Box Turtle Bulletin

This Month In History: How To Conduct Junk Science

Recent election coverage has brought a lot of attention to opinion polls. We’ve seen a number of polls failing to predict some of the state primary winners, while other polls either overstate or underestimate the support for various candidates. There are a lot of factors which can determine a poll’s accuracy, with the phrasing of the questions being a key component.

Forty years ago this month, a young assistant psychology professor from Wayne State University published the results of a study in the February 1968 edition of the journal Psychological Reports:

That a poll can be biased by the statement of the question and/or the attitudes of the interviewers is part of the pollster’s lore. The degree of biasing possible is largely unknown and the present study was undertaken to aid in the anchoring of this parameter.

Twenty introductory psychology students interviewed by telephone 590 fellow-students randomly selected from the student directory while an additional 574 were personally interviewed utilizing quota sampling. In either case, the interviewer asked [the subject] two questions from an array of 18, one concerning Johnson’s policy in Viet Nam and the other about its news coverage. No [subject] was asked two questions of the same coloration (neutral, agree-, or disagree-biased). Interviewers were instructed to promote agreement with the casting of each item by acting as though they personally endorsed it by tone of voice (and, in the face-to-face interview, facial expression).

And what did this young neophyte professor discover? Depending on how the question was phrased and how it was asked by the interviewer, it was possible to manipulate a change in opinion of around 13%. That young researcher concluded:

Considering the influence of an interviewer in a transitory situation, social psychologists would do well to cast a critical eye on classical assessment-message-assessment attitude experiments.

That young assistant professor was Paul Cameron, who would later become famous for being a prolific generator of junk statistics for the anti-gay industry. Little did he know how useful that little two-page study would become later in his career.

Source: Cameron, Paul; Anderson, James. “Effects of introductory phrases and tonal-facial suggestions upon question-elected responses.” Psychological Reports 22, no. 1 (February 1968): 233-234.

Paul Cameron at a Supermarket Checkout Near You

It looks as though anti-gay extremist and discredited “researcher” Paul Cameron hasn’t been able to get much attention lately. His “research” usually appears in the pay-to-publish vanity journal Psychological Reports, but he hasn’t made an appearance there since June, 2005. Last year he tried to pawn off a paper which he supposedly “presented” to the Eastern Psychological Association convention, but the president of the EPA said nope, it didn’t happen.

Then Cameron hit on the idea of starting an Internet-only “Journal” (what the rest of us would call a “web site”). But it looks like he hasn’t had much luck there. So far that web site, er, “journal” has only posted two papers, and the only author appearing in that web site “journal” (sorry!) is Paul Cameron.

And it looks like Cameron’s new web site isn’t garnering much attention. (I give up! It’s a web site.) According to Google, only four other unique web sites have bothered to link to Cameron’s new venture so far, and one of them did so only because Cameron paid for a press release with a link.

But don’t fret; Cameron’s publication woes are over. The National Examiner (that’s the National Enquirer’s dumber, louder sister) has cited Paul Cameron as an “expert” on gay serial killers, based on a Cameron source from 1983. Qouth the Examiner:

“A study of 518 sexually-tinged mass murders in the U.S. from 1966 to 1983 determined that 350 — or 68 percent — of the victims were killed by those who practiced homosexuality and that 19 of the 44 murderers were bisexuals or homosexuals,” writes Paul Cameron, Ph.D. in a report for the family Research Institute”.

The quote from the “report” was actually lifted nearly verbatim from this pamphlet, which in turn cites Cameron’s paper “Is homosexuality disproportionately associated with murder?” — a paper which he claims to have “presented” to the Midwestern Psychological Association back in 1983. Doesn’t that scenario sound familiar?

Well anyway, everyone here at Box Turtle Bulletin would like to congratulate Paul Cameron for finally finding a suitable publication outlet in the National Examiner.

Hat tip: Good As You

A Holocaust Revisionist Speaks To Racists

Ex-Gay Watch’s David Rattigan noticed that discredited anti-gay “researcher” and holocaust revisionist Paul Cameron was a guest speaker at a Christian Council of Britain meeting in London on October 26. According to Rattigan, Cameron brought up his most recent claim that homosexuals are responsible for 29 percent of child rapes and murders. While the CCB is little known on this side of the Pond, they have a virulently nationalistic and racist reputation throughout the United Kingdom. Just take a look at section 5 (“The gift of race and nation”) of the CCB’s constitution:

The Christian Council of Great Britain and Northern Ireland therefore resolved to recognise the godly importance of race and nation as groups based on this historical and providential process of objective descent: giving rise to different organically-formed communities; sharing and passing-on common genetically inherited (physical, intellectual and character) features, together with cultures, mores, relationships, loyalties, memories, and identities-in-common; and ultimately – by the will of God – national homelands, where an ongoing connection between land and people has developed, and can be encouraged and preserved.

