Think your child is gay. James Dobson can help.

The BBQ Pit
21

*1. A strong feeling that they are “different” from other boys. *

Okay, I’ll put a “check” on this one.

2. A tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy.

Here’s where Boolean search terms become significant. If this had said or dislike blah blah, then it would mean that if the kid has any of these symptoms then, to paraphrase Foxworthy, “HE MIGHT BE A HOMERSEXYUL”, but and would imply that all are required for this to be significant.

I was decidedly less athletic than other kids, but I didn’t and don’t have a tendency to cry easily and I quite liked roughhousing with other boys, so I don’t meet all the criteria. So no check here.
3. A persistent preference to play female roles in make-believe play.

Not even once.

*4. A strong preference to spend time in the company of girls and participate in their games and other pastimes. *

Nope. I did inherit my sister’s (original issue) Barbie dolls, but I gave them as brides to my Best of the West action figures (except for Ken, who I tarred and feathered during the Bicentennial [using a hot glue gun] and Midge, who I found guilty of witchcraft and burned at a stake (which had previously been a metal pole and it took forever to purifiy that little plastic bitch’s soul and send her to heaven (my sister is still pissed about this). Once I found out that my sister’s EZ Bake Oven wasn’t big enough to play Holocaust with (long story that I’m not proud of, but sometimes you need to dispose of a broken action figure) I had no interest in it either. My favorite toys were toy guns, sticks and action figures, so all around Nope.

5. A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys, who may tease them unmercifully and call them “queer,” “fag” and “gay.”

Nope. I had a problem with being bullied, but I wasn’t called queer, fag or gay.

6. A tendency to walk, talk, dress and even “think” effeminately.

Nope. I couldn’t tell an Armani from an Arnie’s Big Boy’s Clearance Rack outfit, thank Og that I don’t have to put as much care into dress as a girl does and go dead-snake-eyed when any woman tries to give me any detail on clothing shopping beyond the price and place.
I’m not even sure how one would “think effeminately”.

7. A repeatedly stated desire to be — or insistence that he is — a girl.

Nope. I always rather liked my penis, PARTICULARLY after I was no longer pre-homosexual but a card carrying member.

So of all the above I only got 1 in the checklist.

Does this mean that I’m latently straight?

OH GOD DO I HAVE TO DO STUFF WITH THOSE… THOSE… GIRL PARTS NOW AND ACT LIKE I LIKE IT?

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

(not that there’s anything wrong with that)

22

James Dobson is scum and somebody needs to douse him with Chlorox and bleach. Now.

goes off to grumble and kick stones across the street :mad:

23

Yep. Looks like somebody’s confusing sexual attraction with gender roles again.

24

My entire lesson on puberty and sexuality was a book given to me by my mother, “Preparing for Adolescence” by Dobson. It really took me a long time to realize that I could disagree with him and not be ashamed or be rejecting Christianity. I think it is especially harmful because many people use him to indoctrinate their young children - since he has a PhD in child psychology, they think that he is qualified in every sense and not just using his religious bias. When young kids read him, they don’t realize he is just one extreme interpretation and that he is not speaking directly for God. So yes, he can be very harmful in my opinion.

I don’t blame my mother because she was doing what she thought was right and I sincerely think she thought she was doing the best thing for me. There are a lot of people my age who grew up with Dobson’s teaching that are now agreeing that he is full of crap, though. When I bring him up with other 20 somethings in my church there is definite eye-rolling. So the good news here is many who were brought up on him are not going to do the same with their kids. The church that I attend now is the same denomination as the one I belonged to as a child, but there is a definite sense of turning away from Focus on the Family and their kind of rigidness.

Has anyone else noticed that many of his articles are just the same ones from the 70’s or 80’s recycled over and over? Even current newspaper articles have word for word answers that I recognize from his books, which makes me wonder if:
a) he actually has any current research
b) he is re-issuing a bunch of question-and-answers from 20-30 years ago and passing them off as new
c) he is making up the people who write in to make questions to neatly fit his old answers

In any case, reading his advice to kids now is kind of like reading one of those old “Jimmy would like to hold hands with Suzy” dating etiquette books from the 50’s.

