Dear professors: Gays are NOT child molesters you stupid fucks! Love, Sampiro

The BBQ Pit
1

This article appeared (mostly the same with one major difference) on Christianity Today and in various church newsletters. I have seen it cited here at SDMB and on other message boards as the great apologia for the anti-gay marriage stance. Most of it is the same silly conservative Christian rhetoric trying to masquerade as something other than conservative Christian rhetoric and failing; I took issue with most of the points of the article here (warning: very long), but one particular line in the article burned my ass like Emmanuel Lewis with a propane torch. Here it is, with the hyperlinks as they appear in Christianity Today.

Okay, that’s a pretty powerful and damning accusation- let’s make sure we understand it (and while I don’t agree with the other two allegations, I’m just going to deal exclusively with the “greater rate of molestation” part:

The authors of this article have just stated that
HOMOSEXUALS ARE MORE LIKELY TO SEXUALLY VIOLATE (OR AT VERY LEAST ALLOW THE SEXUALLY VIOLATION OF) CHILDREN THAN STRAIGHT PEOPLE

I honestly can’t think of anything worse to call somebody than a child molester: just the accusation, as yet unproven, has ruined the career and reputation of Michael Jackson and the charge that he purchased child pornography has damned any comeback for Pee-Wee (even though in his case the charges were dropped). You most certainly don’t make that charge without some serious documentation.

Here’s what they use for documentation on Christianity Today: a link to a counselling site for gay youth and the abstract for an article on sexual scripting, NEITHER of which mention anything having to do with children raised in gay households. (I read the full 23 page text of the article they supplied the abstract for- my fuller account appears
here, but I intend to be less polite in this rant).

So what the fuck are they using as sources I wondered? So I went to the original posting and noticed that they give a different cite (very badly). It’s to a particular volume and issue of the journal Adolescence (they don’t supply the name of the author, article title or page numbers) which, when I pulled it off the shelf, turned out to be an article by Paul Cameron.

Paul Cameron is the biggest fucking quack in America- even many members of the Religious Right disavow him. He has been expelled from the American Psychological Association for ethical violations specifically related to his falsification of research on homosexuality, he has been censured by the Nebraska Psychological Assn., the American Sociological Association, and read the riot act by a judge in Texas all for his lies and shitty “research” writings. His writings are almost exclusively self-published or appear in vanity press magazines, and yet he is given such credence that his testimony on the likelihood of gays to molest children has led to the removal of children from the homes of gay parents and foster-parents EVEN THOUGH HE IS ONE OF THE MOST DISCREDITED WRITERS IN AMERICA TODAY AND NO OTHER INDEPENDENT STUDY HAS MATCHED HIS FINDINGS. And here’s the icing on the cake: in that same article in Adolescence, Cameron himself states that

Cameron has produced “studies” showing that the average life expectancy for homosexuals is in the late 30s to early 40s, a figure he arrived at by using OBITUARIES FOR AIDS VICTIMS. He estimates that the majority of pedophiles are gay by using the fact that the majority of kids molested are boys- PEDOPHILIA IS A PATHOLOGY THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE ADULT SEX DRIVE- THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEDOPHILES ARE COMPLETELY HETEROSEXUAL IN THEIR SEXUAL LONGINGS WITH OTHER ADULTS. Cameron lied to a crowd in Nebraska by claiming that a four year old had had his genitals bitten off by gays, then didn’t even apologize when he was proven to have made it up, and all of this is just the icing on the cake. I can’t imagine a less credible witness for any prosecutor.