Rev. Robert West heads the CCB, which grew out of the ultra-nationalist British National Party (BNP). In one interview, West complained about the immigration situation in Britain:

“If we are to exist as nations then we are to have our own national homelands. In our own national homelands in which our own identity has priority. The BNP doesnít want the British people to be homeless. Each race should have its own space.”

…

“The mixing of races challenges the glory of God” he said.

That’s some mighty fine company Cameron’s been keeping lately.

Forty Percent of Football Players Are GAY!!!!

Paul Cameron (and his son Kirk) regularly supply anti-gays with Studies and Statistics about the evils of homosexuality. When you read that gay people die 20 years earlier or are three times as likely to molest children, you are reading the work of the Camerons.

Thoughtful people who are interested in truth soon learn to distance themselves from the Camerons and their parade of nonsensical claims. But some find anti-gay attitudes so tantalizing that they take an “if there’s smoke, there must be fire” attitude. They choose to think that maybe the methodology isn’t all that strong… but Cameron’s on to something, ya know?

In the vein of Cameron research, Science Daily brings us a “study”:

In his study of homosexuality among sportsmen in the US, sociologist Dr Eric Anderson found that 19 in a sample of 47 had taken part in acts intended to sexually arouse other men, ranging from kissing to mutual masturbation and oral sex.

Amazing!! Shocking!!

Could it be that the old efforts by some ex-gay ministries to masculinize their strugglers by playing football was making them more gay??!!??

Well, no. Not exactly.

As it turns out, these were all kids who played football in high school but, unable to make the team in college, turned to cheerleading instead. Hardly a representative sample.

So the next time you hear that “studies show that gay men die 20 years early” just reply that “studies show that fourty percent of all football players are gay”. One is just about as true as the other.

Guess Who the First Published Author In Cameron’s New “Journal” Is

Last month, I reported on Paul Cameron’s new fake online “journal”, something he decided to call the Empirical Journal of Same Sexual Behavior. Maybe he can no longer afford the price of being published in his previous favorite vanity journal, the pay-to-publish Psychological Reports. Now, with his own pay-to-publish online “journal,” he can publish whatever he wants whenever he wants for free. Which pretty much means that his new “journal” is what the rest of us would call a “web site.”

His new web site, err, “journal” now features only one article for its premier: “Teacher-Pupil Sex Across the World: How Much Is Homosexual?” — by none other than Paul Cameron himself. And for Cameron’s first article in his little pretend journal, he decided to try to find every instance of teacher-student sexual abuse as reported in newspapers all over the English-speaking world.

But it doesn’t look like he was able to get very far. In his wide-ranging search of newspaper articles from 1980 to 2006, he was only able to find 340 perpetrators in the United States. That average out to fewer than thirteen per year. It’s hard to draw any conclusions from such a fractional size, but that has never stopped Cameron before — even though he understands perfectly well why his sample is so problematic:

Even though teacher/pupil sexual events are fairly common, an instance of teacher/pupil has to run a veritable gauntlet before it becomes public knowledge. Educational systems try vigorously to assure that teacher molestations are not brought to light. So such an event is likely to be suppressed. Thus, an Australian commission uncovered scores of teachers who were either shifted to other assignments or given a letter of commendation rather than being prosecuted…

Which may explain why there were only ninety-five teachers in his Australian sample.

I won’t bore you with the details since you can guess what he has to say: The gays are out to molest your children. Warren Throckmorton spotted the biggest problem with this “research” right away:

Anyone familiar with schools and teacher behavior knows that these events are frequently covered up with many never getting to trial and thus are not captured by newspapers. Who knows how many actual events occur? Who knows how many of the same-sex perpetrators are married with kids? Not to mention that same sex perpetrations might actually be more likely to be reported and made public. And yet, Cameron considers news reports a source of data adequate enough to include in his inaugural issue. So since he demolished any credibility the study could have, there is no point in going any further, right? Of course, he does, and we get statistics that may end up in a news release somewhere.

Whenever I come across a paper like this, the first thing I do is a survey of the footnotes or the bibliographical references. That’s where I get the first clues of where his distortions are (he typically recycles the same material over and over), and I am never disappointed. Cameron typically loads his papers up with dozens of bibliographical references. Even his popular tracts and brochures are burdened with such scholarly debris. Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do has thirty-three references alone.

