Please Explain This One

Please Explain This One

Chastity Bono has completed the transition to being male. In some ideal world, what Chastity/Chaz does in private would be completely irrelevant to anyone else.  But unfortunately, the continual yammering and hammering by the transgender crowd for governmental action means that nothing is really private anymore: the personal is the political.

This transition raises several interesting questions about "Chaz" Bono and her/his relationship with "partner" Jennifer Elia.

1. If Chastity is now a man, then he is having sex with a woman (Jennifer Elia).  Does that mean Chaz Bono has changed from being a lesbian to a heterosexual man?

2. If Jennifer Elia is now having sex with Chaz Bono, a man, does that mean that Jennifer Elia has changed from being a lesbian to a heterosexual (or at least a bisexual)?

3. Wait a minute: I thought that the claims that you could change your sexual orientation from gay to straight were just lies.  But here we have two lesbians changing their sexual orientation!  Or is Chaz not really a man?

4. A number of trouble makers like myself have long suspected that there is a connection, for at least some homosexuals, between childhood sexual abuse, and adult sexual confusion.  Even those championing homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle have sometimes made damaging admissions in this area.  If a woman preferring another woman is a natural, completely healthy and normal orientation, isn't there something just a bit weird about Jennifer Elia being a lesbian, now is "partner" to an ersatz man?  Isn't this exactly what you might expect if Elia's sexual orientation was the result of a traumatic or destructive relationship with a real man?

Did This Used To Be A Problem, But No One Reported It?

Did This Used To Be A Problem, But No One Reported It?

The October 20, 2009 Idaho Statesman reports on a 37 year old teacher who has pleaded guilty:

Former Meridian Middle School teacher Ashley Beach admitted Tuesday to having sexual contact with a 13-year-old male student earlier this year.

Beach will find out in December if she will have to go to prison after pleading guilty Tuesday to one count of felony lewd conduct.

Two other counts of lewd conduct were dropped as part of a plea agreement with Ada County prosecutors.

The 37-year-old Beach, a former teacher at Meridian Middle School, is accused of having sex with a 13-year-old student between June and September. An Ada County grand jury indicted her on the three charges earlier this month.

I've seen some sad booking photos, but this is perhaps the saddest ever.

When I was young, there were rumors about male teachers who got in trouble for sex with their junior high age students. But of course, these were always "heard it from someone who heard it from someone." Nonetheless, this has always been a little bit of a problem. I'm always sad to hear of it, but I'm not surprised: men are naturally more sexually aggressive than women, and I am not surprised that some men can't resist temptation, and some girls are seeking the validation and approval of the father figure that isn't present.

As a friend once described it, "Girls are looking for emotional intimacy; boys are looking for sex; they end up making up a trade." It's potentially quite hazardous, in both physical and emotional terms, when we're talking about 12, 13, 14, even many 15, 16, and some 17 year olds. But when one of them is an adult? We expect the adult to know better, and look for someone who is at least an adult.

I don't recall ever hearing of women teachers seeking out 13 year old boys for sexual relationships when I was young. Now, you can't seem to get through a month's news coverage without these incidents popping up. Was it happening back in the 1960s, but no one was getting caught? Were such incidents hushed up? Or are women achieving equality with men by sinking to the same low level?

I suppose if these situations involved approximate equals (you know, the 24 year old teacher and the 17 year old student), I could disapprove, but it wouldn't seem so sick. But this 37 year old has children almost the age of her sexual partner. What possible sexual attraction is there to a 13 year old boy for a woman this old? Or is the pursuit of innocence just as appealing to some women as it is to some men?

But Of Course, It Didn't Cause Her Adult Sexual Orientation

But Of Course, It Didn't Cause Her Adult Sexual Orientation

I'm just amazed at how many gay celebrities acknowledge that they were sexually abused as children, but insist that it didn't affect their adult sexual orientation. From June 18, 2001 People:

According to The Truth Is..., between the ages of roughly 7 and 10, Etheridge—daughter of John Etheridge, a high school teacher and basketball coach who died in 1991, and Elizabeth, a retired computer consultant—was sexually abused by her older sister Jennifer, now a home-maker in Arkansas. Etheridge, unwilling to be more specific about the abuse, says she is sure it affected her sexual orientation and left her unable to form a stable relationship from adolescence on, when she first realized she was a lesbian. "I don't think it's what made me gay," she says, "but it definitely shaped it."

No, of course not! Having someone sexually abuse her at a young age couldn't possibly have confused her sexual orientation! How silly to think otherwise!

