What Makes Paul Cameron Tick?

Jim Burroway

May 18th, 2012

I can’t help but think that so much of his animus is motivated by some deep, deep wounds caused by this alleged “raping”. There seem to be a lot of unresolved issues there, and I can’t help but pity someone who is that psychologically bound.

— BTB commenter “DJ”

I couldn’t agree more. While I can’t claim to know Cameron’s mind, I do think that child sexual abuse — or perhaps some form of child abuse in general — is an unexplored area (at least I haven’t explored it much) which may explain some of the behaviors that we see among anti-gay activists.

A few weeks ago, gay blogs excitedly posted about a study which showed that some individuals who grew up with controlling parents (mainly fathers) and were identified as likely being gay themselves through testing but who otherwise denied that they were gay, those individuals were found to be more likely to employ “defensive processes” which include displays of greater hostility toward gay people. There’s a lot of “more likelies” and “some individuals” in that statement, but many people nevertheless jumped to the obvious oversimplification (homophobe=gay!). But the way the study was constructed it doesn’t allow us to work backwards from someone’s outward homophobia to conclude that they are probably gay — unless you’re talking about someone who is in the ex-gay movement obviously.

But that study was still fresh on everyone’s minds when David Pakman interviewed Paul Cameron earlier this week, and that may explain everyone’s excitement that Cameron acknowledged that he had “some feelings” after having been sexually abused at the age of three until he was about eight or ten when he became “thoroughly interested in girls.” I think for a lot of gay and pro-gay bloggers, that was big “aha!” But for me, that looked like a normal developmental process, at least as normal as such a one could be under the circumstances.

Is Cameron secretly gay? I don’t know. If he were, it would go along way toward explaining what he told The Rolling Stone’s Robert Dreyfuss in 1999, when he explained how he thought “untrammeled homosexuality” could take over and destroy an entire society:

“If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one’s own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get — and that is what homosexuality seems to be — then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men, and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasms.”

He doesn’t explain what evidence he has for that statement — I’ve never seen it, and given the high degree of individual variability of what one likes and dislikes among gays I seriously doubt that such evidence exists. But Cameron nevertheless found the idea compelling. He told Dreyfuss, “I’m convinced that lesbians are particularly good seducers.” And in the next paragraph, Cameron called homosexuality “pure sexuality. It’s almost like pure heroin. It’s such a rush.” People have been pondering what he meant by that for the thirteen years since then.

Despite his protestations, he may be just another closet case. But I think the rush to latch onto that as an explanation for anti-gay extremism may prevent us from seeing another important, more painful, and little-discussed factor that is staring us in the face: child sexual abuse.

As a refresher, here’s the video again:

And here’s the transcript, beginning at the 11:14 mark where the relevant part of the conversation takes place:

Pakman: What age were you when you decided, “I’m going to evaluate men and evaluate women, and I’m going to choose for the rest of my life I will be attracted to women.” How were you when you did that?

Cameron: Well I didn’t do that so much consciously. I reacted to my environment. As you’re probably aware, I was seduced or raped as a child. I was about three. And I was raped homosexually. And so had that continued, I don’t know where I would have ended up. But I do know that the culture was directed toward heterosexuality overcame whatever feelings I had — and I had some that I acquired as a three year old. And by the time I was, say, eight or nine or ten, I was thoroughly interested in girls.

Pakmna: But Dr. Cameron, with all due respect, don’t you think that if we combine the attraction that you stated that you had to men when you were very young, combined with the fact that your entire life you have focused on homosexuality, sex between men to a degree that almost no one that I’ve come across except a handful of people, isn’t it possible that you are gay?

Cameron: (Laughs) Well it’s impossible. I’m … No one… Gay is kind of a political term. Am I interested in homosexual relations? Not at all. I don’t… on a scale of one to a hundred? Zip. And uh, as a matter of fact, as I’ve dealt with people who have this affliction or this desire or this interest, if anything I’m repelled by it. I’m probably about a minus a hundred.

This isn’t a new revelation. Reporter Paul Harkavy obtained a similar revelation from Cameron in 1996:

Paul Cameron was about four years old, he recalls, when a young man accosted him in an apple orchard and ordered him to perform oral sex.