I’ve delved in more detailed and detached language with Cameron here, but I come here not to be professional or courteosu but to vent. When I see the writing of the fanatical homophobe lunatic Cameron cited by a dumbass redneck legislator who brandishes his G.E.D. like it’s a license to perform surgery it pisses me off, but what makes me boil is that this article was written by two Ph.D.s (one of them a priest), BOTH OF WHOM KNOW THAT IT IS IMPERATIVE TO DETERMINE THE RELIABILITY OF YOUR DOCUMENTATION BEFORE MAKING ANY EXTREME OR PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS CLAIM. The professors are Dr./Fr. Gerald McDermott and Dr. Robert Benne, both of Roanoke College (a small Lutheran school in Virginia), and either of them would probably fail a student for providing documentation as slim and faulty for such a serious and even potentially dangerous claim. (I’m a professor myself: if I made the comment in a paper that “black women are far more likely to commit cannibalism than other races and as such should not be allowed to adopt” and then as documentation posted a flier left on my car by the KKK, I would probably be fired and it would make the cover of tomorrow’s newspaper, but BECAUSE THESE FUCKING MORONS, IN ADDITION TO PROVING THAT A TRAINED BEAGLE COULD GET A PH.D., WRITE FOR AN UNREAD AUDIENCE WHO DON’T KNOW OR GIVE A SHIT ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF RELIABLE DOCUMENTATION BUT ONLY KNOW THAT “HEY, THERE’S TWO PREFESSIRS WHO THANK LIKE I THANK- BARBRA JO GIT THAT BABY OUT THE DRIER AND LET’S PRAY” IN A SOCIETY WHERE IT’S PERFECTLY ALRIGHT FOR THE PRESIDENT TO PROPOSE AN AMENDMENT FORCING ALL STATES TO VIEW GAYS AS INFERIOR TO STRAIGHT COUPLES THEY GET AWAY WITH IT!

Well, I acknowledge that they are protected by Freedom of Speech and that FoS is necessary, but I’m protected by it as well.

Dear McDermott and Benne: you are lying libelling sacks of offal. The slimiest worm that ever slithered off the liquid shit of a dying three legged rabid wolf-bitch is holier than any wafer that ever touches your putrid hands. I almost wish that I did believe in the supernatural just so that I could entertain the fantasy of you and those like you (the Josef Goebbels’ and Julius Streichers of 21st century America) would spend eternity in hell, your souls transformed upon your death into giant tampons and handed to a 700 foot tall Della Reese. Fuck you and your total lack of ethics: you should both be defrocked and relieved of your positions, but I’ve no doubt you’re more likely to be promoted than censured. Nevertheless, look no farther than yourselves for the reason America is slowly but surely turning away from religious faith.

Have a nice day.

2

Nice. /me applauds

However, you’re kind of rough on trained beagles. One of my best friends is a (semi)-trained beagle.
:smiley:

3

shakes head sadly

The worst thing is that some people think having a PhD means a person is going to always be right. Reminds me of the ethics professor at McGill University that they called in to argue against gay marriage in court, up here.

4

I totally agree with you EXCEPT FOR YOUR DEFENSE OF MICHEAL JACKSON and ALL YOUR DAMN SHOUTING

Child molester or not, he is a damn freak. He was a freak back when he was big time. His recent crappy releases has ruined his reputation far more than his molestation charges. Please try not to make you text look like the Time Cube guy.

Other than that, you rock!

5

PhD: Piled higher & deeper

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But child molesters are perverts and homosexuals are perverts, therefore all homosexuals are child molesters! Surely you can see that! It’s logic, just like snails are animals and carrots are animals, therefore all snails are carrots, see? Logic. I know you’re going to say that carrots aren’t animals, but if that were true, how could they be snails? So they are.

7

Sampiro, you’ve provided an object lesson in debunking. Thanks for a stellar contribution.

8

A tear to mine own eye is wot that done brung, it surely did. Masterful!

My advice is to clean this rant up a bit, get rid of the ALL CAPS, and send it on to both perfesserz, as well as their intended readers. Such flummery cannot go unchallenged.

9

8/10. Excellent job.

-1 point for overuse of CAPS and BOLD CAPS.

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Whaddya got against Della Reese? (She’s a little past prime tampon-using age, anyway.) How about Ann Coulter? :smiley:

Great rant, by the way…

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[QUOTE=Sampiro]
<big snip> your souls transformed upon your death into giant tampons and handed to a 700 foot tall Della Reese.<snip>

[QUOTE]

Whaddya got against Della Reese? She’s past prime tampon wearing age anyway. How about Ann Coulter? :smiley:

Great rant, by the way…

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Hey, he could write copy for ballots:

ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF PROPOSITON ED-209

We have very dangerous schools these days. The Ed-209 project will help protect our children by eliminating dangerous elements from our schools. Please vote yes on this proposition and PROTECT YOUR CHILDREN FROM THE DANGEROUS ELEMENTS. Thank you for your support.

