Any such conclusion depends on;
1/ Precise definition of what’s gay, what’s straight.
2/ Complete disclosure of who’s gay, who’s straight.
The first has always prove problematic and may be impossible. The latter has never been achieved as many, for one reason or another and perfectly within their rights, conceal this.
Ergo; any figures that makes claims on the matter will be full of holes and pretty worthless.
Well, on the one hand, I guess a man who molests a boy is by definition homosexual, so I suppose you could say that gay men are behind that branch of molestation. But unless I’m having a complete cranial rectal inversion, I recall that the profile for a child molester is a nominally heterosexual married man, often a family member. So the scads of attempts to tie this to the gay rights movement would seem to fail on their face.
Besides which, that perspective on child molestation ignores a rather important portion of the populace: women. There are adult women who molest boys. And of course, there’s that eensy teensy massively overwhelming issue of adults having sex with underage girls.
When I was in middle school, there was one boy who had sex with adult men (although he was by no means an unwilling participant, not that that makes it acceptable for the adults). But I would put the rate of severely underage girls who were in sexual relationships with older teens or even adults (and the latter was not rare at all) at about 33%. Throw in sexual relationships between same age kids, and it easily hit majorities in both genders, but of course that’s not an issue for the topic of child molestation.
I don’t know this guy, but after looking at the link, it seems to me you you’re misconstruing his stated meaning.
He didn’t say Gays are more likely to be child molesters, nor did he imply it, nor anything of the kind.
What he actually said was:
And, I guess he has a point. Homosexuality and Pederasts are not “utterly different” or “not related to each other in any way, shape or form.” Both refer to male same sex sexual relations.
The same of course applies to heterosexuality and pedophilia. They are not utterly different and unconnected.
A thirty year old man may find 15 year old girls to be very attractive sexually. Letting him be a girlscoutmaster and take a bunch of such girls into the woods by himself might not be the hottest idea. I think this is why men can’t be scoutmasters for Girlscouts. We would think that men who seek such a position may well be suspect.
I don’t see why it would be different with a homosexual man and Boyscouts. I think the articles claim is that to ignore the potential sexual element or claim it doesn’t exist is simply stupid. I would agree with that much, but I really wouldn’t have a problem with a gay scoutmaster. The important thing to me would be multiple levels of simultaneoud supervision to ensure things stay appropriate and I’d want it that way regardless.
Scylla - men can so be Girl Scout Leaders. I was a leader for four years and my co-leader was male.
Actually, this is not conventionally the case. Men who prey on little boys are not generally considered to be gay. The difficulty with definition (as just alluded to) is that some people “classify” an adult’s sexual orientation by the adult gender one is attracted to. And no small proportion of men who molest boys choose women for their adult sexual relationships. They’re not attracted to men and don’t consider themselves gay (and aren’t considered gay, at least not by some researchers in this area).
And in fact, one of the crappiest little factoids that floats around and is often quoted by the conservative scaremongers is how some high percentage of child molesters, when surveyed, said they were gay. Later review of that study and those cases suggest that those guys never considered themselves gay and wouldn’t be considered gay by any conventional sense of the word; they were misunderstanding what that term meant in that context.
But without accurate figures for the total number number of gay men you cannot reach any conclusion as to what percentage the molesters make of the whole, or make any comparisons to any other subset.
And that’s even before you consider the complexities as outlined by Cranky. Sexuality and deviation from society norms is not a 2 dimensional spreadsheet.
But not only is practically impossible, it’s not exactly relevant. You’d be as well comparing the figures by eye colour, or height, you’d get far more accurate figures that way. And it still wouldn’t prove anything.
Shows what I know.
[quote]
I think the articles claim is that to ignore the potential sexual element or claim it doesn’t exist is simply stupid.
[quote]
I think you are giving the post too much credit.
The conclusion of his post is this:
Somehow, I just can’t see that language being used to describe letting grown men supervise young girls, and have it be followed up with “(And before anyone e-mails in to tell me that hetersexuality and molestation are utterly different things, not related to each other in any way, shape or form whatsoever: I DON’T BELIEVE YOU.)”