A Sad Reminder Of Where This Leads

A Sad Reminder Of Where This Leads

I've mentioned before that there is a surprising amount of evidence that shows a strong correlation between child sexual abuse and adult homosexuality--and there should be no great surprise that one might cause the other. (The same is true with respect to child sexual abuse and adult substance abuse.) There are a surprisingly large number of homosexuals who acknowledge that they were sexually abused (such as Ellen Degeneres, and Anne Heche)--but insist that there's no connection between the two. In the aftermath of the intellectual/artsy sorts defending Roman Polanski's drugging and raping of a 13 year old, there's a sad column by the author Robert Goolrick reminding us of where sexual abuse takes a child:

Let me tell you a few things about the rape of a child. It happened to me. I was raped by my drunken father at the age of four, before the drunken eyes of my mother, so I know what I’m talking about.

It hurts like holy hell. The next time you see a grown man walking down the street with his four-year-old son or daughter, just observe the sheer difference in the size between the two people.

And, more importantly, it is the absolute, final, and total end of childhood, of any sense of innocence and wonder. Perhaps the girl in California had already lost hers. Perhaps her mother manipulated the situation. I, frankly, don’t give a good goddamn.

That girl is forever defined by that moment, as I have been defined by my own moment of terror and pain and horror. There is, for me, no place on this whole planet that is safe. I move farther and farther from the center of things. I find myself in hotel rooms or houses in remote places where nobody knows where I am, and very few even care.

I have been an alcoholic, a drug user, a sexual deviant and addict. I have tried with what heart I have left to be kind and generous and loving, and I have wrecked my life and hurt people I love. I have tried to be whole, to be a regular man inside a regular man’s skin, and I have failed miserably. [emphasis added]

I don't know exactly what kind of sexual deviant Goolrick was. I notice that a lot of his books seem to come up tagged as "gay literature." Is there any great surprise that early child sexual abuse might cause some sexual confusion as an adult? And yet looking directly at this question is something that just isn't going to happen, is it?

Making excuses for molesters like Polanski is the sign of the utter moral depravity of the entertainment industry.

Not With a Bang But A Whimper (2008)

Not With a Bang But A Whimper (2008)

Theodore Dalrymple, Not With a Bang But a Whimper: The Politics and Culture of Decline (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2008), pp. xi + 252

I've mentioned a previous collection of Dalrymple's essays that powerfully impressed me with its descriptions of the British underclass. This is the most recent of these collections: powerfully penetrating in explaining the disasters that have become dramatically worse as liberalism has become dominant in Britain, they also reveal a good and decent man doing a hopeless job: psychiatrist in a charity hospital and prison, in a society where intellectuals are intentionally destroying any hope that the poorest Britons will ever have of making something of their lives.

Many of these essays first appeared in City Journal, and I was fortunate to find this one, "A Murderess's Tale" online. I suspect that if you read it, you will be tempted to read more. And perhaps seek antidepressants. Make sure you cut Dalrymple's work with something encouraging and uplifting, or you are going to be miserable.

Anyway, I've mentioned before the statistical evidence that shows that child sexual abuse (CSA) survivors are disproportionately represented among homosexuals--as even some very PC books admit, and throw out implausible explanations rather than admit that messing with a child sexually when they are emotionally immature might cause sexual confusion later in life.

We also have examples of prominent homosexuals who acknowledge being CSA survivors, such as Elaine DeGeneres, and her former partner Anne Heche (now married to a man). And when you see that a prominent lesbian gets arrested for lewd acts of little girls? What's the first thought in your mind? Is she recreating the situation that she was in--but now she's in control?

Anyway, back to "A Murderess's Tale." Dalrymple tells us of a case in which he testified, a murder case:

Every murder raises deep and disturbing questions, philosophical, psychological, and sociological: none more so than one in which I recently gave testimony in court. The accused was a girl aged 18, who had stabbed her 16-year-old lesbian lover to death. There could be no doubt as to who had inflicted the fatal wounds: a tape from a closed-circuit camera in the entrance hall of the accused’s apartment building showed her following her lover out of the building with a long knife in each hand, raised ready to stab, as in a too-melodramatic rendition of Lady Macbeth.

Dalrymple tells us of the barbarism in which the 18 year old was raised (which, by his other writing, is apparently pretty common in Britain today):

One of the characteristics of relationships such as that between her mother and her stepfather is their all-consuming nature, at least for the woman. She can think of, and has time for, nothing else: she is the star, albeit the unhappy one, of her own mental soap opera. In this case, the mother noticed neither the stepfather’s habitual violence toward her children by her former lover nor the fact that her oldest son was having intercourse with her daughter while the boy was between the ages of 13 and 17, and his sister was between the ages of eight and 12.

