Is The Term "Homosexual Pedophile" Oxymoronic?


It is an article of faith in homosexual circles that a pedophile, by definition, is not a homosexual. They insist that someone who is sexually attracted to prepubescent children is not a homosexual. Someone needs to tell the scientists doing work in this area about this. I found an article by the Family Research Council (not a pro-gay source, obviously) that cited a study in the well-respected Archives of Sexual Behaviorthat used the term "homosexual pedophile" without any awareness that this is utterly wrong! Sure enough, when I dug around, I found a copy of the article, and the Family Research Council's citation was correct.

The study itself is Ray Blanchard, Howard E. Barbaree, Anthony F. Bogaert, Robert Dickey, Philip Klassen, Michael E. Kuban and Kenneth J. Zucker, "Fraternal Birth Order and Sexual Orientation in Pedophiles," Archives of Sexual Behavior 29:5 [2000] 463-78. The abstract describes the paper's purpose:

The purpose of the paper is to examine whether the well-known "birth order effect" (homosexual men are more likely to have older brothers--but not necessarily older siblings than heterosexual men) applies to homosexual pedophiles as well: Whether homosexual pedophiles have more older brothers (a higher fraternal birth order) than do heterosexual pedophiles was investigated. Subjects were 260 sex offenders (against children age 14 or younger) and 260 matched volunteer controls. The subject’s relative attraction to male and female children was assessed by phallometric testing in one analysis, and by his offense history in another. Both methods showed that fraternal birth order correlates with homosexuality in pedophiles, just as it does in men attracted to physically mature partners. Results
suggest that fraternal birth order (or the underlying variable it represents) may prove the first identified universal factor in homosexual development.

The paper itself acknowledges what has been long known--homosexuals are more likely to be interested in children than heterosexuals:

The best epidemiological evidence indicates that only 2–4% of men attracted to adults prefer men (ACSF Investigators, 1992; Billy et al., 1993; Fay et al., 1989; Johnson et al., 1992); in contrast, around 25–40% of men attracted to children prefer boys (Blanchard et al., 1999; Gebhard et al., 1965; Mohr et al., 1964). Thus, the rate of homosexual attraction is 6–20 times higher among pedophiles.

I've pointed out before that the evidence is clear that homosexuals are overrepresented among pedophiles, and that a very PC journal like Archives of Sexual Behavior published a paper that uses a term like "homosexual pedophile" shows that the gay claim that pedophiles can't be homosexual is simply wrong.

UPDATE: There's a lot more interesting material in this study. While the authors are partial to the idea that the correlation of homosexuality to increasing numbers of older brothers might be the result of some sort of hormonal effects on the younger brothers: "maternal antibodies to Y-linked minor histocompatibility antigens (H-Y
antigens), which are raised in increasing concentrations by each succeeding male
fetus," they also acknowledge:

The most popular rival hypothesis is the notion that sexual interaction with older males increases a boy’s probability of developing a homosexual orientation, and that a boy’s chances of engaging in such interactions increase in proportion to his number of older brothers (e.g., Jones and Blanchard, 1998). Although this hypothesis may seem intuitively plausible, there are little empirical data to recommend it (see discussion in Purcell et al., in press).

It seems an appropriate area to examine--especially with the strong correlation of child sexual abuse and adult homosexuality. The paper also acknowledges something that homosexuals refuse to admit:

The proportion of pedophiles in this study who were exclusively or primarily interested in boys, as assessed from their offense histories, was 25%. This result is consistent with previous studies that suggest the prevalence of homosexuality is about 10 times higher in pedophiles than in teleiophiles (Blanchard et al., 1999; Gebhard et al., 1965; Mohr et al., 1964).

UPDATE 2: Oh yeah, count on USA Today to contact experts about the subject:

NARTH states on its Web site that gay men are three times more likely than heterosexuals to have sex with minors; it also says about 35% of pedophiles are gay. It attributes these figures to studies published in 1984 and 1992 by Kurt Freund, a Toronto researcher who died a few years ago.

USA TODAY asked experts on pedophilia and sex behavior research to evaluate these studies.

The verdict: They don't support a claim that gay men are more likely than heterosexuals to abuse minors. In fact, Freund explicitly points this out, says physician John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction.

Freund's sample of sex offenders finds that male pedophiles are more likely to molest boys than girls.

A 'separate sexual orientation'

But NARTH's claim that 35% of pedophiles are gay stems from "a flawed assumption" that men who prey on young boys also are attracted to grown men, says Johns Hopkins University psychiatrist Frederick Berlin, an expert on sexual disorders.

...

No scientifically conclusive research exists that would answer questions about pedophiles' sexual orientation, says Berlin.

But clinical experience with pedophiles suggests "it's kind of a separate sexual orientation," says David Finkelhor, author of four books on child sexual abuse and director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire. "Often they have no attraction to adults whatsoever."

Bancroft agrees. "They're men interested in children. They're more interested in boys than girls, but they're interested in kids, not adults."

Does anyone find something...interesting...about how Berlin and Finkelhor can make such claims, when published, peer-reviewed research on the subject--and in a serious, well-regarded journal like Archives of Sexual Behavior--directly contradict them? At best, I would hope for something like, "Well, there's been a lot of contradictory research" or "There isn't general agreement on this."