“Relatively common”? And you, of course, have a cite for this.
Here is an article from the Journal of Legal Studies discussing the relative frequency of home invasions or “hot burglaries” as the article calls them in the US vs the UK. It is in pdf format.
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/JLS/lott.pdf
What the article states is that approximately 50% of the robberies committed in the UK are done with the occupants at home in contrast to 13% in the US. Given that the burglary rate in the UK is about twice as high as the US, that would mean the rate of home invasions is about 7 times greater in the UK.
UK style public schools are all but unknown in the US, consequently public school buggery is also very rare in the US.
I don’t see what the relative rate of home invasion in the US and UK has to do with the OP. The source of your claim is a position paper in opposition to gun control, a topic having absolutely nothing to do with sexual preference.
Yes. Except they probably call it the “Egyptian vice”, or something. Just like the Germans call it French and the French call it Italian. Different name. Same thing. The nationality makes no difference.
Rather than getting drawn in to pointing out the obvious flaws in this argument, I have a question: This is relevant because… ???
What is this fascination with public school buggery you have? Some facts:
- UK public schools are a small percentage of UK schools.
- It’s a dumb stereotype.
- The school you attend has no influence whatsoever on your sexual orientation.
Therefore I fail to see the impact on the percentage of homosexuals in the population this could have. What exactly is your point? I really have no idea what you’re trying to establish here.
I have it on good authority that the abuse of adolescent chelas by Buddhist monks is far higher in Burma and Thailand than it is in Canada, too. Of course, there are far more Buddhist monks there, and a larger proportion of those who go into it for “social” reasons rather than strong religious commitment.
I’d be very interested in seeing proportionate studies on (a) dominance sexual relationships and (b) mutualistic sexual relationships among single-sex prep school boys in America vs. single-sex “public school” boys in England, seeing as how puddleglum seems to think he has some point there. But I will be darned if I know how anybody can come up with a 3% figure or any other figure as “reliable” (assuming he hasn’t had a recent enema). We don’t even yet have a definition that works, given the range of possible standards for use in delimiting our populations.
The more we get into this topic, the more I realize how deadly dichotimous (sp dammit) thinking is.
The biggest problem with determining the percentage of homosexuals in a given population is the definition issue, as has been mentioned.
Using myself as an example, if asked:
[ul]
[li] do I fantasize about members of the opposite sex: Yes
[li] do I fantasize about members of the same sex: Yes
[li] have I ever had sex with a member of the opposite sex: No
[li] have I ever had sex with a member of the same sex: No
[/ul]
So where do you put me, in a heterosexual/homosexual only dichotomy?
The problem, as always, is that people (and their behaviour) are not that simple.
I guess that makes you an asexual, sister. 
Ah, but you’re asserting that this organization “could not possibly produce scientifically accurate non-prejudiced information,” which is itself an ad hominem argument. If we apply that standard consistently, then we must also dismiss all statistics which come from pro-homosexuality advocates, since those organizations have their own bias and agenda.
That is why ad hominem argumentation is fallacious. It is perfectly possible for an organization to be biased – and yes, even hateful – and yet produce answers which are nonetheless correct. Racial bigots may oppose immigration to the US, arguing that such immigration is out of control. However, their hateful stance does not automatically invalidate their arguments or the statistics they cite.
To cite another example… Planned Parenthood has a vested interest in making abortion acceptable; after all, they derive a measure of income from such services. Should we automatically dismiss any claims they make about the number of abortions which are performed due to grave personal hardship?
It is perfectly reasonable to consider the possibility of bias, and to urge others to do likewise. However, that is a piss-poor substitute for refuting the arguments themselves.
Excuse me, but… isn’t that an ad hominem argument which you’re making? Besides, let’s assume that you’re right – that these people are an ignorant hate group. Does that automatically invalidate their statement on the mere number of homosexuals in the USA?
Would it not be better – and more convincing, and more intellecutally astute – to refute their statistics, rather than attacking their character?
fixed coding **
[/QUOTE]
Not necessarily.
The Family Research Institute was founded by Dr. Paul Cameron, an arch conservative psychologist living in D.C. with offices in Texas and Nebraska. Twenty years ago, Dr. Cameron was investigated by the APA and subsequently dropped from their membership (at their choice, not his) for using fraudulently obtained (i.e. “made-up”) statistics, ala Sir Cyril Burt, in his studies. In Colorado, not a particularly liberal state, his studies were disallowed as trial evidence for this reason.
Dr. Cameron’s history of ethics violation in research, along with his comment that gay men should be quarantined, tattooed, and exterminated (which he stupidly included the verification of on his own web site in the copy he posts of an apology to him from the National Republic- the writer apologized for a factual error, but in the same letter cites the exact source in which Cameron made the famous “exterminate” comment) definitely cast serious doubt as to the validity of his sources.
