul of the obscenity laws
> until very recently. Started just four years ago, XY is now, according
> to its founder and publisher Peter Ian Cummings, the "third largest
> gay magazine in the U.S., selling over 60,000 copies per year and
> hav[ing] more than 200,000 readers." (These numbers are unaudited, but
> would put XY on a par with the Advocate in circulation, though lower
> than Out magazine's 120,000.) Cummings also reports that "you can find
> XY on sale in Borders, Tower Records, Virgin Megastores, B. Dalton,
> Barnes & Noble, Waldenbooks, and many others."
>
> What gives XY its unprecedented niche is that here, for the first
> time, is a mass-market magazine "officially targeted toward 12-29 year
> old young gay men," every issue of which, as one admiring journalist
> puts it, "features scantily clad young men in several photo spreads
> and on the cover." Then there is the non-photo content. The first
> issue was stamped "Underage." Another issue included a sympathetic
> pro-and-con interview with a prominent member of NAMBLA. An article in
> another issue was titled "F— the Age of Consent." There is also a
> smattering of self-help that can only make minors easier to find—for
> example, advice about what kids should do if their parents install a
> filtering system that prevents them from reaching gay cyberspace
> (answer: get around it).
>
> In sum, if one had taken on the challenge of designing a magazine for
> pedophiles, it would probably look a lot like XY, which is why its
> market niche and evident reader support invite reflection. So too, for
> obvious reasons, does the public (gay) reaction to all this. On the
> one hand, Out magazine referred to XY's debut as a "dubious
> achievement" and suggested that it was equivalent to child
> pornography. Similarly, Philip Guichard complained in his Village
> Voice piece (headlined "I Hate Older Men"): "Mainstream gay culture
> dresses up its kiddie porn in a pretense of serving teens. As nice as
> it is to believe that magazines like XY and Joey [a recent competitor]
> are actually consumed by gay teens, it's obvious to me that the
> shirtless kids in provocative poses who fill their glossy pages are
> there for older men." What's more, XY's publisher has complained of
> "pedophobia" on the part of his gay critics; and most advertisers, by
> Cummings's account, including those popular with the male gay market
> (Calvin Klein, Abercrombie & Fitch, the Gap), have demurred from
> buying space in its pages. Apparently, the fear of supporting child
> sex, or the fear of appearing to do so—or both—remain potent corporate
> motivators.5
>
> At the same time, however, to judge by the endorsements on XY's
> website, numerous other observers have weighed in favorably. The San
> Francisco Examiner says that of all magazines, XY is "the one most on
> the cutting edge of change." The Ft. Lauderdale Express Gay News calls
> it "the most courageous magazine in America." The general-interest
> entertainment guide Time Out New York observes that "XY has boldly
> established itself as a unique publication that tackles sex, romance,
> and other issues facing gay teens and men." But perhaps the most
> accurate indication of XY's community standing comes from the business
> publication Advertising Age, which noted: "XY is playing a significant
> role in mainstream online media. . . . The magazine's site can be
> accessed directly via America Online, and the magazine is also
> providing content to the 'youth channel' on PlanetOut.com." This
> success is a sign of the times. Some of the largest and most respected
> gay organizations in the country now list XY, of all things, as a
> "resource" for gay youth—this, alongside a burgeoning number of
> websites also aimed at minors and replete with personal ads, chat
> rooms, "pen pals," and other forms of anonymous contact rife with the
> potential for subterfuge.
maf1029
<jn...@NoSpamThanks.net> wrote:
<snippety doo-dah>
J. Donovan,
Bill Taylor,
James Smith,
sosayer,
Matilda,
Adam,
Rich,
Billary,
A. J. Squarduay,
aka...@cotse.com,
Debayas@cotse,
Hamilton T. Brighton
Robert Harrison
mail...@zedz.net
Killing Romulus
Tyrone Washington
Menlo Park
Alonga Poe
T.C. Harris
Panza Krause
maf and dog, aa # 1954, EAC Cruise Director and Lounge Pianist,
respectively
Bruce Garrett
James Smith <jn...@NoSpamThanks.net>...
