Box Turtle Bulletin

FRC’s Tony Perkins “Unimpressed” With State of the Union Speech

The Family “Research” Council’s Tony Perkins issued a press released in which he complained about President Bush’s State of the Union address last night. Apparently, the Uniter-In-Chief’s message wasn’t divisive enough:

“What will become of the culture of life, the defense of marriage and permanent family-friendly tax policies?” Perkins asked. He called on Bush to “fight for the American family, and American families will stand with you!”

Tuesday’s State of the Union speech marked the first such address in five years in which the president did not focus on family values issues like abortion, stem cell research and marriage.

Noting that President Bush called for constitutional bans on same-sex marriage in the 2004 and 2005 State of the Union messages, he “avoided homosexual ‘marriage’ after a year — 2006 — in which efforts to create a constitutional amendment to ban it failed.”

If this speech is any indication, perhaps the President finally recognized that the old politics of division and scapegoating didn’t serve his administration well. Only time will tell if there has been a change of heart. But there is one thing we can all count on. In Tony Perkin’s ideal America, second-class citizenry would not only be acceptable, it would be the law of the land.

Update: Gary Bauer of American Values chims in with an e-mail he sent to his troops (You don’t want to know what shows up in my inbox sometimes!):

While the president did challenge the Senate to provide up-or-down votes on his judicial nominees, I was disappointed that there was no mention of values issues –- like the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, or religious freedom. I realize the president was addressing a hostile Congress and was undoubtedly advised to avoid these “controversial issues.” But, my friends, defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman is not controversial with the American people.

Tell that to the people of Arizona.

FRC and the Maryland Gay Marriage Case

I wish I had found it earlier, but just yesterday I ran across an Amicus Brief that the Family Research Council submitted to the Maryland Court of Appeals for Conaway v. Deane. This case will decide whether marriage equality for gays and lesbians will be granted in that state.

I looked into the brief to see what it said. Most of it consists of legal arguments citing case law, court precidents, and so forth. But one portion of the brief claims that gays and lesbians don’t deserve the right to marry because of what social science says about them. I looked into these claims, and it turns out that the FRC has a problem with the truth when it comes to citing social science. You can read about it in my latest report, The FRC’s Briefs Are Showing.

So, my questions are these: What exactly are the legal obligations of a friend-of-the-court to present their arguments truthfully? And what weight, if any, do courts give to amicus briefs when deciding cases? And what does it say about their arguments when a “values” group throws away the values of truth to become a false witness?

Somehow, I don’t recall reading “the ends justify the means” in Proverbs, or anywhere else in Scriptures for that matter.

The “Root Cause” of AIDS

Focus on the Family, in an October 19th online CitizenLink article, joins the chorus in denouncing U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s remarks at the swearing-in ceremony for Mark Dybul as deputy global AIDS coordinator. Ambassador Dybul, who is openly gay, was joined by his partner Jason Claire, who held the Bible as Secretary Rice administered the oath of office and first lady Laura Bush looked on. Also in attendance was Claire’s mother, who Secretary Rice referred to as Dybul’s mother-in-law.

According to the Focus on the Family report, Secretary Rice’s chief of staff tried to backpeddle a bit, but Focus wasn’t having any of it:

Tom Minnery, senior vice president of government and public policy for Focus on Family, called Rice’s comments “astonishing.”

“This is very provocative,” he said, “and very disappointing.”

In response to inquiries from Focus, Minnery heard from the State Department on Wednesday.

“Secretary Rice’s chief of staff called to say it was a mix-up,” he said. “That somebody should have checked this mother-in-law business, didn’t do it, and it got out.”

Perhaps, but such nuances are Rice’s stock in trade. Besides, she was standing right next to Dybul’s partner as he held the Bible for the swearing-in.

Peter Sprigg, vice president for policy at the Family Research Council, claimed this was evidence that “they’re really rather apathetic about the efforts to defend traditional marriage.” He also went on to cite a “conflict of interest” in having a gay man lead HIV/AIDS prevention efforts:

“If we are not willing to say that men should not engage in sex with other men,” Sprigg noted, “then we are really not willing to tackle the root causes of the AIDS problem.”

