Box Turtle Bulletin

Paul Cameron’s Latest “Lifespan Study”

Paul Cameron is at it again with a new “Lifespan Study.” Here in the US, we know what Paul Cameron is all about. In Britain, he’s a lesser-known quantity, so his brand of “science” is sometimes mistaken for the real thing.

Apparently that’s what happened when the U.K.’s Pink News published an uncritical article today with the title “American scientist: gays die younger than smokers,” apparently with little awareness of his standing as a “scientist.” Fortunately, Pink News followed up with an analysis of who Paul Cameron really is.

I am working on a more thorough analysis of his latest “Lifespan Study.” Part of it is based on the same ludicrous methodologies used in his earlier “Lifespan Study.” The rest, well you’ll have to wait a few days for that. But rest assured, it’s forthcoming. Friday possibly, Monday at the latest.

Paul Cameron on MSNBC

Paul Cameron has just made an appearance on MSNBC’s News Live today (Saturday, Dec 9) at about 3:40 pm EST. Saying that Mary Cheney is being “cruel to children,” it looks like he memorized his press release from yesterday. The weekend host apparently didn’t know about his problem with professional ethics, which mean that his credentials as an “expert” went unchallenged. A very simple Google Search should have clued them in.

Matt Foreman, of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, was also there to offer his perspective on Mary Cheney and Heather Poe. While he did a good job in defending their decision to have a child, he did little to shine light on Paul Cameron’s junk science.

Paul Cameron: “Mary Cheney Cruel To Children”

Paul Cameron is trying to use the occasion of Mary Cheney’s family way to worm his way into the national spotlight. Yesterday, he issued a press release where he condemns “the Vice President’s unmarried daughter”:

Unmarried women should not deliberately have children. Their children are more apt to experience privation and disruption. Consequently, such children are more apt to do poorly in school, disrupt society (e.g., engage in criminality), and be personally troubled. These wrongs are compounded when the child is brought into a homosexual setting.

Cameron offers his opinion on what some of these “wrongs” would be, based largely on his own discredited research:

Mary, 37, is currently “partnered” with Heather Poe, 45. The median age of death for lesbians is around the late 50’s. If Poe and Cheney stay together, odds are this child will lose at least one caretaker before graduating high school.

In 1993, Paul Cameron claimed that the median age of death for lesbians was 44. This is when he released his famous and discredited obituary study. By 1998, he began to raise that estimate to “less than 50 years” although anti-gay activists continue to use his earlier statistic (for example, Christopher Rosik and Kathleen Melonakos, both writing for NARTH).

Now he’s saying “around the late 50’s”. For this, he’s referring to his 2002 paper in the low-ranked pay-to-publish Psychological Reports, “Homosexual partnerships and homosexual longevity: A replication.” Here, he uses the same methodology from his original obituary study, except he limits it to news stories from a single outlet (The Washington Blade) between 1999 and 2001. In that period, only 22 lesbians’ deaths were reported. That tiny non-representative sample yielded a median age of 56. The problem with this methodology is that only notable people make the news; ordinary people who die of old age don’t. Otherwise, it would be very odd to believe that only 22 lesbians died in the metro Washington area in that three year period.

Children of homosexuals testify that day-to-day living is more difficult – and they are more apt to report personal disturbance as a consequence.

Since 1995, Paul Cameron has published more than a half-dozen papers on gay parenting in that same low-ranked journal. Most of his research on “reported personal disturbances” rely on case reports and court reports of children caught up in custody disputes. This is hardly a representative sample.

A high proportion of lesbian “partnerings” break apart — with custody issues haunting the child for the rest of his life.

A high proportion of heterosexual “partnerings” break apart as well. When cohabiting straight couples are combined with non-cohabiting couples, that figure can be astronomical. And since gays can’t marry, that is the only basis for comparison.

But I have a feeling Heather and Mary will do just fine. They’ve been together for fifteen years. These days, that’s quite an admirable accomplishment for any couple, gay or straight.

The child will disproportionately associate with homosexuals – who are as a class considerably more apt to have STDs and a criminal history, be interested in sex with children, involved in substance abuse, etc.