But his latest effort stops at a paltry eleven. Three of them are Cameron’s own work. Another is a magazine article from McCall’s, which he brings up four times in the text as though it were a scholarly study. Now that he doesn’t have to pay Psychological Reports to get his stuff published, it’s as if he’s not even trying anymore.

See also:

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

Alan Chambers “Returns To Sodomy”?

It looks like Warren Throckmorton is on some pretty entertaining email lists. He reports on an email by Fred Hutchison, a columnist on the particularly virulent website Renew America, which has gained wider circulation among social conservatives. That email goes like this:

Ex-gay leader returns to sodomy

According to Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute Alex Chambers, (sic) Director of Exodus International, the largest Evangelical organization for ex-gays declared that he is no longer ex-gay and is not sure he has ever met an ex-gay! He is now calling to Evangelicals to reconcile with practicing gays.

Don’t you just love it when someone takes Paul Cameron’s word for something?

Warren contacted Hutchison, who responded by citing last June’s LA Times story (which says no such thing) and Cameron again, saying, “I really thought Paul Cameron and the LA Times were adequate sources because I had no intention to publish.”

I have no idea what that’s supposed to mean. I also have no idea whether Cameron actually claimed that Exodus President Alan Chambers “returned to sodomy,” or if Hutchison quoted Cameron accurately. I am quite confident that Chambers hasn’t “returned to sodomy” — that much I can say. But is it too terribly wrong of me to think that this sounds like something Cameron might say?

Whenever Cameron has written about the ex-gay movement, he’s been particularly critical of Exodus. This goes at least as far back as his October 1998 newsletter, when Cameron zeroed in on what he sees as the essential problem of ex-gay ministries like Exodus — they’re too nice:

The result among ex-gay ministries has often been an attitude that those who engage in homosexuality are deserving of delicate treatment, precisely because they consider homosexuals “victims of circumstance.” In fact, the tactics of the ex-gay groups sometimes so avoid direct criticism of homosexual behavior that they almost sound like quasi-apologists for the gay movement. They frequently use the same words gays use, words like homophobia, etc. And these leaders are often reticent to call homosexuality what it is — deadly dangerous.

Boy, oh boy. I have no idea what ex-gay conferences or literature Cameron’s been exposed to, but I haven’t seen much evidence of “delicate treatment” from the ex-gay movement. But that might just be a matter of perspective. Maybe Cameron would be more approving if the ex-gay movement adopted some of the “proven techniques” developed by Nazi Germany which Cameron admires so much.

Anyway, Cameron continues:

This is one of the difficulties with the philosophy undergirding Exodus. FRI regards homosexuality not as a disease from which one must be cured, nor necessarily a bruise from an inadequate or defective childhood that must be healed, but a bad habit that must be broken no matter how it came to be acquired. Digging about in a person’s past often involves mining for face-saving excuses, and has no particular relevance to breaking adopted habits.

Since FRI regards homosexuality as merely a habit (Don’t you love how Cameron refers to himself in the institutional third person?), the solution to that habit is simple. Just stop doing it and move on:

But those in leadership positions in the ex-gay movement often appear unwilling to simply move on, get away from homosexuality, and get a life. Being involved with the Ex-ministry keeps them around homosexuality and homosexuals. Instead of “getting away and staying away,” they retain a toehold in the gay world.

Cameron’s opinion of Exodus hasn’t changed much since 1998. He returned to the subject last July, prompted by what Alan Chambers told the LA Times:

Alan Chambers directs Exodus International, widely described as the nation’s largest ex-gay ministry. But when he addresses the group’s Freedom Conference at Concordia University in Irvine this month, Chambers won’t celebrate successful ‘ex-gays.’ Truth is, he’s not sure he’s ever met one.

… [L]ately, he’s come to resent the term “ex-gay”: It’s too neat, implying a clean break with the past, when he still struggles at times with homosexual temptation. “By no means would we ever say change can be sudden or complete,” Chambers said.

Those comments served as a launching pad for Cameron’s long and rambling critique of the ex-gay movement which appeared in the July 2007 issue of the FRI Report (not available online). Here, Cameron loses patience with both arms of the movement – the ministerial branch represented by Exodus, as well as the clinical branch represented by NARTH and personified by one of its founders, Dr. Charles Socarides. In fact, Cameron spends nearly three pages criticizing Socarides’ psychological approaches to homosexuality.