JS> Another writer outraged over the outrage about "Meta-Analytic" was
JS> respected reporter and political analyst Jonathan Rauch. In his
JS> commentary on the controversy published in the National Journal, Rauch
JS> roundly defended the study.
Uhm...no he didn't. Here's what he said:
I don't know who is right, and neither do you, and neither
does the U.S. Congress. A lot of science is flawed, and
most scientists have biases. The answer is for other
scientists with different biases to do more science.
Conscientious criticism, however fierce, helps drive that
process forward. But the process counts on critics to make
some effort to be truthful.
"...some effort to be truthful." Well...that's sure a hell of a
lot more effort then your kind is willing to make...isn't it James. Bill.
Matilda. Rich. Adam. Robert.
JS> It was the critics of the "Meta-Analytic" piece, Rauch wrote, who were
JS> "turning out stomach-churning stuff."
Yeah. They were.
Here is the Rauch piece:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Washington's Other Sex Scandal
By Jonathan Rauch
National Journal, August 7, 1999
On July 12, in an action that seems to have been without precedent, the
House voted, 355-0, to condemn a scientific article. Granted, this was not
an article about magnetic induction in supercooled fluids. It was about
sexual abuse of children. Congress "condemns and denounces all suggestions
in the article . . . that indicate that sexual relationships between adults
and `willing' children are less harmful than believed and might be positive
for `willing' children." Most people who noticed this news probably found
it either puzzling or faintly amusing. I want to suggest that it was, in
fact, faintly sinister.
The July 1998 issue of Psychological Bulletin, a scholarly journal
published by the American Psychological Association, carried a dense,
31-page article titled "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties
of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples." The authors are Bruce Rind of
Temple University, Philip Tromovitch of the University of Pennsylvania, and
Robert Bauserman of the University of Michigan.
The article is not original empirical research. Rather, it analyzes 36
peer-reviewed studies and 23 graduate dissertations that examined how
sexual encounters in childhood and adolescence had affected college
students. The findings are startling.
First, the students who had experienced child sexual abuse (called "CSA")
were on average only slightly less well-adjusted than others in terms of
objective psychiatric and medical symptoms. Individuals can and do suffer
severely, but they were the exception rather than the rule.
Second, most women (72 percent) recalled their childhood sexual episodes
negatively, but most men recalled them positively (37 percent) or neutrally
(29 percent).
Third, only a minority of men and women reported lasting negative effects,
although temporary negative effects were reported by a majority of women.
Such findings, the authors state, "are inconsistent with the assumption of
pervasive and lasting harm." As a result, the authors suggest that
psychological researchers should abandon the current custom of referring to
all adult sexual encounters with minors, regardless of the circumstances
and results, as "child sexual abuse." Researchers could perform
finer-grained analyses if they used "abuse" to designate injurious or
unwilling encounters. Other encounters could be called "adult-child sex" or
"adult-adolescent sex."
The authors said they were talking about scientific definitions--not law or
morality. "The findings of the current review," they said, "do not imply
that moral or legal definitions of or views on the behaviors currently
classified as CSA should be abandoned or even altered."
As Carol Tavris, a social psychologist, wrote last month in the Los Angeles
Times, you could reasonably interpret these results as very good news: Most
people bounce back after sexual abuse. Instead, in December a group that
promotes "reparative therapy" for homosexuals denounced the report as
attempting to normalize pedophilia. In March, Laura Schlessinger, a
syndicated radio personality monikered "Dr. Laura," took up the cause and
turned it into a national crusade. "They are, in effect, suggesting a
repetition of the steps by which homosexuality was normalized," she said.
"Deviance became redefined as diversity." The study, she said, was "bogus
science, more like propaganda."