The memory makes him chuckle. “I must have been a beautiful and charming little boy,” says Cameron. “But I didn’t like it much. He just told me, ‘Hi, kid, I want you to do this.’ I remember that he was kind of dirty, and that bothered me.” He didn’t tell his parents about the incident. “Kids want to live their own lives,” he explains. “They don’t want to tell everybody everything.” Nor did he tell his folks about another molestation a year later, after his family had moved from Pittsburgh to Florida, when a female stranger lured him into her apartment, gave him a bath and “fiddled” with his genitals.

“I remember that one more fondly,” Cameron says with a laugh. “I went out and looked for her apartment afterwards–never did find it, though. I had a much more positive experience with the woman. I thought it was a rather pleasant experience.”

In other words, Cameron wasn’t molested once, but twice — at least.

I’m going to have to admit that I haven’t done much studying in this area. (Maybe some crowdsourcing in the comments will come in handy here. BTB readers are the best in the land when it comes to things like this.) But I have broached the subjects with a very few therapists who deal with child sexual abuse, and they confirm that one of the common effects of such abuse is that the abuse victim often doesn’t see his or her sexuality as something he or she owns. From a very early age, that that person was taught that his or her sexuality belongs to someone else, and that other people have mastery over that his or her sexual being. And for too many children, that instruction comes painfully early in life, long before that child even has an opportunity to understand that the child even is — or will be — a sexual being. That child is taught that the most private and intimate parts of that child’s body and being are the property of someone else.

I am not aware of any studies which examine possible pathways of child sexual abuse and homophobia in adulthood. Those few therapists I talked to weren’t aware of any either. If someone does know of any, I’d really appreciate it if you would let me know in the comments or via email. So without those studies, all we have is a hypothesis in search of evidence.

But with very little effort, one can easily imagine that this must play a link. Being a closet case may explain the shame and strong aversion that some homophobes exhibit when they are around gay people, but I wonder if it is enough to explain the obsession, the rage, and sometimes the violence. In Cameron’s case, the violence isn’t physical. He commits extreme acts of violence to the truth which he has taken to radical, almost pathological, extremes.

As I have pointed out many times, his willingness to lie about scientific research has led to denunciations by the American Psychological Association in 1983, by the Nebraska Psychological Association in 1984, the American Sociological Association in 1985 and 1986, the Canadian Psychological Association in 1996 and, more recently, the Eastern Psychological Association in 2007. I cannot think of any other individual who has racked so many denunciations by so many organizations, and yet Cameron keeps on going as though he had never been challenged in his life.

And his anger against gays has been quite astonishing. As early as 1983, he was advocating “medical extermination” for gay people with AIDS. In 1999, he penned an article describing in approving terms how the Nazis “dealt with” homosexuality. That’s a road on which few other anti-gay extremists have dared to travel.

You can add Cameron to Joe Dallas, an ex-gay activist who says that he was molested as a child. Ditto Alan Chambers, Richard Cohen, Greg Quinlan, the late Anthony Falzarano — the list is particularly long in the ex-gay movement. Melissa Fryrear, a ex-gay advocate who was formerly with Focus On the Family, routinely told “Love Won Out” audiences that she had never met a gay man or a lesbian who hadn’t been sexually violated as a child. She also said she had been abused as a child.

As a matter of fact, it is extremely easy to find people in the ex-gay movement who say they were abused as children. Partly because it’s become something of a dogma in the ex-gay movement that most gays were abused as children and that’s why they became gay. Being molested is an almost de rigeur touchstone in ex-gay testimonies of transformation. Alan Chambers said in 2006 that of those who contacted Exodus International, “85 percent of the men and women have been sexually molested prior to age 13.” He assumed that his statistic applied to the entire gay population. But of course it doesn’t. It applies only to those whose deep-seated shame and pain over their sexuality — a sexuality that was already claimed by someone else — has led them to want to try to change that horribly corrupted sexuality. Or to just get rid of it altogether in exchange for a lifetime of celibacy.