And in the end, Cameron remains dissatisfied that nobody seems to understand what he thinks is so clear: that homosexuality is nothing more than a “habit.” And the best way to break the habit is to stay completely away from anyone else who is prone to that same habit:

‘Common sense’ holds that if one has a bad habit – involving sex or drugs or anything else that can be intensely pleasurable – that individual has got to stop feeding it. Then they must get out and stay away from those with whom they associated while indulging their habit and any of its associated pleasures….

…

FRI believes that the folk involved in Exodus and NARTH are sincere, caring people. But FRI, believing in ‘common sense,’ is skeptical about any ‘curative program’ that physically puts together many of those seeking healing from a particular bad habit.

After recalling Michael Bussee’s example (He was one of the original founders of Exodus before leaving with his partner and fellow volunteer, Cary Cooper, to become one of Exodus’ strongest critics), Cameron finally returns his attention the Chambers’ remarks on the fifth page. That’s where Cameron accuses Chambers of potentially making the same “mistake” Bussee made:

These ‘healing programs’ defy common sense. Instead of running away from homosexuality and those who participate in it, ex-gay movement leaders immerse themselves — albeit with a different motivation, a motivation to help their fellow former-habitué’s. Who knows how much this ‘re-immersion’ affected Bussee’s decision making?

And when it comes to Chambers, perhaps he hasn’t met an ex-gay because those who leave the lifestyle AND distance themselves from hanging around homosexuals or former homosexuals aren’t around for him to talk to. And why should they?

Cameron concludes:

Perhaps Alan Chambers’ ‘spilling the beans’ might be the wake-up call that the Evangelical Church can hear. If the main defense of the Church against the homosexual movement boils down to ‘converting’ homosexuals away from participation in homosexuality, it is hard to see how victory can be denied the gay movement. Yet this very tactic is being vigorously pushed by Focus on the Family at its ‘Love Won Out’ conferences.

… Chambers is calling for the Church to abandon its historic stance against homosexuality and adopt instead the ‘insights’ of psychiatric theory. He is in step with Joe Dallas, an ex-gay who delivers the last address at many of the ‘Love Won Out’ conferences. In that address Dallas compares the Church’s treatment of those who practice homosexuality to the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis’s. That’s what FRI would call taking psychiatric theory seriously!! [Emphasis in the original]

Imagine the impertinence of Joe Dallas using the Nazi angle! Why, that’s Cameron’s domain!

Clearly Cameron is not Alan Chamber’s greatest fan, nor does he think much of Exodus, ex-gay ministries or secular “reparative” therapy. Throughout his career, Cameron has made it clear that he’d rather go the punishment route instead.

Cameron seems to think that Chambers’ continuing association with “homosexuals or former homosexuals” is flirting with danger. What’s more, Cameron is outraged that Chambers occasionally speaks out about “compassion” towards the gay community. Again, I have no idea if Cameron actually claimed that Chambers “returned to sodomy.” I personally doubt it myself. But given his writings on Chambers and the ex-gay movement, it would appear that Cameron sees little difference.

Paul Cameron Announces a New “Journal”

What do you do when you are having trouble getting your junk science published in reputable peer-reviewed journals? Well, one solution would be to improve the quality of your science. Or, if you’re Paul Cameron and you’re running an outfit called the Family Research Institute (FRI), you try something else:

FRI is doing something exciting — we are starting an online scientific journal! It is entitled the Empirical Journal of Same Sexual Behavior (EJSSB)

That exciting announcement went out to members of Paul Cameron’s mailing list. The brainchild of Paul Cameron and George Rekers, the EJSSB’s first articles were slated to appear sometime in September, although the pay-to-publish website (beginning at $500) appears to still be under construction. But even if it does go live, don’t look for this journal to appear in your local university library:

Not too many years ago, launching a scientific journal was a colossal undertaking. First, you had to assemble an editorial board and get capitalized sufficiently to be able to print and ship the journal. Then you had to find a way to get libraries of the world to subscribe — hopefully covering all or most of your costs. Daunting to put it mildly.

Times have changed. The internet now permits journals to bypass many of the previous hurdles.

Cameron intends to dress this “journal” up as an academic journal, but that doesn’t mean it will actually be one. Because there are some 1,700 real social science journals listed in Journal Citation Reports, an article in the most reputable journals may still be read by only a few thousand professionals around the world. But that’s not who Cameron is targeting. Instead he wants to draw in thousands of unsuspecting readers on the internet, few of whom will realize that it isn’t a reliable journal — or even a real one.