Sprigg added it’s unlikely a gay man can effectively articulate that point — if it’s still the point the administration wants to make

Clearly Peter Sprigg needs to be much more educated on the issue. Gay men are quite capable of articulating how to prevent AIDS. What other explaination is there for the dramatic drop in AIDS cases since the mid-1990’s? Since then, new AIDS cases fell by more than 60% in New York and Los Angeles while in San Francisco — that ever famous gay mecca — that drop was more than 80%.

But when it comes to “root causes of the AIDS problem,” it’s not men having sex with men. It’s people of all sexual orientations engaging in unsafe sexual practices. AIDS began as a heterosexually transmitted disease which was quietly killing generations in the Congo River basin of central Africa since the late 1950’s, long before the deaths of five gay men in Los Angeles grabbed the medical community’s attention twenty-five years ago. (You can read more about it in our report Opportunistic Infections.)

Demagoguery surrounding HIV/AIDS has been a persistent obstacle in dealing with AIDS, both here and around the world. Words like these continue to shore up the stigma associated with HIV/AIDS. And as long as that stigma continues, real answers to the problem will continue to remain elusive.

Update on “The Politically Inconvenient Truth”

Three weeks ago, I wrote about the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins going on various media outlets to claim that gays are much more likely to molest children. I examined the “evidence” that he offered and found it to be quite lacking.

When I wrote that, I had tried to contact the FRC to get some clarification on exactly what source material Tony Perkins was using when he made his claims. My e-mail went unanswered for more than a week, and when I did get a reply, they just referred me to their online tract, Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse, which wasn’t much help.

A few days ago, someone passed on an E-mail he received from the FRC which clarifies one point, namely the following claim:

…the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy found that boys molested by men are almost four times more likely to become homosexual or bisexual than boys who weren’t molested.

When I wrote my examination, I couldn’t find the relevant article in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. My detective work led me to believe that claim actually came from a third-hand reference to a book written in 1979 by David Finkelhor. I now stand corrected.

According to the email I received, the claim actually comes from an article written by James R. Bramblett, Jr. and Carol Anderson Darling entitled “Sexual contacts: Experiences, thoughts, and fantasies of adult male survivors of child sexual abuse” (Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, vol 23, no. 4, Winter 1997; pp 305-316).

And right there on page 313, we read the following:

In this study, 46% of the abused men, as opposed to 12% of the non-abused men, defined their sexual orientation as either bisexual or homosexual.

This study examined two groups of men, one group of 35 men who had been sexually abused and another non-abused group of 33 men to serve as controls.

That’s right. The Family Research Council is basing its evidence on thirty-five men who somehow are to represent all men who were sexually abused — that’s not very compelling evidence.

And notice the non-abused group. Twelve percent identified themselves as being gay. Now, if this group were representative of non-abused men, would the Family Research Council concede that gay men make up 12% of the male population? I doubt it.

Another interesting fact is that the composition of the abused group broke down this way: 54% straight, 32% bisexual, and 14% gay. In other words, the number of gay men in both groups is the same. What’s more, there were no bisexuals in the non-abused group. They were either gay or straight.

So why the large numbers of bisexuals in the abused group? The authors note that “according to existing literature, gender identity confusion and gender preferences are often cited as being affected by childhood sexual abuse.” The very small number of participants makes it extremely dangerous to try to draw broad conclusions. Not all bisexuals — and perhaps not even significant numbers of bisexuals — are bisexual due to past abuse, for example. And this is not to say that bisexuals generally are “confused”, but it certainly begs the question of whether abused men suffer a greater degree of uncertainty over their sexual orientation than non-abused men.

The most this study proves is that abused men are more likely to report being bisexual than being gay. That’s an important distinction given the difficulties involved with overcoming child sexual abuse. But the Family “Research” Council won’t recognize that very important distinction. Instead, they’ll do just about anything for a smear, including misrepresenting the lives of abused men to denigrate others.