Eventually, her daughter, now 14, plucked up the courage to tell her what had happened. Her mother said she didn’t believe her, flew into a rage, and threw her out of the house. She went to stay with a friend and then asked her mother whether she could return home. As a condition of doing so, her mother made her apologize to her brother and swear never to say anything like it again.

Her mother also failed to notice that, from the age of 12, her daughter had begun to drink heavily: or if she noticed it, she considered it a matter of no importance. Her daughter skipped school in order to drink; by the evening, she was often very drunk and soon got to the stage when she drank first thing in the morning to steady her shaking hands. She was also smoking marijuana. She said that she drank and smoked to obliterate the reality of her life, which was too awful to bear unaided.

Is there anyone that finds her substance abuse surprising? Is there anyone that finds it at all implausible that her sexual response would be seriously affected by this? When you put this together with the disproportionate problem of substance abuse in the gay community (both among men and women), why isn't anyone making a serious effort to study the connection?

Hey, maybe it is all a big, astonishing coincidence that CSA survivors have many characteristics disproportionately in common with homosexuals (such as substance abuse problems, difficulties in forming long term relationships, high suicide rates) and homosexuals are disproportionately CSA survivors. But I think everyone knows that the reason that this question doesn't get studied is because a lot of people know that there probably is a causal connection (at least for some homosexuals)--and the "I was born this way" argument would be demolished.

UPDATE: One reader takes issue with this because Dalrymple's work is about the underclass, and homosexuals are smarter and more capable than straight people. His evidence for this is a collection of marketing data compiled by someone named Tony Marco:

Any claims that gays as an entire class are seriously "oppressed" seem clearly bogus in light of emerging, highly accurate marketing studies done by gays themselves that show gays to be, to the contrary, enormously advantaged relative to the general population -- and astronomically advantaged when compared to truly disadvantaged minorities. A July 18, 1991, Wall Street Journal article, entitled "Overcoming a Deep-Rooted Reluctance, More Firms Advertise to Gay Community", reported the following findings by the Simmons Market Research Bureau and the U.S. Census Bureau; cf. also The Marketer, "The Gay Nineties," September 1990; Quest magazine, a Denver gay tabloid ("Invisibility = Stagnation"), February, 1992; and Overlooked Opinions studies, cite to follow:

• Gays have an average annual household income of $55,430, versus a general population income of $32,144. Mean income of disadvantaged African-American households is only $12,166 (Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1990).
• Factoring in comparative household sizes, gays average annual individual income is reported as $36,800, compared with $12,287 for average Americans and a mere $3,041 for disadvantaged African Americans. This means gay individual income is more than 300% greater than average Americans' -- and an enormous 1,200% greater than disadvantaged African Americans' (The Marketer, op. cit.).
• More than three times as many gays as average Americans are college graduates (59.6% vs. 18.0%; gays average 15.7 years' education vs. 12.7 for average Americans) -- dwarfing achievements of truly disadvantaged African-Americans and Hispanics. More than three times as many gays as average Americans hold professional or managerial positions (49.0% vs. 15.9%) -- making gays embarrassingly more advantaged than true minorities in the job market.
• 65.8% of gays are overseas travelers -- more than four times the percentage (14.0%) of average Americans -- and more than 13 times as many gays as average Americans (26.5% vs. 1.9%) are frequent flyers.

I remember when gay marketing companies first started putting out these claims, the "gays are victims of oppression" crowd insisted (and probably with some truth) that these weren't typical homosexuals, and these companies trying to sell their marketing services were engaged in some sort of fraud in portraying homosexuals as America's new overclass. I think that there's some truth to this.

The bigger problem, however, is that there a lot of "men who have sex with men" out there who usually deny that they are homosexual, and who homosexuals (like the gay supremacist who gave me that link) deny are homosexuals. Yes, that's right! Men who have sex with men are really heterosexuals! And yet that same gay supremacist admitted that these heterosexual men who have sex with men are generally poor, poorly educated, and criminal. Hmmm. It's amazing what fun you can have making your definitions fit your desires.

"Pedophiles Aren't Gay"

"Pedophiles Aren't Gay"

This is conventional wisdom--and I've been told this repeatedly by gay activists and their liberal apologists--even when the pedophile preys exclusively on little boys.

Sexual preference is on a different axis from pedophilia. There are heterosexual pedophiles, bisexual pedophiles, and homosexual pedophiles. As I pointed out in 2006, in spite of the talking heads that the news media interview on the subject, serious, very PC scientific journals still use terms like "homosexual pedophile" and "heterosexual pedophile" to describe these offenders.