George Rekers has some firsthand knowledge of how this works. He set up the Journal of Human Sexuality in 1996, featuring such luminaries as Peter LaBarbera and Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively. As far as I can tell, that journal appeared only once and few libraries bothered to acquire it. Notice how WorldCat listed it as a “book” despite it’s name. But that doesn’t prevent several anti-gay activists from citing it as though it were a real journal.

Cameron is among the most extreme of the anti-gay activists, and he’s become something of a persona non grata in more respectable quarters for many reasons: whether they be his numerous ethical violations, his widespread abuses of science, or his deeply chilling solutions that he poses for the “homosexual problem” in America — including his admiration for how Auschwitz commandant Rudolph Hoss dealt with homosexuals in the 1930’s.

Cameron’s letter to his supporters lists the initial public members of the Editorial/Review board for Cameron and Reker’s latest venture. In addition to Paul Cameron, his son Kirk, and Rekers, they include:

Toby B. Bieber: She and her late husband, Irving Bieber, co-authored the famous 1962 book Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Male Homosexuals, which popularized the too-close mother and distant father theories of male homosexuality. They were an ardent opponent of the APA’s 1973 decision to remove homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. Since Irving’s death in 1991, Toby Bieber has carried on her husband’s opposition to that decision by serving on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), an organization she helped to foster from its beginning.

Gerard van den Aardweg: Another NARTH Scientific Advisory Committee member and Dutch psychologist, Gerard van den Aardweg is the author of The Battle for Normalcy: A Guide for (Self-)Therapy for Homosexuality� in which he cites four different Cameron works. Oddly for a “professional,” none of Cameron’s works that he cited were published in remotely professional setting. Among the Cameron sources Van den Aardweg cites is “Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do”.

Thomas Landess: A former English professor at the University of Dallas, Landess co-wrote three articles with Paul Cameron between 2001 and 2005, all of which appeared in the low-ranked pay-to-publish Psychological Reports. Cameron described Landess as a “long-time FRI collaborator, supporter, and friend” at a 2002 FRI banquet, where Landess was the featured speaker. Landess is also identified with the Neo-Confederate Movement and once served as contributing editor of Southern Partisan magazine. One 1984 article for that magazine condemned the Statue of Liberty for its the ideals of freedom and nineteenth and early twentieth century immigration.

Nathaniel S. Lehrman: A former Clinical Director of the Kingsboro Psychiatric Center in Brooklyn, Lehrman holds revisionist views about gays in the holocaust which closely parallel Paul Cameron’s and Scott Eric Lively’s, another holocaust revisionist. Like Cameron and many other anti-gay extremists, Lehrman contends that there is no such thing as sexual orientation.

Walter R. Schumm: A professor at Kansas State University, Schumm published a 2000 article in Psychological Reports, Paul Cameron’s favorite publication outlet, in which Schumm defended Cameron’s research methods against Dr. Gregory Herek’s criticisms.

Little is known about the remaining three names given for the Editorial/Review board: Ralph E. Mayberry (MD), John Raney (MD), and Steven Rice (MD). There is a Steven Rice, MD, who serves as a board member and Public Policy Liaison for the Memphis-based and Exodus-affiliated Love In Action ex-gay ministry. I have not been able to confirm whether this is the same Dr. Steven Rice.

While it appears that the “journal” is not yet up and running, I wouldn’t be too terribly surprised to see Cameron’s “Scandinavian Lifespan Study” appear as one of its first so-called “peer-reviewed” articles. If so, I wonder if he will have given himself a discount to get it published?

Hat tip: An unnamed reader I met at the Ex-Gay Survivor’s Conference who managed to get on Cameron’s mailing list. You know who you are. Thanks.

LaBarbera Award: Alan Stang (With a Little Help From Paul Cameron)

Ronald Reagan was our first “homosexual” president, and the Republican Party is a “sodomite organization” — according to Alan Stang, our latest LaBarbera Award winner.

Who is Alan Stang?

When I was in high school, a local AM radio station in my hometown used to carry a five-minute program called the “Alan Stang Report” produced by the John Birch Society. The program began with Alan Stang’s menacing voice announcing “This is Alan Stang… Stick Around!” before going to a brief commercial for the local sponsor (a candy and tobacco distributor). And he’d always end his report with “This is Alan Stang… Think about it!” In between, you’d hear another revelation from the strangest collection of conspiracy theories imaginable.

According to Alan Stang, Gerald Ford was a communist. So was his vice president, Nelson Rockefeller. Jimmy Carter and Walter Mondale were communists too. By the time Ronald Reagan was in office, I was in college so I never found out whether he was a communist or not.