Again no source and no statistics. But it is interesting to point out that many of these claims come from his deeply flawed ISIS Survey. They were also repeated in a more recent 2005 paper he published in Psychological Reports titled, “Homosexual sex as harmful as drug abuse, prostitution, or smoking,” a rambling 47-page screed that exemplifies Cameron’s misuse of data at its finest.

The child will have a much higher probability of learning homosexual tastes (at least a third of lesbian’s children adopt homosexuality).

This one is my personal favorite. “Learning homosexual tastes” is a nice touch. Here, he’s flogging his laughably illogical and unrepresentative study that was published in last May’s Journal of Biosocial Science. The flaws in this study are so incredibly obvious it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to list them all.

Paul Cameron continues to exhibit his lack of regard for the truth, his lack of ethics in reporting scientific evidence, and his highly creative deployment of the English language to denigrate lesbians and gays. If it weren’t for the fact that some very prominent anti-gay extremists take his work seriously, we could all sit back and laugh about it. But we can’t. He doesn’t often get that much attention himself, but his junk science often makes it into mainstream venues with or without attribution. (Update: He does occasionally manage to get himself in front of television cameras however. He appeared today on MSNBC News Live reciting this press release.) And while some anti-gay activists are embarrassed by him, they find his “facts” useful.

Mary Cheney and Heather Poe are having a baby together. Their decision wasn’t a political one but a deeply personal one. And unlike most pregnancies, we know this one was very well planned and is eagerly awaited by both parents. This baby will do just fine. Most children of gays and lesbians do. They turn out just as good — and sometimes just as bad — as anyone else’s kids. That’s what the research really shows.

Paul Cameron on The Daily Show

Journal of Biosocial Science author and NARTH source Paul Cameron appeared as the anti-gay foil on last night’s The Daily Show segment featuring Bleu Copas, the Arabic translator who had been kicked out under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

I just can’t understand how anybody can take Paul Cameron seriously. I’m talking to you, JBS! Where is that retraction?

I’m also talking to you too, NARTH. You’re using his discredited lifespan statistic here. (Our examination of that so-called “study” can be found here.)

NARTH again cites Cameron’s lifespan statistic along with another flawed study claiming that gays are responsible for one-third of all child sexual abuse. What’s even more egregious is this: That article purports to offer suggestions for “ethical” care in conversion therapy. Another NARTH author repeats the same child sexual abuse claim, but no matter how many times you repeat that lie, it’s still a lie. For a more accurate reading of the statistics behind child sexual abuse, see our report, Testing the Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

If NARTH ever wants to attain any kind of scientific repectability, they really have a long way to go to clean up their act.

Paul Cameron Is Quoted In The Christian Post

A reader passed on a tip of Paul Cameron’s latest missive being picked up by the Christian Post. I wanted to write a little blurb about it, but The Real World intervened and I didn’t have time. Fortunately, Timothy Kincaid at Ex-Gay Watch posted a much better rundown on this than I would have, with an interesting link to the International AIDS conference taking place in Toronto.

Now that Cameron’s “homosexual pedophilia” claims have been picked up by the Christian press, it’s only a matter of time before it shows up in a mainstream venue. When it does, whether it’s a news story or a letter to the editor in your local paper, remember where you can find the real scoop about his bogus findings. And for a more in-depth examination of the supposed link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse, read our report Testing The Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?

Paul Cameron: “35% of Foster-Parent Molestations Homosexual”

Paul Cameron is at it again. From a press release:

New evidence poses problems for those who think homosexuals should be allowed to serve as foster-parents. 35% of foster-parents who sexually abused their foster-children in the last three years engaged in homosexuality.

From 2003 through 2005, a third of foster-parent molestations of foster-children were homosexual. That’s the official tally from two states — Illinois and Minnesota — that permit homosexual foster-parents. For the approximately 30,000 children/year in foster-care at some point in the two states:

—12 foster mothers sexually abused their charges: 9 (75%) assaulted foster-daughters, 3 (25%) raped foster-sons.

—28 foster-fathers sexually abused their charges: 23 (82%) assaulted foster-daughters, 5 (18%) raped foster-sons.