If Derbyshire had written what YOU wrote, I don’t think anyone would have much to complain about. But what you paraphrased isn’t what he wrote, and in addition, this is Derbyshire. I don’t think Derbyshire thinks of homosexuality as a sexual orientation. He sees it as a deviant behavior, a harmful sexual fetish, and in his final sentance is arguing that the two deviant behaviors/fetishes are related to each other.
Apos:
Maybe I am giving too much credit. I’ve never read the guy before. He is certainly not very sensitive on the issue. At the same time I note that he didn’t actually say gays are more likely to be child molesters.
Considering that some use the fact that because some men molest young boys, that in turn means they must be gay. Is it possible that who these people choose to molest has more to do with 1.) opportunity, and 2.) the potential for these children NOT to tell due to it potentially being more embarrassing.
Especially since a lot of times the view is that same gender sex is wrong/deviant/whatever and is shameful.
Does that make sense or could I be way off on their motivations?
Hopefool,
You are missing something here. An adult man who has sex with boys may or may not be gay. He may choose as his adult sexual partners only women - and be as completely grossed out by having sex with men as your “normal” heterosexual male. Or he may not ever choose to have sex with women at all, he may choose only to have sex with children. The gender of the child may or may not be important to him. And, IIRC, girls are much more likely to be the victim of sexual abuse than boys. Pedophiles who have sex with twelve year old girls (and never boys) would be likely insulted by the thought that they were gay.
I’m not a gay man, but my understanding is that it hasn’t been hard to discretely hook up for sex as a gay male in recent history. Choosing children because there is opportunity would completely ignore the personal ad/gay bar dynamics - not to mention the grocery store, work, getting set up by friends, etc avenues for meeting people (and the fact that most gay men seem to understand the it isn’t nice to kiss and tell - I think you are more likely to find a gay man who understands why you might not want to tell your boss than a twelve year old). Hell, until the mid 1980s most big cities had bath houses primarly to facilitate casual sex among gay men - and yet pedophiles still preyed on young boys in big cities.
We had this discussion quite some time ago - well, many times, probably - and I actually went to the trouble of calling up Dr. Bill Marshall, a renowned expert on the subject of sexual crime and deviance, who was one of the father’s mentors when Dad got his psych degree, and posted his thoughts on this very matter.
To sume up Dr. Marshall’s points:
Men who molest prepubescent boys are almost universally heterosexual in their adult relationships. According to Dr. Marshall, interviews with such men revealed that their attraction to young boys was reflective of typically female characteristics - smooth skin, etc. (I would go into more detail but I’m frankly kind of grossed out just typing this stuff.)
Men who molest pubescent boys, e.g. 12-17, are overwhelmingly homosexual in their adult relationships, although not quite as statistically universal as in the first case.
Therefore, if you have a bunch of prepubescent kids - e.g. younger than 11-12 or so - having them supervised by homosexual men is, in fact, the safest thing you could do. If they’re teenagers, you would be somewhat safer having them supervised by heterosexual men. Of course in both cases I think people are being a bit hyper.
Those were the facts as espoused by Dr. Marshall, and I’d be happy to call him up again if someone starts a GD.
Thanks Rick Jay. I missed all this the first time around. Here on the SDMB, I knew it was covered by people better informed than I. I only dipped my toe in when I saw stuff on another message board and virtually no one was being the voice of reason.
Isn’t it also the case that sexual attraction and molestation of kids who are 12-17 has an entirely different name? It’s not even considered pedophilia but rather something else?
Dangerosa, thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, I don’t think I asked my question very coherently. Let me try again (sadly, I’ll probably fail this time too).
I do understand that just because a man molests a young boy that doesn’t make him gay, in no shape, form or fashion. However, I wondered if do to whatever reasons that said molester chose his victim is part of why others (like homophobes) like to say it makes him gay.