But testimonies of molestation outside of the ex-gay movement are quite rare, which makes Cameron’s statement rather unique. But I’ve often wondered if a similar explanation may lie behind the anger displayed by some of the more extreme anti-gay activists. Take Scott Lively, for instance. He talks about growing up in an abusive household, but he has never mentioned sexual abuse as far as I know. The closest he comes to suggesting that sexual abuse might have occurred in his family was during his infamous 2009 talk in Kampala, Uganda. He opened that talk with a brief introduction, in which he said, “I have another sister that wasn’t able to enter into marriage until she was in her 40’s because of the pain of the family life that we had.”

Is that a hint? I don’t know. But something must surely explain the incredible anger that lies just underneath the surface. It doesn’t take a psychologist to understand that there are some rather deep unresolved emotional issues at play, whatever their source may be. There is a whole field of questions that I think deserve exploring, and I hope some enterprising researchers or grad students take up the question soon.

Priya Lynn

May 18th, 2012

Jim said “There’s a lot of “more likelies” and “some individuals” in that statement, but many people nevertheless jumped to the obvious oversimplification (homophobe=gay!).”.

I don’t think many people oversimplified in that way, I think the vast majority recognized a possible linkage amongsts some or many homophobes that was there but virtually no one assumes its an automatic given that homophobe=gay.

Hyhybt

May 18th, 2012

It feels like there has to be something wrong with this idea because it makes TOO MUCH sense.

Ben In Oakland

May 18th, 2012

I don’t really have time to write today, though i find your analysis both good and thought provoking. i hope i will have more time to write over the weekend.

but one thing stands out for me: you’re assuming that cameron is telling the truth about being molested as a child. Given his penchant for lying about everything else, I don’t know if i would accept that assertion.

I don’t say this as somoeone who is in denial about child sexual abuse. I was quite active in the field for years, and consider myself as knowledgeable in it as anyone who is not a full time expert.

when being pressed upon her particularly horrible treatment of her children, my own mother once blurted out that she had been molested as a child. Was it true? Well, it was the first I had heard of it, and it was a great way to change the subject from where it was, which was very unciomfortable for her, into something that painted her as a victim and not responsible.

It also made a lot of sense in terms of the little i did know about her, and explained a great deal of her behaviour. But it wasn’t a necessary condition, it was strictly a sufficient one.

but was it true? Who knows? I asked a few of her still living cousins. no one knew.

Is it true for cameron? Again, it is a sufficient condition, but not a necessary one.

Cameron may well have “thought” he was gay because he was molested. His three-year-old’s anger was never resolved or examined, and so like so many homophobes, he generalized his own pain onto all gay people. (Lou Sheldon is another one that claimed the same thing.)

If it happened at all, it was more likely the molester saw cameron as vulnerable– not an uncommon insight among a certain class of catholic priest.

Or, it might strictly be a rationalization

More anon.

Ben In Oakland

May 18th, 2012

Priya– one observation about yours, something someone said to me years ago.

I’ve never liked the term homophobia, though I recognize its usefullness. a lot of anti-gays will sieze on the term, saying that they’re not afraid of gay people.

Here I agree with them. The correct term for them is homohatred, or homobigotry.

Homphobia is NOT the fear of gay people. It’s the fear the you yourself might be gay.

Priya Lynn

May 18th, 2012

Yes Ben, I agree the meaning of the term has shifted and it no longer means “fear of gays”. In its usage today it means as you say, homohatred or homobigotry.

I’m not a stickler and that’s the meaning I apply to the term when I use it.

JakePHX

May 18th, 2012

To BenInOakland:

I totally agree with you. About the homohatred thing.

Paul Cameron is an unhappy and conflicted individual. Unfortunately, we gay ppl are the “beneficiaries” of his conflictedness, and the stoopid Christofascists who use his so-called research as support for their own homohatred.

Stephen

May 18th, 2012

A four year old is able to take an erect adult penis in his mouth? I don’t think so. Not without serious physical damage being done. How much of the penis was inserted? Did the ‘young man’ ejaculate in his mouth? I don’t believe a word of it. Perhaps he does but I don’t. I think it’s supposed to give him some sort of cred in the anti-gay industry. The second story is even sillier. And both detract from real abuse, it’s discovery, and prevention.