I agree that discounting a study because it was conducted by a conservative organization is in and of itself ad hominem, but in this case there is reason to suspect the validity of the research as well. (Two of Cameron’s major patrons, incidentally, are Bob Dornan and Pat Buchanan, also evidencing motive for bias.)
Point the first: I still maintain that my dismissiveness of the organization in question is not ad hominem, defined by dictionary.com as “appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason”. I confess that I do have plenty of personal considerations against the FRI, but there are also plenty of other logical and reasonable reasons to put the FRI in a suspect light.
I would say that the term “pro-homosexuality advocate” is loaded, but certainly there must be vociferous lobbying organizations for G/L/B/T rights out there. If those organizations consistently made statements that could reasonably be equated with the assertion that 2 + 2 = 5, then yes, I would doubt any data that they arrived at just as much.
Point the second: I’ll believe that assertion when the Tobacco Institute publishes a study conclusively proving that smoking kills, or Senator Jesse Helms cites a study made by his office that some pornography is harmless fun, or Billy Graham’s ministry sponsors research that concludes “I’ll be darned, Jews don’t control the universe after all, I guess Billy was wrong when he said as much to President Nixon.” I’m not saying credibility is an all-or-nothing proposition, but isn’t it safe to say that the amount of credence one may safely lend to any given study is in inverse proportion to the political extremism of the sponsoring group of the study?
Point the third: Planned Parenthood is a not-for-profit organization primarily dependent upon charitable contributions for their income. Their vested interests are a matter of politics, not fee-for-service considerations. A better example would be claims made about necessary medical services by an HMO, which might have reason to either inflate or deflate such statistics. Should we automatically dismiss those statistics? No. Should we scrutinize them, and the methodology used to arrive at them, very closely? Yes. If the conclusion made by the study in question is that no hospital stays beyond one hour are ever necessary, should we give them the immediate brush-off? You be the judge.
Point the fourth: Calling into question the evidence upon which an argument is based is not piss-poor in any way – it’s a perfectly valid and extremely commonly used method of refutation. The source of ones evidence alone reflects on the quality of that evidence. Say, for example, that by some amazing coincidence the same set of statistics appear in both the New England Journal of Medicine and the National Enquirer. I could make the same cite from either publication, but the source that I chose to name would factor greatly into the inherent believability of the statistics.
I’m surprised at the number (and there are quite a few not singling anyone out) of posts saying:
“Why does it matter? Why should we care?" And very close to <suspicious eyeing> “Why are you asking?” …
-
This is the SDMB this is a legit question entirely in
keeping with the practices and morals of the board IMHO. -
I have heard protesters on (OK- on TV how very lame)
Yelling “1 in 10! 1 in 10” referring to the Kinsey statistic. -
I have heard Pat Robertson trumpeting the 1 in 100 statistic (when it suits him not to try to scare the Ladies of Virginia Beach into thinking most of their kids teachers are gay indoctrination recruiters)
For Political reasons it is very important, Examples: for money for everything from AIDS prevention targets to gay teen counseling $$ to Insurance for same sex couples. Deciding those issues fairly requires us to get this answer & it behooves each side to spin or exaggerate or minimize these numbers as best they can.
Yes, I’m familiar with the accusations that you cite. To be fair though, I think there’s ample reason to doubt those accusations. For example, the claim that Cameron wants to “exterminate” homosexuals is incongruous, in light of FRI’s other writings. Also, while Cameron did say that it would be cheaper to kill homosexuals in primitive societies rather than quarantine them, that hardly qualifies as an endorsement of such. (Moreover, Cameron specifically said that such an idea is “not politically, ethically or socially acceptable” – in fact, he said so in the very same article.)
FRI’s rebuttal to the various accusations can be found at http://www.familyresearchinst.org/FRI_APA-rebuttal.html . Personally, I don’t know which side is more correct, and frankly, I don’t much care. I’m not endorsing FRI’s studies; however, I do think it’s intellectually sloppy to dismiss them by saying “FRI is an ignorant anti-homosexual group! They must be wrong!”
(And yes, I do know that you acknowledged such arguments to be ad hominem in nature. I suspect that our views really don’t diverge that much – insofar as we recognize that is is ad hominem argumentation, and that we must consider the possibility of bias in such studies.)
Which is precisely what your original posting did. It attacked the person (or in this case, the organization) instead of appealing to logic or reason. Attacking the person is a classic example of appealing to personal considerations. In addition, there is nothing logical about assuming that a study must be wrong, simply because it was used by an (allegedly) hateful entity.
Of course, but if we dismiss their findings out right, then by that very same token, we should dismiss the findings cited by all the homosexual activists groups as well. While it’s easy to say “They’re biased. Ignore what they say!”, such responses ultimately amount to sloppy argumentation.