A similar claim sparked a firestorm in April, 2005 when Cathie Adams, the president of Texas Eagle Forum repeated Cameron’s statistic live on CNN. The only difference between today’s statistics and last year’s is that Paul Cameron has added data from Minnesota. But when Carl Bialik, the “Numbers Guy” at the Wall Street Journal — which can hardly be accused of being a liberal rag — looked into the claims last year, he found the evidence very unconvincing. Since Cameron’s method for generating his statistics are unchanged from last year, Mr. Bialik’s criticisms still apply:

There were 270 reports, and 34% of those were same-sex in nature: committed by a male adult against a male child, or a female adult against a female child. Dr. Cameron called those homosexual acts of abuse, and, citing several studies, including a joint report by the University of Michigan and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, concluded that gays make up between 1% and 3% of the adult U.S. population. “Thus, homosexual practitioners were proportionately more apt to sexually abuse foster or adoptive children,” Dr. Cameron wrote.

This required several leaps of logic, some of which I’ll discuss later. The biggest is that Dr. Cameron had no data about the makeup of homes in which the Illinois children were abused; indeed, a state DCFS spokeswoman told me the agency doesn’t record whether households are same-sex. It’s possible that much of what Dr. Cameron calls homosexual abuse occurred in what would be considered heterosexual homes.

And he goes further:

Besides his lack of data about same-sex couples in Illinois, researchers pointed out Dr. Cameron’s flawed assumption that the gender of pedophiles’ victims correlates to adult sexual attraction; that he applied nationwide data on homosexuality to a predominantly Chicago-based population of foster homes; and that he cited many of his own studies, including two previous ones that attempted to calculate the proportion of sexual abuse that is same-sex based on small sample sizes of six and 25 cases of abuse, respectively.

“The paper is not written as a competent research paper,” said Paul Velleman, associate professor of social statistics at Cornell University. “This is a pretty lightweight study,” said Kenneth Land, professor of sociology at Duke University and chair of the American Statistical Association’s mathematical sociology section.

Walter Schumm, professor of family studies at Kansas State, once published a paper responding to Dr. Cameron’s critics, but in this case he questioned Dr. Cameron’s conclusion that same-sex couples pose a special threat to children. “Since the state didn’t provide him with any data on whether parents were heterosexual or gay, it’s hard to make any definitive statements other than that much of the abuse seems to be same-gendered,” Dr. Schumm said. “For all we know, that could all be by heterosexual parents.”

That last point by Dr. Schumm is very significant. Up until then, he had been a staunch defender of Cameron’s work.

Cameron concludes this press release saying:

The study from data provided by the IL Dept Children & Family Services and MN Dept of Human Services appears in a rebuttal to gay marriage in the August, 2006 issue of Pediatrics on-line http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/eletters/118/1/349.

If you click on that link, you will see that the rebuttal, by Kirk Cameron, Paul’s son, is not peer-reviewed, nor does it even appear in the journal itself. It is part of an online discussion forum they call a “Post-Publication Peer Review,” which, in the broad scheme of things, doesn’t have much standing as far as professional publication is concerned. At best, it’s an online letter to the editor. They didn’t even bother to pay the fees to have it published in the vanity journal Psychological Reports.

By twisting official statistics, and making assumptions that men who molest boys and women who molest girls are among the “2-3%” of the openly gay population, Cameron seeks to perpetuate the lie that gays and lesbians are much more likely to molest children. But if you want to know the real truth behind statistics like these, read our report, Testing the Premise: Are Gays A Threat To Our Children?.

Paul Cameron Down Under

The bogus “research” of discredited psychologist Paul Cameron has been enormously influential in the U.S. for some twenty-five years. But it’s easy to overlook the high esteem with which he is held by those overseas are also willing to leverage his shoddy and disreputable work to bolster their anti-gay agenda.

The Sydney Star Observer reports that his dubious research has shown up in a report submitted by the Australian Christian Lobby to the New South Wales Adoption Act Review, which is considering the issue of adoption by gay and lesbian parents. Citing Cameron, the submission (PDF: 144KB/11 pages) claims that:

…a major American study arrived at these conclusions:

“children of homosexuals will;
— be more frequently subject to parental instability (of residence and sexual partners);
— have poor peer and adult relationships.
— Be more apt to become homosexual;
— be unstable (have emotional problems and difficulty forming lasting bonds) with reduced interest in natality, and;
— be sexually precosious and promiscuous.”