I think that most of the ex-gay ‘I was molested’ yarns are false memories planted by incompetent ‘therapists’ out to find the trauma they know is there.

Timothy Kincaid

May 18th, 2012

BTB readers are the best in the land when it comes to things like this.

I quite disagree. BTB readers are not limited to “the land” but are quite international. They’re the best on the globe when it comes to things like this.

And excellent piece, by the way. Truly thought provoking.

Ahab

May 18th, 2012

Jim — With regard to research, I couldn’t find much research on connections between sexual victimization and strong homophobia. A 1994 article touches upon it, but bear in mind that the study is old and draws from a small sample.

Lisak, D. (1994). The psychological impact of sexual abuse: Content analysis of interviews with male survivors. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 7, 525-548. Retrieved from http://www.usfk.mil/old/sa/pdf%20doc%20for%20handout_files%5CLisak1994.pdf

Regan DuCasse

May 18th, 2012

I would love to be more empathetic about Cameron’s experience.
But it smells.
It smells too much of a convenient way in which this supposed assault took place.
It smells like the stereotypical way a person is instructed to recount such things. And most of all, blame it on gay men. Instead of where the blame really belongs: stronger males using sexual abuse on a weaker one.

Boys might suffer more from such treatment because of how males of Cameron’s generation are expected to act, and especially in their own defense.

Notice how much of the subject of girls who have been sexually abused by males is rarely in the conversation about adults who abuse children in general.
And female pedophiles and ephebophiles on young boys are virtually forgotten. They are forgiven if considered attractive and the boys, congratulated.

The gender/orientation bias among those committed to anti gay attitudes is very specific and pernicious in this.
Their ONLY obsessive concern, is gay males and the myth of gay males so sexually aggressive and without any other interests, that casual contact among anyone is risky.

This was a similar issue when it came to black men and women and the enforcement of Jim Crow.
Black males considered sexual animals, with an ‘unnatural and insatiable’ attraction to white females. And black females were sexually wanton, without restraint and available to any white male that would have her.
Notice also, how the expectant aversions to gay people is very twisted and contradictory in similar ways.

Gays and lesbians considered grotesque, but compelling in ways that straight people make gay people and conversation about them a repository more for their fantasies about gay people, than reality.
I think Cameron falls into this category. That the fantasy of believing he was raped, squares with what he wants to believe about gay people. The only rational reason to reject them, is to believe they put kids at risk.

Isn’t it weird that while rejecting gay sex, apparently straight people like to think it’s possible to change a gay person by having sex with them.

You would think that heteros never, EVER raped or sexually abused anyone. In other words, there is no compelling reason to discriminate against het males, and scrutinize THEIR behavior.
Regardless how much damage they HAVE done in society.

B John

May 18th, 2012

First…sorry, as Christian as I try to be, no pity for Cameron. He claims to be a psychological professional, so he could have, and should have sought help for himself to resolve these issues.

Second, As several commentors mentioned, if the guys mouth is moving, there’s a very good chance he’s lying, so the story of abuse is suspect.

I think there is little doubt he’s gay though. I’ve thought about this before. The anti-marriage crowd always bring up the procreation thing, as if everyone who is straight would suddenly turn gay, and quit having straight sex.

Then there’s the crowd always saying it’s a choice. Gay people can change. When I hear that, my rebuttal is to say, “Choice requires at least two options, which means, if you truly believe I could wake up tomorrow and decide to be straight, then you must truly believe you could wake up tomorrow and be gay. Recently, I’ve kind of been rocked when two people I know to be homophobic (one a female Methodist minister), both said the could have. The minister said, “I remember the summer and the girl it could have been with.” I told her anyone could have a single experience, and she insisted that “no,” she could have decided to be Lesbian.

My point to all of this is that these people must really think it to be true that everyone would go gay if they could, because deep down, they know if there weren’t “rules” to require one to be straight, they would be gay.

So, to further convince themselves they are “normal,” I think they project onto everyone this idea…if I feel like I would prefer to be gay (if I could), then so must everyone else, because I’m just like them. I’m normal, so this must be the “normal” feeling.