Legitimate criticism of the study fell into two categories. One concerned
the authors' alleged bias. Were they "agenda driven," aiming to
destigmatize pedophilia? In 1989, when he was 23 and just out of college,
Bauserman published a cross-cultural comparison of attitudes toward man-boy
sexual relations in a Dutch journal called Paidika, which had taken
pro-pedophilia stands. This raises red flags. It does not disqualify the
authors, but it does invite particularly rigorous scrutiny of their work.
The second kind of legitimate criticism concerned methodology. The most
prominent assertion was that the article relies heavily on 43-year-old data
that lumped contact sex together with exhibitionism--so, of course,
aftereffects seemed slight. The authors replied that exhibitionism is a
recognized form of abuse that can indeed be traumatic, and they said that
including this form of abuse in such studies is standard practice.
Moreover, they noted that their main findings, which evaluated lingering
symptoms, did not use the disputed data at all, and that omitting those
data altogether did not significantly change the other results.
I don't know who is right, and neither do you, and neither does the U.S.
Congress. A lot of science is flawed, and most scientists have biases. The
answer is for other scientists with different biases to do more science.
Conscientious criticism, however fierce, helps drive that process forward.
But the process counts on critics to make some effort to be truthful.
Starting in May, a stream of conservative activists and Republican House
members, including Majority Whip Tom DeLay, lined up to issue
denunciations. "I am appalled and outraged that an influential American
psychological association would publish a study that advocates normalizing
pedophilia," DeLay said. Advocates normalizing pedophilia? Where?
Rep. Joseph R. Pitts, R-Pa., said in a press release: "The authors write
that pedophilia is fine . . . as long as it is enjoyed" (ellipsis in
original). His office could provide me with no quotations from the study
that support his remarkable reading. Wade F. Horn, writing in The
Washington Times, said, "Apparently, these authors believe, it's perfectly
fine for an adult to sodomize a 10-year-old so long as the child doesn't
develop psychological problems because of it."
Eileen King, the head of a group called One Voice/American Coalition for
Abuse Awareness, said in a press release: "It would have us believe that
giving pedophiles free access to our children is `enlightened.' " The
quotation marks around "enlightened," as if the study had used the word,
was a nice touch. A columnist named Kathleen Parker quoted the study itself
as saying, "Sex between adults and willing minors should be described in
more positive terms." That inflammatory quotation is spurious. When I asked
for her source, Parker told me she had misplaced a quotation mark and was
chagrined. Whoops.
In June, Schlessinger declared on national television: "Two out of the
three authors have written and traveled all over the world in the
pedophilia circles to promote the notion of adult-child sex." This is a
serious accusation. I interviewed two of the authors, Rind and Bauserman,
and both said it is false. They said the statement's closest intersection
with reality is that, on one occasion, Bauserman and Tromovitch presented
their findings to a group of social workers and clinicians in the
Netherlands. When I asked for substantiation, a spokeswoman for
Schlessinger wrote to me that the authors "are obviously `in touch' with"
Dutch pedophilia advocates.
All the while, the people churning out this stomach-turning stuff were
condemning the study's authors for distorting truth to promote an agenda.
They were also charging that the American Psychological Association had
been "irresponsible."
When a few members of Congress condemn a scientific report, they are
expressing opinions. When the U.S. House of Representatives, with its vast
power, condemns a scientific report, it is making an implicit threat. After
holding its ground for a few weeks after the storm broke, in June the APA
embarked on a campaign to placate Congress--as well it might.
Raymond D. Fowler, the APA's chief executive, told me he doubts the
contretemps will have any large chilling effect on research or publication.
"I think that any attempts to interfere with the normal scientific process
wouldn't go very far," he said. Maybe. On the other hand, an activist
coalition of Kulturkampf conservatives has just learned that by smearing
research on a particularly sensitive subject it can score a 355-0 victory
over the forces of darkness. Hmm. Would you be surprised if this happened
again? And again?