The Politically Inconvenient Truth

Over the past week, Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, has tried to make himself something of a media expert on the supposed link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse. Since October 3, he appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room, MSNBC’s Hardball and MSNBC Live, Fox’s The Big Story, with Charmaine Yoest on CNBC, and all three nightly network newscasts. And wherever he’s appeared, he’s been making the claims that he made in this blurb, entitled “The Politically Incorrect Truth” that he posed on his web site:

The more recent revelation that Foley himself was molested as a teenager, and his lawyer’s acknowledgment that he is indeed a homosexual, simply reinforce a pattern well-attested in the scholarly literature. For example, the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy found that boys molested by men are almost four times more likely to become homosexual or bisexual than boys who weren’t molested. Homosexual activists don’t want you to know that, because it undermines the myth that people are “born gay.” Although homosexuals and bisexuals are less than 3% of the male population, male-on-male abuse accounts for about a third of all child molestation. The Archives of Sexual Behavior reported that “eighty-six percent of offenders against males described themselves as homosexual or bisexual.”

Three specific statistical claims, but only two cited sources. Let’s examine them one by one.

Claim 1:

…the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy found that boys molested by men are almost four times more likely to become homosexual or bisexual than boys who weren’t molested.

I looked high and low in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy for this statistic. It was nowhere to be found. But after searching through the FRC’s website, I was able to find it repeated in another document that carried this footnote: Watkins and Bentovim (#35).

Update (10/20/2006): Almost there weeks after writing this post, I have learned the actual source for this claim. You can read that update here.

Okay. Here’s the first example of shoddy research: Tony Perkins got his source wrong. He should have referred to Bill Watkins and Arnon Bentovim’s “The sexual abuse of male children and adolescents: A review of current research”, which originally appeared in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry vol 33, no. 1 (January 1992): 197-248.

I happened to have that report on file, and this is what I learned:

Finkelhor (1984c) note it is a traditional mythology that molestation leads to homosexuality, but at the same time he found, in his college study, that boys victimized by older men were over four times more likely to be currently engaged in homosexual activity than were non-victims.

With that, I went to our local university library and found David Finkelhor’s 1984 book Child Sexual Abuse: New Theory and Research (New York: Free Press) and found this on page 195:

Boys victimized by older men were over four times more likely to be engaged in homosexual activity than were nonvictims.

For this statistic, David Finkelhor cited yet another book he wrote clear back to a book he published in 1979, Sexually Victimized Children (New York: Free Press). This book presented some preliminary results of a survey that he conducted in the mid-seventies among social science college students at six New England colleges. Notice that now we’re talking about data that is some thirty years old. And since it comes from a convenience sample of social sicence college studients, the data is not representative. David Finkelhor plainly discusses the weakenesses of his sample in pages 38-41 of his book.

But that’s not all. Finkelhor’s claim about boys victimized by men doesn’t actually appear to be in the book (I can’t find it, anyway). So how did he determine that these kids were “currently engaged in homosexuality” as he said in his later book? I found my answer in appendix B, where the questionnaire was reproduced:

In the last year, how many sexual experiences have you had with someone of your own sex?

0. None
1. 1-2
2. 3-5
3. 5-10
4. 11 or more

So this is what it took for Tony Perkins to come up with his statistic that he’s so proud of. It wasn’t a comprehensive survey of adults who were molested as children. Perkins had to find an obscure third-hand reference to a thirty-year-old study that was not peer-reviewed, and was based on a convenience sample of college students taken at the very height of the sexual revolution (college students who were enrolled in social science classes in New England, no less). And that statistic included those who may only have had a single experimental experience in the past year.

How’s that for cherry picking?

Let’s skip Perkins next claim for now — that 3% of male homosexuals account for a third of all molestations, a claim we’ll come back to in a moment — and move on to his other attributed statement.