It is true that a majority of homosexuals are not pedophiles. It is also true that a majority of pedophiles are heterosexual. (Since heterosexuals are about 97% of the population, of course a majority of pedophiles are heterosexual.) Scholarly works published into the early 1990s (before Political Correctness took over) were still showing that homosexuals and bisexuals were 20-30% of pedophiles--or about 8-10x disproportionate to their fraction of the population. While I'm a bit skeptical of the article linked here, because Paul Cameron has a strong ideological orientation on this, it is curious that the percentage of homosexual child sexual abuse that he found analyzing Illinois foster care data was...24%, right in the middle of historical data. And there are cases like this one, involving an openly gay couple, molesting a foster child. Or Paula Poundstone, a lesbian entertainer who was charged with lewd acts on one of her under 14 foster children.

I've also pointed out that one rather special group of pedophiles--Catholic priests--overwhelmingly victimize little boys: 81%. And guess what? Catholic priests have about 11x the rate of AIDS of the general population. (Surprised? I was, too. But when I look at those two figures together, I'm not surprised.)

So let's not pretend that this horrific case from Duke University is just a big surprise, shall we? From the June 28, 2009 North Carolina News-Observer:

Federal authorities say Lombard, 42, of 24 Indigo Creek Trail, performed sexual acts on his son and invited an undercover investigator online to fly to North Carolina and do the same.

Lombard owns the home with another man, according to Durham County property records. The pair bought the home, which sits at the end of a narrow path lined with trees and multicolored homes, in May 2007, the records show. The co-owner has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

...

Lombard, associate director of Duke's Center for Health Policy, was arrested Wednesday evening at his home. Investigators seized two webcams, five computers and a sex toy, among other items, after searching his home.
The 5-year-old and another child in the home were placed in protective custody.
...
Lombard, a licensed clinical social worker with a master's degree in social work, is a health-disparities researcher who studies HIV/AIDS in the rural South.

Professor Mike Adams points to the wailing fest from the Duke faculty when the lacrosse players were falsely accused of raping a black woman, and were almost railroaded by a dishonest district attorney. But this is going to be a lot more entertaining:

So it will be interesting to see how Duke faculty members respond to Frank Lombard. Because he is white, Lombard is fair game at Duke, isn’t he? But Lombard is also gay, so will that complicate things?
Unfortunately for Frank Lombard, the affidavit in support of his arrest warrant shows that this second Duke rape case will also have a strong racial component. According to a confidential source (CS) a man using the user name “cooper2” or “cooperse” logged onto an internet-based video chat room. CS saw him perform oral sex on an African-American child under the age of ten. He also performed other acts on the child, which are too obscene to be described in this column.
The user name “cooper2” has now been linked to Frank Lombard, the associate director Duke University’s Center for Health Policy. A second source has now alleged that “cooper2” has confessed to being “into incest” and that he has adopted two African American children.
The only good news coming out of this story is about Frank Lombard’s live-in homosexual partner. The affidavit in support of Lombard’s arrest warrant shows that he made special arrangements when molesting the child – sometimes even by drugging the child – to make sure his partner did not find out.

As I said, most homosexuals are not molesters. And there are enough heterosexual molesters out there--certainly a strong majority--that if you decide to focus on gay men as the danger to children, you aren't being very honest. I suspect that most gay couples that are adopting children are trying to create a white picket fence middle class life that they can't have without marrying the opposite sex. But there are some creeps out there, too, and I do worry a bit that in the mad rush to allow gay adoption, the agencies involved aren't being careful enough in screening.

When we were raising our kids, we were extraordinarily careful who we let watch our children, and I encourage you to be similarly careful. Do not assume that [fill in your favorite male relative] could never have done something like that! Children make stuff up, without question. But they are victimized--a lot.

As I pointed out a while back, both here and here, there is a curious connection between child sexual abuse (CSA) and adult homosexuality--enough so that it seems plausible that CSA causes at least some adult homosexuality. More worrisome is that a small percentage of CSA survivors end up becoming molesters themselves when they grow up. Usually male victims become molesters--but sometimes, female victims do so as well. The exact mechanism isn't well understood, but the connection seems clear enough. And that's part of why we aren't making any progress on stopping it. This ideological pretense that pedophiles are always heterosexual, or don't have an adult sexual orientation is not only false, it is dangerously false.