It’s quite a stretch of the imagination to claim that anything Paul Cameron writes consitutes “a major American study” — certainly not when considering his many run-ins with American professional societies and his own well-documented aversion to the truth When apprised of Cameron’s history, a spokesperson for the Australian Christian Lobby said he was unaware of Cameron’s history and promised to look into it.

As well he should. The Australian Christian Lobby certainly would be the first to have egg on their faces because of this, and unfortunately they probably won’t be the last. Despite the mission of prominent Christian organizations to uphold The Truth, they are too often eager to turn to one who has absolutely no regard for it.

Anna Has Her Say

About three weeks ago, I received an E-mail from Anna Carlsson. Anna went by the pseudonym “Greta” (she’s Swedish) in Abigail Garner’s book, Families like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is. Paul Cameron used one of her quotes for his article “Children of Homosexuals and Transsexuals More Apt To Be Homosexuals.” But in this crude propaganda piece, Dr. Cameron took Anna’s words out of context and twisted their meaning far beyond anything that she ever intended to say. Not that this is anything unusual for Paul Cameron.

But what’s unusual this time is that Anna decided to do something about it. After all, it was her words he was using, and she was entitled to tell her side of the story. So now we get to hear from Anna herself — in her own words — as she sets the record straight, in Greta Speaks!

UPDATE: Anna Carlsson will walk with FFLAG in Europride this year, to be held in London on July 1. She is interested in contacting other people with LGBT parents, especially in Europe. Her E-mail address is available at the beginning of Greta Speaks!.

Paul Cameron vs. Abigail Garner on SiriusQ

Paul Cameron and Abigail Garner appeared in this afternoon’s Michelangelo Signorile Show on SiriusQ Satellite Radio. For those of you who don’t know, SiriusQ is the designated LGBT radio channel on the Sirius system. Paul Cameron was there to tout his manuscript Children of Homosexuals and Transsexuals More Apt To Be Homosexual which appeared in the Journal of Biosocial Science and was based largely on Abigail Garner’s book, Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is. These interviews were bound to be very interesting.

Paul Cameron was first up, and during his interview he made a startling statement. He said that he read in Abigail Garner’s book that she claimed it was made up of a “fairly representative” sample of gay vs. straight adult children of LGBT parents because these kids came to her through the grapevine. He also said that he had no idea what Abigail Garner’s “sexual preference.”

Poor Paul. I have to wonder what’s happening with his memory these days. He remembers reading in Abigail’s book that her sample was “fairly representative.” But during the same interview, he said that he doesn’t remember submitting his manuscript to the journal Pediatrics, he doesn’t remember being censured by the Nebraska Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association, and he doesn’t remember what Abigail “enjoys doing in her bedroom.”

Okay. I’ll have to give him that last one. I don’t know what she enjoys doing in her bedroom either. I also don’t have a clue as to what her “sexual preference” might be. But when Abigail appeared on the program after Paul Cameron’s interview was over, she reminded us what anybody who really read her book would have known: she is heterosexual, and nowhere in her book did she ever make the claim that her sample was the least bit representative.

I wonder if the JBS editors are paying attention to any of this?

A Call to the Journal of Biosocial Science

Abigail Garner writes in her website today:

Many of the emails I receive regarding the publishing scandal by Cambridge University Press ask me why I won’t simply alert the editors of the Journal of Biosocial Science. Surely, your emails tell me, after hearing the truth from me, the Journal will be left with no choice but to correct their error.

I already contacted them. I wrote an email in February before the article ran. No response.

I wrote again two weeks ago. I have heard nothing; not even the standard “we’re looking in it” reply that some bloggers have reported they received from JBS.

Since Paul Cameron’s article Children of Homosexuals and Transsexuals More Apt To Be Homosexual appeared in the Journal of Biosocial Science, I’ve been asked the same question, and I guess my experience is only marginally better than Abigail’s. Since January 15^th I’ve written five letters to the journal’s editors and management, and just today I sent a sixth letter to the editors, management and members of the editorial board. Of the previous five messages I’ve only received two responses, both of which were along the lines of “we’re looking into it; we’ll keep you informed; thanks for writing.” But of course, they haven’t kept me informed of anything.

