Help me find a cite (sexual abuse and orientation)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

On another board on another site, I’m discussing the evolution of homosexuality throughout childhood development. One of the people I’m discussing this with made a claim that sexual abuse is a factor in “turning people gay”. Anyway, his claim was based on the purportion that the percentage of gay people who have been sexually abused sometime in their life is much higher than the percentage of straight people, thus this turns them gay.

My instinct calls BS, but I’m looking for some data; specifically, something like the percentage of heterosexual reporters who had also reported sexual abuse in thier lifetime compared to the percentage of homosexual reporters who had reported being sexually abused at some point.

I’m not really looking for evidence that connects being sexually abused with sexual orientation, but my curiosity is also leading me to find out. I’m googling, but hopefully someone here who knows anything about sexual abuse can help out.

Thanks =D

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Oh, and I suppose I should mention that I don’t want cites from radicals on either end (ie: no “gay people are evil” or “help us, we’re gay” sites). I’d rather find some kind of poll data conducted by a neutral agency.

Thanks, again. :smiley:

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I don’t have any cites, but I wanted to offer the old reminder that correlation doesn’t imply causation (i.e. if a higher-than-average percentage of gays were abused as children, that doesn’t mean abuse turns people gay).

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Exactly-- hence why I’m not looking for info that connects the two ideas, just looking for some numbers because I think his claim was largely a shot in the dark, and I want to call BS. :smiley:

I’ve got my correlation =/= causation argument ready on the sidelines for him.

Thank ya tho!