Claim 2:

The Archives of Sexual Behavior reported that “eighty-six percent of offenders against males described themselves as homosexual or bisexual.”

This is a very poor choice of support for such a broad contention. That 1988 study (Erickson, W.D.; Walbek, N.H.; Seely, R.K.; “Behavior patterns of child molesters.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 17, no. 1 (1988): 77-88; abstract available here) consisted of a convenience sample of only 63 convicted molesters against male victims. The brief sentence of “eighty-six percent of offenders against males described themselves as homosexual or bisexual” is the only mention of sexual orientation. There was no attempt to follow up on whether any of these predators had any adult relationships, or if so, what kind of relationships they were. There was no description of how they may have measured these predator’s sexual attractions. There was no attempt to quantify their erotic age preference. Just one single sentence in passing, with no further explanation or support.

This is important. As you can imagine, it’s much easier to label oneself as a homosexual than as a pedophile. Members of the Aryan Nation, for example, call themselves Christians instead of bigots, a claim which most Christians would vehemently disagree.

I’m sure the “researchers” at the Family Research Council had to dig long and hard to find that statistic, because it runs completely counter to what the most respected experts have to say about the subject — Dr. Carole Jenny, Nicholas Groth, and the late Kurt Freund, for example. They have all found that this supposed connection between homosexuality and pedophilia simply don’t exist.

And finally…

Claim 3:

Although homosexuals and bisexuals are less than 3% of the male population, male-on-male abuse accounts for about a third of all child molestation.

Here’s a news flash: that 3% statistic only applies to men who openly acknowledge their sexual orientation. It does not include those who engage in same-sex sexual activity but identify as straight.

A recent random survey of 4,193 men in New York City revealed that among men who have sex with men, 72.8% identified as straight. And these only represent those who admit to such sexual activity when questioned.

In short, this claim is not only unsubstantiated, it is logically false and demonstrably wrong. But he’s not the only one to make it. You can read an extensive analysis of that myth in my report, Testing the Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Friends, this is what passes for research at the Family “Research” Council: cherry-picking of thirty-year old data, ill-supported conclusions, and statements built on faulty logic. In other words, the same old stuff. It’s time we — and specially the press — called them on their so-called “science” and exposed it for what it is: junk.

Challenging Predators Is “Gay-Bashing”?

Just a few moments ago, Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council just appeared on CNN’s “The Situation Room” to talk about the unfolding scandal involving Congressman Foley’s sexually explicit Instant Message exchanges with 16-year-old pages. When Perkins was asked why he thought the Republican Congressional leadership delayed so long in handling the situation, he answered that he didn’t know. But, he said, it raised a lot of questions:

Was it out of fear of pushing something too far, over-reacting, and that, uh…. because of the orientation of congressman Foley they would be seen as being ‘gay bashing’? Was that part of the decision not to act? That’s what I think we need to know.

Let’s get these two things clear right away:

1. Going after sexual predators is not gay bashing.
2. Equating homosexuality with sex abuse is.

Fear of gay-bashing? This congressional leadership? Give me a break. The election is down to the last five weeks. I’m surprised the gay bashing hasn’t started earlier.

Gary Bauer, who heads a group which calls itself “American Values” sent this outrageous statement out in his daily “End of the Day” e-mail this afternoon:

Groups like NAMBLA, the North American Man-Boy Love Association, continue to be given positions in “gay rights” parades and, without shame, continue to promote their governing slogan, “Sex by eight or it’s too late.”

I would like anyone who has any evidence of NAMBLA has been invited to participate in a gay pride parade to email me directly. I’m looking for photographs or mainstream newspaper articles. (Sorry, I’m afraid I won’t take Agape Press’s word for it.) I haven’t seen anything like this in at least the past ten years –- probably longer. I know I would be outraged to see such a thing, as would virtually everyone I know. If it’s happening, I want to know about it.

It looks as though this scandal will provide the anti-gay lobby plenty of ammunition to use against us. Now is the time to get informed. One place to start is by reading Testing the Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?.