I guess I can understand JBS’s ignoring me. I don’t like it, but I can understand it. I’m not a principal in this fight and they don’t know me from Adam. I’m neither a social scientist, a JBS author or reviewer, nor has any of my work been misused. Abigail on the other hand has seen her wonderful and very important book (Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is) twisted into something barely recognizable at the hands of Paul Cameron — with JBS providing the platform. It’s unfathomable to me why the editors would ignore her warnings about Cameron’s misusing her work. It leaves me scratching my head and wondering what were they thinking?

Abigail has decided to respond to the journal’s silence by treating her letters as open letters on her website. I think it’s a good move on her part. Now the editors cannot claim they didn’t know what they were dealing with in deciding to go ahead and publishing Dr. Cameron’s manuscript.

As for me, I’ll wait a reasonable time before posting mine. I hope my latest missive to members of the editorial board sparks a dialog toward a solution which restores the reputation and integrity of the Journal of Biosocial Science. But if that doesn’t happen, then the record needs to reflect that I and many others did all we could to warn them of the fallout from their decision to publish Dr. Cameron’s pale imitation of “research.”

I should add that I’m really not threatening to make my emails public. Far from it. If it were a threat, it would be a pretty impotent one. But the journal has a great opportunity to set the record straight. They also have a tremendous responsibility to do so. But if they are unwilling, I believe that it is important to document the events that lead up to this fiasco. For the sake of integrity and honesty (something that seems to be in short supply lately), transparency is very important in getting the whole story out there.

The journal’s website brags that “its reputation for high quality and outstanding scholarship has made it into one of the leading journals in the area of biosocial science.” Without question, that reputation has now been seriously damaged. I urge the editors and the editorial board of the Journal of Biosocial Science to join Abigail, me, and many others in restoring the pursuit of scholarship to its best and loftiest goal: The pursuit of knowledge for the benefit of everyone.

Paul Cameron Misrepresents Paul Cameron

When I wrote to the editors of the Journal of Biosocial Science last January, I warned them that should they go ahead with the publication of Paul Cameron’s paper, “Children of homosexuals and transsexuals more apt to be homosexual,” they would, in effect, give him carte blanche to hijack their journal’s reputation in the promotion of anti-gay bigotry. I also pointed out the very unscientific underpinnings of his supposedly “scientific” research, which was based not on a representative sample, or even a random convenience sample, but on three books he purchased on Amazon.com. His “samples” were mostly based on literary and illustrative merits. (You can read my critique of his article in Paul Cameron Conquers Cambridge.) Unfortunately, my comments fell on deaf ears.

We well know his penchant for misrepresenting the works of others. But in flogging his latest effort, he’s really outdone himself. He now misrepresents his own article.

According to his press release:

“Most people think homosexual parents create an environment that stimulates homosexual desires in their children. We expect children to be confused when a father decides to pretend he’s a woman and demand that his family participate in his charade.”

I’ve read these books. There are very few, if any, examples of gay fathers “pretending he’s a woman.” These books collectively mentioned ten transgenders out of the seventy-seven that he used for his “sample,” but if that’s the basis for what he’s talking about, then he’s using an extremely tiny sample. Sexual orientation and sexual identity are two completely different things. These books aren’t about men “pretending” to be women. They”re about men and women who, for the most part, have decided to stop pretending they’re something that they are not.

Just a little later in his press release, he says:

They say foster care and adoption by homosexuals is absolutely harmless — there is no correlation between children adopting homosexual tastes and the sexual proclivities of their parents. Examination of three published reports by pro-gay investigators shows the falsity of these claims.

Well now he’s completely barking up the wrong tree. I can find no examples of adoptive or foster children in his “sample.” It is made up by the biological children of gay and transgender men and women. And if there were a biological underpinning to homosexuality and gender expression (and the research, while supportive of that idea, it is not conclusive), then why wouldn’t these biological traits be passed down to at least some of the children? Not only does Dr. Cameron refuse to consider this (nor does he even try to disprove it), but since his article doesn’t examine children who were adopted or fostered by gay parents, there’s no basis for what he’s saying. His article does not support the idea that gay parents adopting or fostering children makes them gay.