Cameron admits as much. He makes the claim that all gay and lesbian sex is better than straight sex. Now we know Cameron has no science to back this up, it’s just what he believes. If so, it’s no stretch to believe his preference is homosexual.

Hence this attitude that the human race would stop procreating, and everyone would get gay married if we didn’t institutionalize the bigotry (which is, in effect, institutionalizing heterosexuality).

Jim Burroway

May 18th, 2012

Steven:

A four year old is able to take an erect adult penis in his mouth?

Where on earth did you get that?!? You do realize there are many forms of CSA, don’t you?

Jim Burroway

May 18th, 2012

I actually do believe Cameron when he says he was molested. An awful lot of what he does makes perfect sense in that light. What’s more, this is only te second time I’m aware of him saying it. That he hasn’t made it a central or even a perephreal part of his propaganda tells me that he sees no real advantage in it. If it were some kind of splay for sympathy, it was a rather subtly played one, reserved only for a small Denver alt-weekly and a syndicated TV program airing on channels you almost certainly don’t watch.

I also want to emphasize that my hypothesis is intended only to better understand what drives him and possibly others like him. I have no intention of offering an excuse for what he has done or even much sympathy. Children all over the world experience unspeakable traumas, and yet many of them grow up to become decent human beings.

Priya Lynn

May 18th, 2012

Steven said “A four year old is able to take an erect adult penis in his mouth?”

Jim asked “Where on earth did you get that?!? You do realize there are many forms of CSA, don’t you?”

From Cameron’s 1996 interview transcript you posted:

“Paul Cameron was about four years old, he recalls, when a young man accosted him in an apple orchard and ordered him to perform oral sex.”

Jim Burroway

May 18th, 2012

As I’m sure everyone here well understands, oral sex for a four year old does not require taking an adult erect penis on one’s mouth.

Priya Lynn

May 18th, 2012

I don’t see any other way to interpret that statement.

ladybug

May 18th, 2012

I’m not interested in how exactly the abuse took place, or even if it did or not. Cameron has said what he’s said, and if someone believes it or not that’s up to them. I think it’s tacky to immediately accuse someone who claims a rape of lying.

I think the whole story is tragic, in the way that I think any harm done to a child is tragic… especially that Cameron does not seem to think the woman’s abuse as bad as the man’s. Since he was in her apartment and says he tried to find this unknown abuser again, that could have ended terribly. He’s lucky he never saw her again.

The only questions I have from this are how much a part a religious atmosphere that places a tremendous importance on sex has on people who have feelings of shame or confusion from an early age. But in a way, this does call for more compassion for bigoted people, since it raises some questions about where this anger really comes from and how clear the eyes are of the people who aim it.

ladybug

May 18th, 2012

Oh, and to answer the plea for research: I heard of at least one study a few years ago by a pastor or religious foundation that claimed to find a link between CSA and adult homosexuality. But I don’t have any faith in their results.

Some time on RAINN’s site might help, starting here: http://rainn.org/get-info/effects-of-sexual-assault/adult-survivors-of-childhood-sexual-abuse

I’m reluctant to diagnose what exactly goes into all of this, but RAINN points out PTSD is a common reaction and that many assaulted people cope through self-injury. Attacking a group that they perceive as associated with the rape would mesh well with that… but I don’t think that we can draw any conclusions about the group. All we have to go on are handfuls of case studies, and since homophobia as a social platform is losing ground, I expect that if this is some kind of coping mechanism it’s going to eventually fade away. Certainly before studies come out.

pax58

May 18th, 2012

I think some times it is an America thing to focus child abuse into two camps: sexual and non-sexual. As a professional working in this area from time to time, it seems from my observation that anyone abused as a child: sexual, physical, or verbal, has alot of anger inside that has to be directed somewhere.i Often it is turned on the self, after all, if I take credit for the abuse, then maybe I had some control over it. As delusional as this it, it allows one in a twisted way to regain control. The second way is to turn that anger outward. Good therapy would help someone direct it in a focused way that might bring about a greater good. Too many people, like this man, project it on some other, in this case the whole gay community. This is damaging to them as well as their victims. I took could have some empathy for him, but I agree that as a so called mental health professional, he has had access to treatment that he has not taken advantage of. Is he a closeted gay? Pretty much: I don’t care. His own angry at what happened to him as turned him into a destroyer of healthy gay men and women, that is what does matter to me.