25

[ol]
[li]A strong feeling that they are “different” from other boys.[/li]Boy howdy was I. I was such an odd duck my first grade teacher took her psych professor father’s advice and installed a refrigerator box in the class so I could have my alone time. It backfired as I vastly preferred it to interacting with my classmated. I did get better.

[li] A tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy.[/li]I do cry at the most sappy and sentimental movies, my wife loves that about me. I tried to be a jock in high school never managed to earn a letter. I never got into that sweaty Roman-Greco thing
[li] A persistent preference to play female roles in make-believe play.[/li]NO MORE WIRE HANGERS EVER! Heck, women get all the best lines.
[li] A strong preference to spend time in the company of girls and participate in their games and other pastimes.Well I spent a lot of time with my first grade girlfriend practicing mouth to mouth. She was a head taller than me and once beat the snot out of me and I’m pretty sure that would have to ad to my gayness[/li][li] A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys, who may tease them unmercifully and call them “queer,” “fag” and “gay.”[/li]Well I did know a lot of assholes in school
[li]A tendency to walk, talk, dress and even “think” effeminately.[/li]Does this make me look too butch?
[li]A repeatedly stated desire to be — or insistence that he is — a girl.[/ol][/li]This is pretty serious. I mean this James Dobson guy should know, he’s a doctor right? I guess this settles it, I’m queer for girls. <sigh> Wait until my brother hears this. He’s queer for guys but it’s all good. :smiley:

26

I love this from the same website:

Let’s see if you can count the errors in that…

Just two from my own:

  1. I honestly don’t know any gay men or women who didn’t know they were gay (they may not have known the term or been able to express what it was, but they knew on some level that they liked members of their own gender differently that others did) before puberty.

  2. The comment “young children are not sexual beings” is one that I don’t know any child therapist who would agree with. if you mean that as in “they’re not sexually experienced” or “it’s a psychosis to be sexually aroused by them”, then sure, but they are most definitely sexual beings. They play with themselves, they have sensation down there, etc…

27

<Homer Simpson>

What do you call it when a guy is queer for a girl?
</Homer Simpson>

28

Sorry Padeye, but if you preferred being around girls to having other boys roll around on the floor with you, you’re probably queer and need to go ahead and tell the wife.

29

*1. A strong feeling that they are “different” from other boys. *

I knew I was different in that I hated sports and didn’t even know how to play some of them (especially football), nor was I into collecting bugs or reading comic books about super-heroes. I didn’t care for dogs and loved cats (still do). I had few friends and most of my playtime activities were solitary (coloring, playing with Legos, jigsaw puzzles, etc.). Still, I meet the criteria here, so that’s one point for me so far.

2. A tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy.

I was easily upset and offended, so I was, admittedly, a crybaby in school. As I stated above, I shunned sports and did not enjoy “roughhousing”, getting my clothes dirty, etc. That’s two points for me.

3. A persistent preference to play female roles in make-believe play.

A big fat NO on this one.

*4. A strong preference to spend time in the company of girls and participate in their games and other pastimes. *

I did have some girl friends (note, two words) in school, but I didn’t always participate in their tea parties, playing with dolls or anything that was patently girlish. If anything, they joined me in my activities, which were not patently boyish, except perhaps for playing with Tonka trucks and Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars. I’ll give this one half a point.

5. A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys, who may tease them unmercifully and call them “queer,” “fag” and “gay.”

I was bullied mercilessly for a variety of reasons, and because I was late in developing interest in girls, this made other kids in school think that I was gay. Add another point.

6. A tendency to walk, talk, dress and even “think” effeminately.

Another one for the NO column.

7. A repeatedly stated desire to be — or insistence that he is — a girl.

And this one didn’t apply to me, either. I was always very sure of my being a boy and never once wished to be a girl.