But it doesn’t matter. Now I know something even juicier. Alan Stang’s latest book, Not Holier Than Thou: How Queer Is Bush? spills the beans. And you can trust it because Paul Cameron wrote the foreword.

Not Holier is not a squeamish dance around the issue. It exposes the homosexual ring in the Reagan and both Bush White Houses. It names names and tells who is in bed with whom: “If Clinton is our first ‘black’ President, Ronald Reagan is our first ‘homosexual’ President. . . . For the record, Bush strategist Karl Rove’s late father, Louis Rove, was a homosexual, which could be the reason Karl’s mother committed suicide.” [Ellipses in the original.]

That’s right. Ronald Reagan is our first “homosexual” president. I think I’ve heard just about everything. But it doesn’t end there. According to Alan Stang’s latest book:

“So, George Bush and Karl Rove have always used homosexuality as a weapon, have righteously opposed it and have routinely accused people of it, knowing that those people were normal, while all along they have colluded to make the Republican Party a sodomite organization from the top down.”

That’s the theme of the latest, incendiary book by Alan Stang, who says Republican leaders are using homosexuality to terrify critics into silence, so they can bring the United States to its knees. The foreword by Paul Cameron, Ph.D., chairman of the Family Research Institute, reinforces that theme.

I can’t wait to find out how Cameron reinforces Stang’s discovery of a “homosexual ring.” But after having had a glimpse into Cameron’s fascination with how the Nazis dealt with homosexuality, one might argue that the John Birch Society is actually a step in the right direction.

Well, one might argue it but it wouldn’t be worth the effort.

Hat tip: Jonathan Rowe. Graphic courtesy of Daimeon Pilcher.

Paul Cameron in EDGE New York — and NARTH

EDGE New York published an article by Arielle Chavkin about Paul Cameron’s “Scandiavian Gay Lifespan Study.” Her report includes several observations by Jason Cianciotto and yours truly.

And speaking of Paul Cameron, Ex-Gay Watch’s David Roberts noticed that NARTH has added yet another link to a study using Paul Cameron’s research. Just scroll down a bit on NARTH’s front page and you’ll see this in the center column:

7.25.07 – Distortions of Science
Studies of Homosexual Parenting: A Critical Review [link]

That handy little link will take you to a paper by George Rekers and Mark Kilgus that was published in the Regent University Law Review back in 2002. Regent University, if you’ll remember, is the school established by Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson. That same law review issue contained two other articles which cite Cameron, Child Molestation and the Homosexual Movement (PDF: 76 KB/16 pages) by Stephen Baldwin (not the actor), and Homosexuality: Innate and Immutable? (PDF: 340 KB/42 pages) by A. Dean Byrd and Stony Olsen, 2002. Meanwhile, NARTH continues to maintain their own articles citing Paul Cameron on their web site.

These are just a few of Paul Cameron’s many collaborators who are complicit in not only perpetuating his pseudo-science, but who also help to support his stated agenda for gays and lesbians.

BTB Mentioned in “Bay Windows”

Bay Windows, New England’s largest LGBT newspaper, published an op-ed this week by Richard J. Rosendall mentioning the work we do at Box Turtle Bulletin. (It’s also reprinted at IGF.) Citing an article about Paul Cameron, Rosendall bemoans the fact that reporters often aren’t very diligent in getting to the root of a story:

One advantage enjoyed by phony experts is that those who interview them and report their published claims are seldom prepared to challenge either their claims or their professional credentials…

We are fortunate that groups like GLAAD, Box Turtle Bulletin and SPLC are active in refuting anti-gay propaganda disguised as news, but there are far more news outlets than they can handle, in an expanding array of media. All of us who are consumers as well as subjects of the news must be vigilant. When you find a reporter giving credence to the work of an anti-gay “expert,” call the reporter and the editor on it. Instead of merely berating them, use the occasion as a teaching moment. First, though, be sure to do more careful homework than the reporter.

See also:

Paul Cameron’s World: to learn more about Cameron’s “solution” for gays and lesbians.
Paul Cameron’s Collaborators: A running list of people who use Cameron’s “statistics.”
Paul Cameron’s Footprint: to learn about Cameron’s latest “lifespan study.”
Paul Cameron vs. Professional Ethics: to learn about Cameron’s censures by professional organizations.

Bill O’Reilly Broadcasts Cameron’s “Lifespan” Statistic Unchallenged

A few weeks ago, Bill O’Reilly’s program became something of a laughingstock for raising the specter of 150 lesbian gangs wreaking havoc in Washington, D.C. O’Reilly’s guest, Rod Wheeler, who gave that scenario, has since apologized and O’Reilly has had to eat crow over it.

