|
|
|
Member
|
 |
|
|
|
Feb 22nd, 2006, 08:51 PM
Anti-gay pseudoscience
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intel...le.jsp?pid=996
Quote:
Nearly 600 evangelical Christians packed into the gymnasium of the Calvary Christian Academy in Forth Worth, Texas, to witness a ceremony on a Sunday in June. With a flourish of his pen, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed the first bill while the televangelist at his side praised Jesus.
Gov. Perry shared the stage with celebrity Pentecostal faith healer Rob Parsley, whose television program is carried by 1,400 stations nationwide. In the audience were the leaders of two prominent family values action groups: Donald Wildmon, chairman of the American Family Association, and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council.
The first document Perry signed that day was a parental notification law requiring girls under 18 to obtain parental permission before having an abortion. The second proposed that the state constitution be amended to specifically prohibit gays and lesbians from marrying. (Texas voters overwhelmingly approved the amendment this Nov. 8.)
Parsley heaped praise on Gov. Perry for "protecting the children of Texas from the gay agenda." Then he rattled off a series of shocking statistics: "Gay sex is a veritable breeding ground for disease," he said. "Only 1% of the homosexual population in America will die of old age. The average life expectancy for a homosexual in the United States of America is 43 years of age. A lesbian can only expect to live to be 45 years of age. Homosexuals represent 2% of the population, yet today they're carrying 60% of the known cases of syphilis."
The televangelist did not reveal where he got those numbers. He stated them starkly as facts to be accepted on blind faith. But they are not facts. They are gross distortions lifted straight from the pages of pseudo-scientific studies by Dr. Paul Cameron, a crackpot psychologist and champion of the anti-gay crusade.
|
Quote:
Not one of Cameron's anti-gay studies has been published in a respected scientific journal with rigorous content review standards. Instead, Cameron props up his façade of credibility by publishing his studies in Psychological Reports, a Montana-based vanity magazine that advertises itself as "The Scientific Manifestation of Free Speech" and will publish practically anything for $27.50 per page.
Unlike a serious academic journal, Psychological Reports does not employ a peer review panel of scientists to guard against flawed studies. But its title looks good in footnotes, and Cameron has been publishing his work in the magazine since 1972, long before he joined the anti-gay crusade. His first study in Psychological Reports concerned the relationship between pet and non-pet owners and animals. Cameron concluded that pet owners are far more likely to be kind to animals than non-pet owners.
|
Quote:
|
Cameron moved his base of operations to Colorado five years later, in 1992, after supporters of a state constitutional amendment to ban civil rights protections for gays and lesbians distributed 100,000 copies of his study 'What Homosexuals Do" (sample statistic: 17% eat human feces) to Colorado voters one week before they went to the polls. The amendment passed. Later that year, during the raging debate over President Clinton's proposal to allow gays in the military, Army officials circulated Cameron's studies inside the Pentagon.
|
Quote:
A 550-item questionnaire designed by Cameron was at the heart of the ISIS study. The questions were oddly constructed and deeply personal: "With how many homosexual virgins have you had homosexual relations?" and "How would you feel about sharing toilet facilities with a homosexual?" (Multiple-choice answers to the latter question included, "Very positive. I'd enjoy it greatly.") Another question asked respondents why they thought they had developed their sexual orientation and gave a checklist of 44 reasons including "I was seduced by a homosexual adult" and "I failed at heterosexuality." According to contemporary newspaper articles, residents in several neighborhoods targeted by Cameron's field teams called the police to report that perverts in the area were asking sleazy questions.
Legitimate scientists have identified and described in detail multiple fundamental flaws in the ISIS study's methodology and statistical analysis, any one of which would be enough to destroy its credibility. But still, to this day, Cameron's 1983 survey serves as the religious right's primary wellspring of anti-gay fear mongering.
"Whenever frightening claims about homosexual sex habits or child molestation are reported in pamphlets, videotapes or other materials, chances are the information has been taken from this single study," writes David Williams, director of the Kentucky Gay and Lesbian Library and Archives, who tracks the use of Cameron's statistics. "As propaganda, it has taken on a life of its own. As information, however, it's stunningly useless."
The same year Cameron conducted the ISIS survey, he released a separate study claiming that homosexuals are "10-20 times more likely than heterosexuals to molest children," a startling figure that still frequently pops up in hard-right religious sermons and AM radio screeds.
Cameron based that finding on a 1978 study by Nicholas Groth, the highly respected director of the Sex Offender Program at the Connecticut Department of Corrections. Groth had interviewed 175 convicted child molesters and found that more of them had molested boys than girls. Cameron's statistic is derived from the false assumption that men who molest boys are gay, despite the fact that Groth's original study found that none of the men identified himself as homosexual. Instead, the pedophiles were either heterosexual outside of their criminal behavior or were what Groth termed "fixated pedophiles with no interest in sex with adults."
Groth was outraged and filed a formal complaint with the American Psychological Association that led to Cameron losing his professional accreditation. "Dr. Cameron misrepresents my findings and distorts them to advance his homophobic views," Groth wrote the APA. "He disgraces his profession."
|
|
__________________
| |
|
|
Linear Mode