Stephen

May 18th, 2012

Jim: it’s ‘Stephen’. ‘ph’ not ‘v’.

That’s his story. He said the man put his penis, presumably erect if he was being raped, in his mouth when he was 4. I’m saying it’s physically impossible and that he’s a liar.

This has nothing to do with the reality of child abuse. This has to do with the anti-gay industry.

Stephen

May 18th, 2012

‘As I’m sure everyone here well understands, oral sex for a four year old does not require taking an adult erect penis on one’s mouth.’

That is exactly what he claimed happened.

Jim Burroway

May 18th, 2012

Actually Stephen, that is not exactly what he claimed. Read it again.

Priya Lynn

May 18th, 2012

Stephen said “He said the man put his penis, presumably erect if he was being raped, in his mouth when he was 4. I’m saying it’s physically impossible and that he’s a liar.”.

I don’t believe that would be in any way physically impossible.

Palmer

May 19th, 2012

Stephan, I must address your statement that a four year old cannot accommodate an adult male’s penis in his mouth. As we all know every penis is at least 12″ by 9″ and ever time oral sex is performed it’s always by shoving said penis all the way down the receptive partner’s throat!

We don’t know what went on, but it is perfectly logical for Cameron to have been orally raped. We don’t know how large the penis was, or if the entire length was involved. Perhaps just the glans went in, perhaps the penis was a mere 4 inches, so please, stop with the nonsense that it was physically impossible.

Even if it did happen it’s no excuse for all the lies Cameron has told and all the hateful things he’s spewed. It’s time for him to own up to his behavior.

StraightGrandmother

May 19th, 2012

Well speaking from a straight woman’s perspective his story about a stranger woman taking him into her apartment and-

“after his family had moved from Pittsburgh to Florida, when a female stranger lured him into her apartment, gave him a bath and “fiddled” with his genitals.

“I remember that one more fondly,” Cameron says with a laugh. “I went out and looked for her apartment afterwards–never did find it, though. I had a much more positive experience with the woman. I thought it was a rather pleasant experience.”

From a straight woman’s perspective I find that story REALLY suspect. Between the 2 stories, the lured into a woman’s apartment story is by far the least credible. I can imagine an older boy picking on a younger boy in an apple orchard with no one around. BUT the story about an adult woman who lures him into her apartment to give him a bath seems wildly unbelievable. We know that stranger assault is rare. Even rarer is stranger women who assault little boys. Finally the ending of how he goes back looking for the apartment but gosh darn it can’t find it is, well, a fantasy.

What Cameron describes with the stranger woman IMHO is a fantasy. It seems reasonable to me that if he was sexually assaulted in the apple orchard, that as an adult when he flashed back to that memory he conjured up a completely opposite fantasy memory to stop the hurting, the nice woman fantasy. I have never been a boy so I can’t relate so much to the boy on boy assault in the apple orchard, and have no experience with psychology or really even an interest in it, but I am a straight woman and the story about a complete stranger woman doing this to him as a 5 year old seems to me to be so so so rare as to be unbelievable.

If he had a pleasant experience with the woman and she must have also (if true story) then she would have found him again. It is very rare for child sexual abusers to assault just one time and then it never happens again, especially if the first sexual assault is undiscovered. The fact that he says he never found her again (and therefore she never found him again) is highly suspect. IF true this woman had a willing victim she would have gone back for more.

Much more likely is that the woman who gave me a pleasant bath is a fantasy.

Jerry Sloan

May 19th, 2012

I used to facilitate a men’s discussion group at our GLBT community center in Sacramento. I was shocked at one discussion when the subject about molestation came up that about 25 % of the men said they had been molested as children. Over the years further inquires have come up with similar figures. This of course is not a scientific study simply an observation of a gay man who has been out for 52 years. I never experienced any molestation as a child or teen.

Joe Kort

May 19th, 2012

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! Jim for saying this. I have always said that most of the people who are antigay have been sexually abused. And now that Cameron has come out about this his behaviors do make sense. He has confused abuse with homosexuality.