In other words, he’s misrepresenting his own paper, which in turn misrepresents the work of the three authors whose books he bought on Amazon.com.

He went even further when he appeared on the Thom Hartmann Show on the Air America radio network last Monday. There, he described these three authors as “pro-homosexual investigators” conducting “studies” using “data,” even though his own paper acknowledged that this was not the case (although he went on the compare their books to legitimate studies anyway in an attempt to inflate their “scientific” merit).

Abigail Garner, the author of Families Like Mine, one of the three books Dr. Cameron bought from Amazon.com, caught his act on Air America and did an excellent fisking of that interview. And throughout that interview, the good names of the Journal of Biosocial Science and Cambridge University Press were repeated, loudly and clearly.

As Dr. Cameron goes on the offensive with this, it’s high time the editors of the Journal of Biosocial Science made their positions clear: do they support Dr. Cameron’s “findings” as legitimate? Or do they concede the mistake they made in publishing the article in the first place? So far, despite repeated attempts to reach them, I have received nothing but a deafening silence.

Paul Cameron Strikes Again

The May 2006 edition of the Journal of Biosocial Science includes an article by Paul Cameron, entitled “Children of homosexuals and transsexuals more apt to be homosexual.” It should come as no surprise to those who have been following his career that this article carries all of his traditional hallmarks: a hostile premise, a weak methodology, deliberate mischaracterization of the works of others, unproven conclusions, and a flagrant bias throughout. What’s very disturbing is that Cambridge University Press has been made complicit in the cause of anti-gay extremism.

I learned last January that that JBS had accepted his article for publication in a forthcoming issue. So I wrote to the editors, explaining the many problems with Dr. Cameron’s history anti-gay extremism. After all, they’re British, and most of them are anthropologists — maybe they don’t know about his history. I even sent electronic copies of recent articles about him from the Boston Globe and the Wall Street Journal so they wouldn’t have to take my word for it. I contacted other authors whose work was misused in Dr. Cameron’s article, and some of them wrote to the editors as well. My only response came from Caroline Gallimore, associate editor, on January 16, 2006:

Thank you for comments on the forthcoming article by Paul Cameron. These are being considered by the Editor and we will get back to you soon.

I guess perhaps I was a bit naïve. I had hoped that at the end of the day, reason and sanity would prevail among these learned academics. But that single, two-sentence e-mail turned out to be the last (and only) response I received from them.

It is unconscionable that the editors went forward with this article. Nevertheless, Dr. Cameron has now had his say; it’s time for a rebuttal. You can read my point-by-point analysis in Paul Cameron Conquers Cambridge.

The False Witness

When I started this project more than two years ago, I had no idea how long it would take to gather all the information, sort through it all, dissect all the implications and shades of meaning, and put it all down in a (hopefully) cogent and useful way. Along the way, I have undergone a crash course in the social sciences, and I have a newfound respect for all those who do this on a daily basis.

I have also undergone a crash course on propaganda techniques, where I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for the skills of those who misuse legitimate social science research to further their aims. From this education, I have made a firm commitment to be extremely careful to avoid these tactics in everything I do.

The thing that most surprised (and dismayed) me was learning how many of those whom we expect to proclaim the truth are willing to distort it so badly. Dr. Cameron isn’t unique in this, but he is certainly a pioneer. Unfortunately, there are many, many others, and I hope to get to them as time unfolds. But this led me to ponder: how can so many make the proclamation of God’s Word their life’s work while ignoring one of His sacred commandments, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

The twelve-part series,Point By Point: A Look At Paul Cameron’s Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do, is very lengthy. I don’t expect many will read it all in one sitting. Instead, it is intended to be a resource for those who encounter this influential pamphlet and others like it.

But I do strongly recommend that you read the conclusion in Part 12: “Genuine Compassion” and a False Witness. There I discuss the implications of bearing false witness against our neighbors. Anyone who cares about following God’s commandments should consider these points carefully, not only for heaven’s sake, but for our nation’s sake as well.