Just last night, O’Reilly’s program became a platform for another bogus statistic, this one from discredited “researcher” Paul Cameron, whose comparison of homosexuality to smoking made it on the air without challenge.

The segment on O’Reilly’s program focused on the San Diego Padres’ decision to hold a Gay Pride Night while giving away hats to children. Sandy Rios, formerly of the Concerned Women for America and currently of the Culture Campaign, took the anti-gay side. Ron Deharte of San Diego Pride defended the Padres’ decision. During the three-way interview, the screen showed numerous scenes of gay couples, some holding hands, hugging and kissing. O’Reilly exploded near the end of the segment, calling those scenes “exhibitionistic.” This was clearly the case of two against one, with the calm-spoken Deharte trying to make his points between the shouting.

Sandy Rios complained about the “mixing” of children with gay couples, saying it sent the wrong message:

Sandy Rios: But let me just give you another way to think about this. What if the San Diego Padres decided to celebrate a “smoking is fun” night, and they had a smoking men’s chorus performing. Now there are a lot of people that come to the game and they have a pack of cigarettes or whatever, maybe they can’t smoke there. But that’s different than celebrating smoking because we all know is that smoking is really harmful to your health. Well, what people don’t understand is that the homosexual lifestyle, especially for men, is deadly. It takes their life ten to twenty years earlier than straight men. That is not what we should be promoting before of our children… [Emphasis mine]

Bill O’Reilly: But that’s their decision…

The connection of homosexuality to the dangers of smoking and a reduced lifespan comes directly from discredited researcher Paul Cameron. He first claimed that gay men die at the average age of 42 and lesbians die at 44 in 1993. That claim, based on his “obituary study,” has been roundly discredited.

More recently, Cameron claimed that official statistics from Denmark and Norway show that gays and lesbians die twenty-four years earlier than their straight counterparts. When he released that self-published study, he issued a press release comparing that statistic to smoking:

Studies have shown that years of smoking shortens the lifespan of the smoker from 1 to 7 years. But analysis of the age of death in Norway and Denmark for gays who are legally married suggests that engaging in homosexual behavior reduces the lifespan by 24 years.

That study was also based on faulty science. Not only that, but Cameron claimed that he presented the paper to the Eastern Psychological Association. That claim earned him a rebuke from the EPA’s president, Phil Hineline. That EPA censure comes after rebukes by three other professional organizations during the course of Cameron’s career.

His problems don’t end there however. Cameron advocates a draconian agenda for gays and lesbians in this country, and points to Nazi Germany for evidence on how to “deal” with gay men. His Family Research Institute web site makes no bones about the fact that everything he does is driven by his goal to recriminalize homosexuality in this country as a felony, and he continues to defend his call to quarantine everyone who is HIV-positive.

There are no current valid studies to suggest a reduced lifespan for gays or lesbians. O’Reilly, of the “we report, you decide” network, allowed a false statistic to air unchallenged. As he did for the lesbian gang story, Bill O’Reilly needs to correct the misinformation that aired on his program and apologize to the gay community for Sandy Rios’ slander. The Rampaging Lesbian Gang story was funny; death isn’t.

Hat tip: David Roberts

Update: Sure enough, Culture Campaign cites Cameron on their web site. That’s another one added to the list.

Donald Hank: “Big Sodomy” Wants To “Silence” Cameron

I rarely read WorldNetDaily, an omission I intend to correct immediately. I almost missed this interesting nugget, “Will ex-gays bring down ‘Big Sodomy’?” The title alone is worth the price of admission, which, of course, is free.

Donald Hank (who I’ve never heard of before, but there’s his picture in case you’re curious) is all excited that a gay activist by the name of Mike Glatze (who I also had never heard of before) has decided to switch teams and become ex-gay. And Hank believes that somehow this unknown activist is supposed to be some sort of body-blow against the whole homosexual-industrial complex that Hank has dubbed “Big Sodomy.”

Frankly, I don’t know what the fuss is all about. I’ve been rather bemused by the reaction to Glatze’s homo-hostile broadside. He’s not the most interesting anti-gay writer, nor is he the most talented. And I also can’t help noticing that Glatze is trying to stretch his fleeting fifteen minutes of fame into a sixteenth minute by hitting virtually every web site that mentions his name with either an email or a long-winded comment (or both).