Not entirely. They may be not-for-profit, but they still derive substantial amounts of income from abortion and from donations-- which itself amounts to a vested interest. So once again, should we automatically dismiss everything that Planned Parenthood says, simply because they have a bias toward abortion?
Only if you attack the evidence itself, which your original posting did not. Your posting was an attack on the organization, not the evidence which it presented – and that makes it an ad hominem argument.
First of all, my good man or woman, the post that you orginally attacked as being ad hominem belonged to ambushed, not me. Let’s take a look back at that original post, shall we?
What you seem to fail to realize is that just because something is inflammatory or pejorative doesn’t mean that there’s no logic or reason behind the aspersion cast. The fact of the matter is, a logical and reasonable person could very easily conclude from reading the so-called “literature” on the FRI website that that organization is indeed ignorant, anti-gay, and hateful. These considerations go far beyond the personal – they cast a global pall upon any statistical claim that this institute might make. Let us also not forget that we’re not talking about a literal person here, we’re talking about a political lobby with a specific agenda and ideology. The FRI certainly does not have a monopoly on being a fringe group – there’s radical organizations like ACT-UP on the other side of the coin too, and they should be held to the same standards of fairness. If you’d bothered to read my post carefully, you’d see that I wasn’t saying “they’re biased, ignore what they say.” I was saying “there may not be such a thing as a completely unbiased group, but the more overt the bias, the less one should trust anything that comes from that group.” The more fair and impartial the formulator of the evidence is, the stronger the quality of that evidence. The FRI is not merely “biased” they are very very very biased, and as such should be dismissed pretty summarily. However, if you would like me to go into in-depth analysis of the FRI, I would be happy to do so in another thread.
**To be fair though, I think there’s ample reason to doubt those accusations. **
Please give some of the reasons. I can supply you with ample discrediting sources from respected psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists, and other experts which discredit him. (Or perhaps they’re the biased ones; for 1% of the population, queers sure as hell have some influence.)
One of the better exposes ever done of Cameron was in the Denver Post in 1996; unfortunately I don’t have access to a newspaper database from home or I’d supply the issue numbers.
Hardly scholarly, but the 3-18-99 Rolling Stone also goes into some depth on his background (p.38), and the National Review article he took such umbrage to, Queer Science (Oct 3, 1994, p. 10) included quite a few statements equally damning that Cameron did not take issue with.
In Cameron’s rebuttal he states that he was never asked to resign from the APA, and true he states since it would have been rather gilding the lily after they expelled him for ethical violations. For confirmation of this on the APA’s own letterhead, please see
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_cameron_sheet.html
Cameron actually admitted to the fact that in one of his studies of gay society in which he claimed to have surveyed 1000s of participants, only 60 were in fact gay. (His implication was that all of the participants were.) The most suspicious factor is that none of the results that he has ever found in his “research” (e.g. that gays are more likely to molest children, that children of gay parents have major gender confusion and are more likely to be gay) have EVER EVEN ONCE been reproduced in any other study by any agency. The man seems to decide what his results will be then he slaps together some “research” that backs him up wiht evidently as much care as a Jolt swilling freshmen writing a 20 page term paper at 3:30 a.m. the morning it’s due, and his results invariably are unable to be reproduced.
Again, it’s not ad hominem to be more suspicious of the research of a man who has been disciplined for ethical violations, who will not reveal his research procedures, and whose results have not been mirrored or even resembled by any other studies. As for not caring which side is correct, if you’re going to use him as a credible source, you should.
The following is an ad hominem attack: I think Paul Cameron is a chest beating knuckle dragging fascist troglodyte who’d be far more at home chilling under the stalactites with Osama and Omar than in any gathering of mental health professionals. Furthermore it is my considered opinion (and one verified in an extensive survey of all of my imaginary friends) that, in addition to being living breathing proof that a trained Bassett Hound can get a Ph.D., Cameron is the practitioner of professional ethics that would raise eyebrows in the offices of Josef Goebbels and that those who use his statistics (Dornan, Buchanan, Robertson, etc. ad nauseum) without even attempting to explain why they are contradicted by hundreds of similar studies are the ideological clones of McCarthy waving his list of “200 confirmed communists” and Julius Streicher Jewbaiting on street corners.
On the other hand, I think that TITANIC movie he made was one hell of a picture.
Goodness gracious, would someone please click the links in my sig? I know we’ve discussed this at length before…
(AFAIC, I’ll stick with the one in ten, except when you’re over my house, when it’s three in three. 
)
Esprix
So what, there’s six people living there? 
andros, andros, andros… shakes head sadly
You obviously haven’t seen nearly enough gay porn. All you need to have three in three is…well, three. Requires some flexibility and athleticism, but…
jayjay
:eek: :::Boggle:::