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Cameronite Updates: How To Cite Cameron Without Citing Cameron

Jim Burroway

December 1st, 2007

As I went about organizing my library over the weekend, I re-opened the book, Staying the Course: Supporting the Church’s Position on Homosexuality (Maxie D. Dunnam & H. Newton Malony, editors). And as I often do, I take a quick glance through the bibliographies, and among the many things I look for is whether they cite Paul Cameron or not. Nope. His name was nowhere to be found.

Then, I skimmed through H. Newton Malony’s chapter, “Homosexuality In the Postmodern World.” And there it was:

Longevity is another area in which homosexuality has been a determining factor. A 1991-92 survey of newspapers available to homosexual communities found that among homosexuals not suffering from AIDS, the median age of death for 5,371 persons to be 42 years of age, [sic] with only 9 percent living to old age. Among lesbians, the average age at death was 45 years. Both these figures are dramatically below the life expectancy of the population in general.22

Footnote 22 was this:

22. Malony, Perspectives on Homosexuality, 37.

Certified Cameronite AwardSee? No Cameron. Unless of course, you happened to have access to Malony’s 1998 Perspectives on Homosexuality: The Transforming Point of View from Integration Press. And if you could find access to that obscure and now out-of-print book, you would eventually discover that this nugget came from an earlier version of Cameron’s pamphlet, “Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do.” (In fact, those earlier statistics were published in the April-June, 1991 edition of Cameron’s newsletter, Family Research Report, which is sometimes cited as though it were a legitimate journal.)

So the list of Cameron’s collaborators has now been updated to include H. Newton Malony, Senior Professor at the Fuller Theological Seminary’s Graduate School of Psychology in Clairemont, California.

Malony joins other recent additions, including Timothy Dailey and Peter Sprigg’s 2004 book, Getting it Straight: What the Research Shows About Homosexuality, and the web sites of the Howard Center and the World Congress of Families.

Comments

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mcewen
December 1st, 2007 | LINK

a group down here in south carolina did something like that.

they cited a book by thomas schmidt. but schmidt used cameron’s work in the book.

David
December 1st, 2007 | LINK

I think writing to Fuller Theological Seminary’s psycology department to demand an explanation is in order. If a member of their faculty is going to engage in such dishonesty they should be forced to take action.

The school’s address is:

Fuller Theological Seminary
135 N. Oakland Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91182

Jason
December 2nd, 2007 | LINK

correct me if I’m wrong, as it’s been years since I’ve had to do proper citation, but aren’t you supposed to cite the original author/paper/study unless you are talking about someone else’s commentary on such?

Does this count as plagarism or is it just bad writing?

Michael
December 2nd, 2007 | LINK

Jason, you’re right. Unless you absolutely can’t get access to the original (which can’t be true in this case), you really need to cite the original source. I don’t know if it’s technically “plagiarism,” but it’s definitely bad form in anything vaguely academic.

Ben in Oakland
December 2nd, 2007 | LINK

I think it counts as trying to avoid naming your source.

Emily K
December 2nd, 2007 | LINK

It’s true, Jason is right. And if you can’t get your hands on the original source, so you don’t know what the original quote is, you’re supposed to right “Cameron qtd in [source]” or something like that. That way you’re giving credit to the original. Like all ex-gay “scientists” and “researchers,” they have terrible academic practices.

Jason
December 3rd, 2007 | LINK

Okay, that’s what I thought, I just wanted it to be put out there so that anyone reading knows that this isn’t just evasive, it’s academically and journalistically unprofessional.

The Story So Far… » Blog Archive » How The Game Is Played…(continued)
December 3rd, 2007 | LINK

[...] in right wing anti-gay propaganda, by citing someone else, who in turn cites Cameron.  But this is a first [...]

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