"I really believe in my heart that if that study had gone unchallenged, it
would have done harm to children," says Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., the
chief sponsor of the congressional condemnation. "I think it was shoddy
science. I don't want to put a gag order on science, but let's make sure
it's science."
Who, precisely, is the "us" in "let's"? One might have expected a
conservative to appreciate that "unchallenged by Congress" does not equal
"unchallenged." If winding up at the business end of a 355-0 congressional
resolution persuades researchers to avoid asking questions or publishing
answers that provoke Tom DeLay, the result will be to stifle the advance of
knowledge about sexual abuse. That will hurt children.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
They lied about the study. They lied about its authors. Stomach
churning stuff. But liars are just your kinda guys...aren't they...
James. Matilda. Bill. Billary. Hamilton. Tyrone.
---
-Bruce Garrett
http://www.brucegarrett.com
My children had to die to be saved. They were not righteous.
-Andria Yates.
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Barnabas,
tim wrote:
> How Bad Science Helped Launch the ‘Gay’ Revolution
> By Robert H. Knight
>
> Franklin Kameny of Washington, D.C., is often described as the "dean"
> of homosexual activists. Mr. Kameny claims to have coined the term
> "gay is good," and was instrumental in having D.C.’s sodomy law
> repealed.
Here is a fact, 25 percent of the heterosexual population admit to having
sodomy on a regular basis, that is anywhere from 15 to 20 percent
more of the population than the entire homosexual population. If
anyone needs the laws on sodomy it is the heterosexuals, not the
homosexuals. Yet there are still some states that have exclusively
homosexual sodomy laws with 10 or more years in jail.
>
>
> regarding one of the totems of
> the sexual revolution, the claim that one in every 10 people is "gay."
The number is unimportant, should we not give those from Luxembourg
the same rights as all other citizens because there are too few of them?
Barnabas,
James Smith wrote:
> On Sat, 21 Sep 2002 16:48:01 GMT, Marie C. Bennett <do....@email.me>
> wrote:
>
> Homosexual Abuse of Boys -- Reconsidered The taboo against sex with
> children continues to erode.
Hey don't blame this on the homosexuals it is you goombas that
have done this, you reap what you sow. Your lot has so tied the
abuse of boys, and by inference all child molesting on homosexuals,
as homosexuals have gained rights of equality, and because your lot
have so tied child molesting to homosexuals the notion of child
molesting has been lessen along with the rights gained by homosexuals.
It is your lot who tied child porn to adult porn to take away the rights
of freedom of speech and that lead to the stranger danger implementation
in schools, which has lead to children no longer being taught any
respect of other so they kill each other and adults like they are just
playing a video game. They are now tried as adults, further eroding
the separation of children from a protected status. So you see in your
using children to get your way, you have made children unsafe.
Hope you are proud of yourselves. Your reap what you sow.
> (APA) prestigious Psychological Bulletin called "A Meta-Analytic
> Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College
> Another writer outraged over the outrage about "Meta-Analytic" was
> respected reporter and political analyst Jonathan Rauch. In his
> commentary on the controversy published in the National Journal, Rauch
> roundly defended the study. It was the critics of the "Meta-Analytic"
> piece, Rauch wrote, who were "turning out stomach-churning stuff." The
> vote in Congress—as opposed, say, to what Rind et al. had written—was
> "faintly sinister." Like the authors of the piece itself, Rauch
> advocated that, in the name of "science," researchers should "abandon
> the current custom of referring to all adult sexual encounters with
> minors, regardless of the circumstances, as 'child sexual abuse,'"
> because they could "perform finer-grained analyses if they used
> 'abuse' to denigrate injurious or unwilling encounters. Other
> encounters," Rauch echoed, "could be called 'adult-child sex' or
> 'adult-adolescent sex.'"
>
> To his credit, Rauch did report that "in 1989, when he was 23 and just
> out of college, Bauserman [one of the Meta-Analytic authors] published
> a cross-cultural comparison of attitudes toward man-boy sexual