[sarcasm]
My score is 3.5, so I guess according to this jackoff, I’m 50% gay and I’m ruined for life. Where was James Dobson when I was growing up?! My dad should have encouraged me to play football, and I should have never had those girls for friends. I don’t know if I can ever forgive my parents for not setting me “straight”. :rolleyes:
[/sarcasm]

30

“By the time the adolescent hormones kick in during early adolescence, a full-blown gender identity crisis threatens to overwhelm the teenager,” warns psychologist Dr. James Dobson. To compound the problem, many of these teens experience “great waves of guilt accompanied by secret fears of divine retribution.”

Wow. Guess those great waves of guilt and secret fears weren’t caused by social pressure or Judeo/Christian oppression. What a relief!

31

I figure it all traces back to when my mother dressed me as a woman one halloween. She really did a good job, underwear, makeup, the whole magilla. Years later my brother did a cabaret show as his alter ego Marge Greenbaum. He was really put out when I told him I was doing drag shows years before he did.

As much as I like making fun of that asshat Dobson he’s a symptom of a very serious problem. How many kids will be alienated from their families, some to the point of suicide by his advice?

In many ways he’s far more dangerous than Fred Phelps. Phelps is such a looney that his virulent following is still quite small. Dobson says some things that make actually make sense concerning protecting children from abuse but the fact that not every single statement coming out of his mouth is a lie doesn’t make the overall message any better. I should invite him to my church sometime just to watch his head explode when he sees gay and lesbian couples taking communion.

32

I now identify as lesbian, but was a “late bloomer”. I didn’t really become aware of it until well after puberty (after high-school, in fact). Even looking back, I don’t know that I had same-sex attraction before puberty. After puberty, yes, looking back on it, although I didn’t know it at the time. I know I’m probably an anomaly, mind you …

33

Now my blood is boiling. A reference on Dobson’s site

Sweet tap dancing Jesus. There is no such thing as a gay child but three quarters of these non-existant kids grow up to be gay unless “treated?”

34

Same here, but I knew there was something “different” about me. It’s one of those things that I look back upon, smack my head and go “D’oh! Of course!”

35

I’m another late-bloomer. I didn’t realize I was attracted to women until late in college. Eventually, I discovered that bisexual people frequently realize their sexual orientation later than gay men or lesbians, so I didn’t feel as much like a late bloomer.

One of my favorite books, which I read for the first time when I was 17 or 18, features a lesbian affair. After I lent it to a few lesbians, including the woman who I’m now dating, they all asked “How could you read this and not know you were queer?”
“I thought I was just queer-friendly,” I replied.
My girlfriend will now tease me with this sometimes. “You’re very queer-friendly.”

36

Thank you, DocCathode .

Fionn , my door is always open! You’d be welcome here anytime!

37

Honestly, I think it’s only especially common for gay folks to realise their orientation young because it not going the way the folklore presumes it will, so they wind up thinking about it. I was certainly consciously aware of the “I like boys” (or, more accurately, “I like that boy”) thing quite young, which seems to mean that I’m boggled by people who claim not to have known something about their attractions before puberty. :wink: I was a painfully earnest and introspective child, though.

“Something about” doesn’t mean completeness, though; I know a woman who didn’t realise she was bi until she was an adult, and reports the reason as, “Of course normal women like looking at pretty women in magazines. All the women’s magazines are full of them, after all.”

I’ve encountered someone who claims to be a psychologist who makes this argument. This person is otherwise an idiot, however, so I don’t find the support of the position terribly convincing (and she was, in any case, shot down immediately by several specialists who I am more likely to believe because they a) agree with me :stuck_out_tongue: and b) don’t have a history of being nitwits on that board).

38

If you:

…Have track lighting.
…Dress like the Village People.
…Work in a steel mill.
…Like to have sex with other men/women.

You might be a homosexual.

Sorry. First foxworthy joke I’ve ever done. Hopefully the last too.

39

Dobson also has many loyal followers who believe anything he says, and he wants to gain more political control in this country.
I can’t stand him.

40

A textbook case of repressed homosexuality.