REBUTTAL TO ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF PROPOSITION ED-209

The people in favor of the Ed-209 project DO NOT CARE ABOUT YOUR CHILDREN! They only care about LINING THE POCKETS OF THE DEFENSE INDUSTRY! Who knows how reliable these robots are? What if they accidentally “eliminate” a kid who isn’t dangerous, just having a bad day? WHAT WILL STOP THEM FROM DECIDING YOUR CHILD IS A DANGEROUS ELEMENT?

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This is my first post as a “Charter Member”… oh Jesus, I’m like Keanu in MATRIX: THE ONE THAT DIDN’T SUCK, or Brad Pitt in INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE- it’s like I’ve never seen with my own eyes before now… there would so be a showtune here if this were a musical…

But enough sentiment. You’re totally right: I went overboard with the caps and bolds.

The version on my blog (which is more civil but a lllloooootttt longer, especially if you start here) has been getting a lot of traffic though not that many comments; however, some of the recent traffic has been from Roanoke College, so I’m guessing that the professors themselves have learned of the post. I can’t imagine them NOT responding to it (since I said they were either idiots or bigots and accidentally e-mailed a copy to the GLBT Student Union at their school), so this may prove interesting.

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I’m pretty sure it could be statistically proven that a child has a greater risk of being molested in a church than in a homosexual household.

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Well, the statistics are in for Boston’s Catholic churches. Seven percent of the priests who served there from 1950-2003 have been accused of child molesting; that’s an incredibly higher percentage that the percentage of gays in Boston who’ve been accused.

16

You seem to be assuming that being gay and being a priest are mutually exclusive…

17

Good point.

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Certainly, priests can be gay. But the FACTS remain thus:

  1. Men who molest prepubescent children are almost always heterosexuals in their adult relationships. Yes, I will provide cites if people want to drag this issue out again. Homosexual men are NOT more likely to molest young kids than heterosexual men; they are in fact LESS likely to do so, although the difference in practical terms is very small. The great majority of men of either persuasion are not child molesters.

Once children reach the pubescent stage, e.g. 12 years old or so, abuse rates split; almost all teenaged boys molested by adults are molested by gay men, and essentially all teenaged girls molested by adults are molested by straight men. How bisexuals work into this I can’t say 'cause I don’t know.

  1. Catholic priests as a group are tremendously dangerous to children, ESPECIALLY young boys. The odds of a Catholic priest being a child molester are far higher than a randomly selected adult male, many times higher. I was raised Catholic and I count myself lucky I was never abused; I know guys who were, and frankly my saving grace was probably that I was never an altar boy. This is not a phenomenon unique to the Boston area; it’s happening all over the place. In Canada it’s become a sort of horrible, sick running joke; practically every Catholic-run boarding school or orphanage was a molestation factory.

I would guess that probably one in twelve, maybe one in ten Catholic priests are child molesters. They are, easily, the highest risk identifiable group for child molestation in the world.

Your kids are safe with gay men, as safe as they are with straight men if not more so. But I would never in a million years allow my son to be alone with a Catholic priest.

But you know what? You never hear these Family-Values-League-Coaltion-To-Protect-Marriage groups demostrating against the Catholic priesthood. We have here a group of men absolutely crawling with rapists, a profession that in some cases has practically organized child rape, a group whose leadership has gone to great lengths to thwart the authorities in investigating and prosecuting offenders, a group that in some cases even went to lengths to transfer rapists to new areas where they could rape fresh victims, a group where rapists make up anywhere from five to ten percent of the entire organization, and they say nothing about this filthy nest of perverts and scumbags. What the hell? If you wanted to stop child molestation you’d call for more scrutiny and precautions and inquests into these Catholic priest people, wouldn’t you? I mean, if you were REALLY interested in the welfare of children, why would you not go after the worst offenders?

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These Catholic priests are “almost always heterosexuals in their adult relationships”? Did I miss a new Vatican ruling somewhere?

20

Sorry, I’m not sure what your point is.

Fact is, men who abuse young children are almost always heterosexual in their adult relationships. Whether the research included seminaries I do not know, but outside the seminary it’s the straight-with-adults men doing the absuing if the victim’s younger than 12 or so.

Fact also is, priests rape kids a LOT. The victims are below AND above 12 years old. I would expect priest rapists include both homosexuals and heterosexuals.

What is unquestionably a correct conclusion then is that while sexual orientation is a very poor basis for being fearful of the chance of child molestation, and really has a vanishingly small impact on the chances a person is a child molestor or not, being a Catholic priest is an excellent reason to be concerned about predeliction to raping children.