Paul Cameron “Calls Himself A Researcher”

I’ve been furiously updating A Look At Paul Cameron’s Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do over the past two weeks. I’ve now added three new sections (parts 7, 8 and 9) for your reading pleasure. The final installments should be ready in another couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, Focus on the Family’s Dr. James Dobson has made a move that has many of his fellow conservatives scratching their heads. On a recent radio broadcast, he endorsed Colorado Senate Bill 166, the reciprocal beneficiaries bill authored by Sen. Shawn Mitchell (R-Broomfield) which would pretty much grant any adult couple living together several important rights which are now difficult to obtain.

Such rights would include decision-making powers over shared property, health care, funerals and organ donations. The couples could be any two adults who live together: two elderly sisters, a parent caring for a disabled adult child, or anyone else who might need these benefits to take care of a friend or loved one. Including gay couples.

This led Paul Cameron to launch a blistering attack on his fellow conservative, which Dr. Dobson brushed off by describing Paul Cameron as someone who “calls himself a researcher” in a recent radio broadcast.

Dr. Dobson isn’t the only conservative to dispute Dr. Cameron’s research credentials. He’s just the latest. And while many conservatives find themselves using some of his “research” in their pronouncements against gays and lesbians, most are loathe to cite him directly by name, including Dr. Dobson.

Let’s Set The Record Straight

Dr. Paul Cameron, founder of the Family Research Institute, is one of the most influential researchers of the anti-gay movement. His statistics often show up in many pronouncements and writings of those who oppose equal rights for gays and lesbians, including such important figures as Coral Ridge Ministries pastor Dr. James Kennedy, the Traditional Values Coalition’s Rev. Lou Shelton, and former Secretary of Education William Bennett.

Dr. Cameron has gained most of his credibility by publishing dozens of articles in professional journals over the past two decades outlining what he considers to be the dangers of homosexual activity. But his research methods have come under fire from other social science professionals who claim that he routinely misrepresents the findings of their work. These allegations led to his being dropped from the American Psychological Association in 1983, as well as condemnations from the Nebraska Psychological Association (where he resided at the time) in 1984, and the American Sociological Association in 1985 (“Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism.”) and again in 1986 (“The American Sociological Association officially and publicly states that Paul Cameron is not a sociologist, and condemns his consistent misrepresentation of sociological research.”)

Despite all this, Dr. Cameron remains very influential among many who oppose equality for gays and lesbians. In 1985, he served as a consultant to California congressman William Dannemeyer shortly after advocating a quarantine of all homosexuals (presumably gay men in particular, since he was serving as an AIDS advisor). In 1992 he was a paid consultant to Colorado’s Attorney General Gale Norton (who is now President Bush’s Secretary of the Interior) as she defended a constitutional amendment to prohibit civil rights laws based on sexual orientation (She lost). And just last year, his claim that children in foster homes with same-sex parents are 11 times as likely to be sexually abused as those with heterosexual parents went unchallenged during a debate on CCN.

While much of his influence comes from the articles he writes for the pay-to-publish professional journal Psychological Reports, he also writes and distributes brochures and newsletters for a lay audience as well. One of his most influential pamphlets, Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do, provides a very typical example of what he writes and how he misuses legitimate social science research to back up his claims. While the pamphlet is written for the average lay audience, the thirty-three footnotes give it a scholarly tone. They also give us an opportunity to verify each of his more than 130 claims, including:

• Gay men on average have more than 100 sexual partners per year.
• The average lifespan of gay men is 42 years. For lesbians, it’s 44 years.
• 70% to 78% of all gay men have had a sexually transmitted disease.
• Gays who travel throughout the world engage in a “biological swapmeet” of new and ever-changing pathogens

It’s not enough to simply say that his statistics are wrong, as so many of his opponents do. If he’s wrong, the burden of proof rests with those who disagree with him. That’s why, in what will become a twelve-part series, I methodically examine his each and every one of his claims, and in the process I reveal exactly how he misrepresents legitimate social science research to support his statistics. The first six parts of Point By Point: A Look At Paul Cameron’s Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do are now available, with the rest appearing in the next several weeks.

This represents the most comprehensive analysis of Paul Cameron’s work outside of the professional social science community. And all I had to do was to look at his footnotes.