But enough about that. The passage that I found most interesting wasn’t Glatze’s energetic and ongoing attempts to draw attention to himself, but this:

Of course, the promulgation of knowledge and data concerning the link between alternative sex and disease is hampered by the bullying tactics of the elite. Thus, only a few facts are known at all to some of the public (such as the results of a study in Scandinavia showing that men in same-sex marriages die 24 years earlier than their counterparts in the general population), and these facts aren’t mainstream, thanks to the media blackout on this issue and the muzzling of opponents under color of law. And that, in turn, is thanks to the activists.

Sure enough, these “facts” aren’t mainstream, but not because of a media blackout or any muzzling by “Big Sodomy.” The facts aren’t mainstream simply because they are utterly ridiculous and demonstrably false. These statistics comes straight from Paul Cameron’s latest oeuvre, “Federal Distortion of Homosexual Footprint,” which I analyzed in detail last April. Cameron’s actions surrounding that paper led to his condemnation by the Eastern Psychological Association just a few weeks later.

But now we have Donald Hank — whoever he is — adding his name to a long roster of those who rely on the discredited “science” of a man who credits the Nazis for “curing” homosexual . And unfortunately, that roster keeps growing. These are the people who continue to spread Paul Cameron’s bogus statistics, despite his censure by four different professional associations and his draconian “solutions” for the homosexual problem. Does Hank also agree with Cameron’s manifesto?

I would love to hear Hank’s thoughts on this.

Tucson’s “Cool Church” Promotes Paul Cameron

The Arizona Daily Star, my adopted hometown newspaper, has a front-page article this morning on Tucson’s “Cool Church,” a franchise of four churches spread around the city which tries to be hip and relevant to young people. But pastor David McAllister seems to think that aligning himself with a holocaust revisionist is part of what makes his church “cool.”

The church’s web site sports an article called “Facts on Homosexual Sex,” in which they repeat Paul Cameron’s lifespan statistics:

A study of 6,714 obituaries in gay newspapers across the U.S. revealed that 3% of 6,574 gays and 20% of 140 lesbians had died violently:

• 1.4% of gays and 7% of lesbians were murdered (rates over a hundred times those of non-gays);
• 0.6% of gays and 5.7% of lesbians committed suicide (rates dozens of times those of non-gays); and
• 0.6% of gays and 4.3% of lesbians died in motor vehicle accidents (over 17 times the rate of non-gays)

These events, coupled with various STDs (especially AIDS) gotten from other gays, resulted in a median age of death of 40 among gays and a median age of death of 45 among lesbians. In the same study, comparison samples of married men had a median age of death of 75 and married women a median age of death of 79. Dr. Paul Cameron of the Family Research Institute.

I have already dealt extensively with Cameron’s Obituary Study. Remember, this is a man who was not only kicked out of the American Psychological Association and censured by three other professional associations, he thinks that the Nazis’ concentration camps were effective in changing gays to straights. He once told an audience that exterminating gay men in America might be “a plausible idea.” While he has backed away from that, he has nevertheless proposed draconian measures against gays and lesbians in his own manifesto published on the Family Research Institute web site.

So, um, yeah. How cool is that?

Close Enough?

We reported earlier on an article appearing in the San Francisco Chronicle which drew a false link between the  anti-gay positions of Focus on the Family and Nazi-revisionist Paul Cameron. The Chronicle followed up with a correction which provided a bit more information concerning Cameron’s status as a illegitimate researcher, but the link between him and Focus on the Family remained. Today, the Chronicle added an addendum to its correction:

Writings by Cameron, who split with Focus on the Family many years ago, are still relied on by many conservative Christians.

They say “close enough” applies only to horseshoes and hand grenades. Maybe we should add journalism. (Hat tip: Warren Throckmorton)

Chronicle Correction on Cameron Fails to Catch Error

As we reported earlier, the San Francisco Chronicle falsely accredited the anti-gay positions of Focus on the Family to “researcher” Paul Cameron.  Though both provide false stereotypes and untrue claims about gay men and women, Focus does not rely on or quote Cameron.

The Chronicle has issued a correction which, while informative, did not catch the error:

CLARIFICATION: In an article about San Francisco’s campaign to get more gays and lesbians to adopt foster children – as well as an opposing evangelical campaign to get more Christian families to adopt — the Chronicle quoted Paul Cameron, director of the Family Research Institute. The article should have noted that Cameron, who believes gays make unfit parents and self-published dozens of articles he said were based on his research, was expelled from the American Psychological Association in 1983 when he refused to subject his work to peer review. The article also should have reported that his Family Research Institute was named a hate group in 2006 by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I wrote to the author to inform her of the lack of connection between Focus and Cameron.