Ok, that still sounds convoluted to me, but I can’t think of any other way to proceeded, so I’ll just keep forging ahead and hope someone understands what I’m asking.
So, although homophobes see this male molester as gay and he’s obviously not, the cause of that would possibly be simply due to other factors (about why the molester picked a boy over a girl) like opportunity (IE: it’s easier to gain access to a child of the same sex, or boys in general, than to the opposite – again, not because the molester actually is gay but due to his chances to be involved with the children he apparently so craves) or because of an attitude of shame.
It’s that last part that made me wonder most. If a molester is looking for an in-road to keep their agenda/true identity a secret, wouldn’t that be helpful? To cultivate with a young boy how this activity that’s being forced on him makes him gay, and of course, everyone knows this is a wicked, sinful thing to be and do. Would that make any difference on who molesters choose? And if so, wouldn’t that play right into the homophobe’s hands to be able to use that and instead insist that most molesters are gay? That was what I was trying to get to.
Probably still not there though. 
Oh, and I agree with what you said about opportunities, etc. for gay people. I definitely do not think that in this day and age they’d have to look much further than any of the rest of us do to date… work, friends, club scene, personals, church or whatever. Surely no sane person would believe that a gay person would have to prey on children because they can’t find anyone else. What a nut job the guy in the OP is talking about must be. (Yeek! Horrible sentence structure I know, but it’s late and I seem woefully inept at coming up with something better. Sorry!)
RickJay, excellent information. Thanks for providing it.
And I wouldn’t touch SPOOFE with toothpaste on the end of a ten foot pole.
Esprix
The really disgusting thing about the “gays are more likely to molest children” libel is that most of it is attributible to one man. His name is Paul Cameron (I refuse to hyperlink to his homepage, but you can find it by googling his name and skipping past the debunkings) and he is the head of the Family Research Institute, a rabidly anti-gay association whose sole purpose is to distribute anti-homosexual propaganda to Fundies and wacko conservatives. He is far more dangerous than Fred Phelps (who frequently cites his work) ever even thought of being.
The best debunking of Cameron is here. The short version:
He was a professor of psychology in the 1960s and 1970s who even then started to raise eyebrows with his outlandish claims about gays. He was finally expelled from the American Psychological Association for falsifying his research (about gays, of course) and for other ethical violations. He has been censured by the American Sociological Association, called a blatant fraud by one Ft. Worth superior court judge and even such anti-gay groups and individuals as Focus on the Family, the Roman Catholic Church, and “Bookie of Virtues” William Bennett have stated that he is both wrong and unethical. His “research” is inevitably at odds with all other research conducted (e.g. he claims gays have an average life expectancy of 43 [a figure he got from using the obituaries of AIDS VICTIMS!] and that homosexuality is a learned pathology) and among other cute tricks he claimed in one Nebraska conference that “in this very town” a little boy had had his genitals severed by a homosexual attack, a claim that was proven to be 100% false (to which he responded “Well, it could have happened”.)
BUT HERE’S THE SICKENING PART: As thoroughly debunked and discredited as he is (he has NEVER been published in a peer reviewed journal; most of his articles appear in titles such as ADOLESCENCE JOURNAL and PSYCHOLOGY REPORTS, which sound quite distinguished but are in fact vanity presses), he is STILL considered a reputable expert witness by many judicial systems. It is because of his testimony, spewing “facts” and figures that are thoroughly at odds with the writings of reputable researchers, that the State of Arkansas will not allow homosexual couples to adopt or, in many cases, even be foster parents, and because of his testimony a lesbian mother in Alabama lost custody of her children.
Cameron is cited in this very popular anti-gay-marriage article currently making the rounds on the net. It was written by two Ph.D.s in theology (who you’d think would know better) and appeared in Christianity Today.
He is tops on my list of “They need a good ol’ fashion medieval ass whoopin’ folks” but he won’t get it. People are so fucking stupid.
(PS- I’m currently writing a reallly long screed on the Benne/McDermott article that I plan to pit here when done, much of it involving their use of Cameron as a credible source.)