F Young

May 20th, 2012

=Ben in Oakland
“…but one thing stands out for me: you’re assuming that cameron is telling the truth about being molested as a child. Given his penchant for lying about everything else, I don’t know if i would accept that assertion.”

Yes, for what it’s worth, I too agree that deceit is as good an explanation as any for claims by Cameron (and other professional anti-gay leaders) that they are victims of child abuse.

One should never assume they are telling the truth as if they were normal moral people, as opposed to greedy, unprincipled, even sociopathic, manipulators.

Stories of child abuse are so convenient and self-serving for people who have made a full-fledged career out of their anti-gay agenda. By claiming to be victims, they can deny taking full responsibility for their hate and greed.

Of course, I don’t know that Cameron was lying. I suspect that being a victim of child abuse is more common that we would like to think, among both homosexuals and heterosexuals.

But that doesn’t mean I should assume that he was telling the truth. Given Cameron’s lifelong history of deceit, I don’t think it is safe to assume that, for this one thing, he was honest.

If he was, it might be in the same way that a stopped clock tells the true time twice a day.

Timothy Kincaid

May 22nd, 2012

Joe,

He has confused abuse with homosexuality.

I think that says WAY more about the entire anti-gay mindset than first glance suggests. Truly, I think that they do equate the two.

How often do we read about adults looking for boys to “indoctrinate into the homosexual lifestyle”. In their minds, it is always a form or rape or seduction. There is always a power disparity. There is always a nefarious motivation involving the abuse – either physical or psychological – of an innocent.

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When we first reported on three American anti-gay activists traveling to Kampala for a three-day conference, we had no idea that it would be the first report of a long string of events leading to a proposal to institute the death penalty for LGBT people. But that is exactly what happened. In this report, we review our collection of more than 500 posts to tell the story of one nation’s embrace of hatred toward gay people. This report will be updated continuously as events continue to unfold. Check here for the latest updates.

Paul Cameron’s World

In 2005, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote that “[Paul] Cameron’s ‘science’ echoes Nazi Germany.” What the SPLC didn”t know was Cameron doesn’t just “echo” Nazi Germany. He quoted extensively from one of the Final Solution’s architects. This puts his fascination with quarantines, mandatory tattoos, and extermination being a “plausible idea” in a whole new and deeply disturbing light.

From the Inside: Focus on the Family’s “Love Won Out”

On February 10, I attended an all-day “Love Won Out” ex-gay conference in Phoenix, put on by Focus on the Family and Exodus International. In this series of reports, I talk about what I learned there: the people who go to these conferences, the things that they hear, and what this all means for them, their families and for the rest of us.

Prologue: Why I Went To “Love Won Out”
Part 1: What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Part 2: Parents Struggle With “No Exceptions”
Part 3: A Whole New Dialect
Part 4: It Depends On How The Meaning of the Word "Change" Changes
Part 5: A Candid Explanation For "Change"

The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing The Myths

At last, the truth can now be told.

Using the same research methods employed by most anti-gay political pressure groups, we examine the statistics and the case studies that dispel many of the myths about heterosexuality. Download your copy today!

And don‘t miss our companion report, How To Write An Anti-Gay Tract In Fifteen Easy Steps.

Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Anti-gay activists often charge that gay men and women pose a threat to children. In this report, we explore the supposed connection between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, the conclusions reached by the most knowledgeable professionals in the field, and how anti-gay activists continue to ignore their findings. This has tremendous consequences, not just for gay men and women, but more importantly for the safety of all our children.

Straight From The Source: What the “Dutch Study” Really Says About Gay Couples

Anti-gay activists often cite the “Dutch Study” to claim that gay unions last only about 1½ years and that the these men have an average of eight additional partners per year outside of their steady relationship. In this report, we will take you step by step into the study to see whether the claims are true.

The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing

Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council submitted an Amicus Brief to the Maryland Court of Appeals as that court prepared to consider the issue of gay marriage. We examine just one small section of that brief to reveal the junk science and fraudulent claims of the Family “Research” Council.

Daniel Fetty Doesn’t Count

Daniel FettyThe FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.