A Fascinating Confusion of Sequence

A Fascinating Confusion of Sequence

I've mentioned before that there are a number of studies, both correlational and longitudinal, that find that homosexuals are disproportionately victims of childhood sexual abuse (CSA). I have also mentioned that disproportionate substance abuse problems (including IV drugs, alcohol, and tobacco) are well documented in the homosexual population--as is the case with adult survivors of CSA.

A new book, Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States, published by Oxford University Press, summarizes a variety of studies, and acknowledges that MSM (which is the new Politically Correct term for Men who have Sex with Men) are indeed, at least three times more likely to have been sexually abused as children than heterosexual men. (p. 92) The chapter summary acknowledges that there might be a connection between childhood sexual abuse and adult sexual orientation. Throughout the body of the chapter, the authors continue the little pretense that MSMs were sexually abused as children because they were already homosexual, and were attracting men, or in some way initiated the sexual abuse (pp. 87-88).

What blows this argument right out of the box is that:

1. The largest survey of childhood sexual abuse, with 17,000 HMO patients (both homosexual and heterosexual), found that 16% reported CSA--and 40% of the abusers were women. But among MSMs, 90% of the abusers are men. As the authors even admit, on p. 87, either there's some connection between CSA and development of adult homosexuality, or there's something about MSMs that causes them to have increased "vunerability."

2. The average age of the abused men was ten (p. 87)--which means that at half were ten year old or less than ten years old. Yeah, like we should really believe that six, seven, and eight year olds were out flirting with adult men because they were already interested in sex, or otherwise were doing something that made them so disproportionately victims of CSA.

Which do you think is more likely? That a psychologically scarring, sometimes violent sexual act committed on a child might screw up their sexual orientation? Or that children under ten years old are obviously homosexual, and that this attracts pedophile adults? What is especially bizarre is that the chapter admits that CSA causes sexual confusion among men:

While the outcomes of CSA are generally non-specific, sexual issues (sexual orientation, sexuality, gender role, and comfort with intimacy) do seem to be a hallmark of CSA for all men, regardless of sexual orientation, when compared to the effects of other negative childhood events such as physical abuse. CSA an be considered a form of sexual learning, even if that learning is involuntary and the results dysfunctional. Sexual orientation and gender identity can be particularly confusing for men who experienced arousal during the abuse, and MSM who experienced abuse may continue to be around by circumstances that mirror the abusive situation. [p. 86]

Gee, and yet they aren't quite prepared to admit that CSA might cause adult homosexuality. I wonder why?

I scratch my head a lot when I read stuff like this, because the very first item that should be researched is, "Does CSA cause adult homosexuality?" The forward direction of causality for CSA and adult homosexuality is vastly more likely than that pedophiles can identify little boys that are going to grow up to be homosexual. And it doesn't take a genius to see how one can lead to the other--nor does it take a genius to figure out why homosexual activists have always had an ambivalent relationship with pedophile groups like NAMBLA. But it is so much easier for everyone to pretend that the connection just isn't there--because homosexual activists will screech up a storm if you suggest that they weren't born that way, but are the victims of abuse.

UPDATE: Let me emphasize that I am not arguing that there is a single cause for all homosexuality. At least part of why psychiatry eventually decided that homosexuality wasn't a problem was that they seem to have been too focused on seeking a single explanation. The Freudian weak father/domineering mother fit a number of homosexuals (including some families that I have seen), but certainly not all. Hormonal problems explained a few homosexuals (or at least, with the crudeness of the biochemistry then available, seemed to explain it). But a single explanation just didn't fit all homosexuals.

Because a majority of MSMs in these surveys do not report CSA, it would be tempting to conclude that the majority has repressed their memories (as some CSA survivors do). But it seems unlikely that that the discrepancy is large enough to explain this large of a gap. There may be multiple causes of homosexuality, and I will even admit the possibility that there may be some that are born that way. But even the American Psychological Association admits that there is simply no evidence that clearly demonstrates that people are born homosexual.

Senator Boxer Sure Hires A Bunch of Weirdos

Senator Boxer Sure Hires A Bunch of Weirdos

Some years ago, it was one of her staff trying to get a handgun through security at San Francisco International, and giving some absurd claim that he worked for the CIA. Now, according to the November 14, 2008 Washington Post:

A senior aide to Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) was fired from his post last week after he was charged with distributing and receiving child pornography.

Jeffrey P. Rosato, an aide to Boxer and a senior policy adviser on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, was arrested last Friday, the same day he was fired from Boxer's office, and charged with one count each of receipt and distribution of child pornography. He appeared in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Wednesday and was released on his own recognizance, but he is forbidden to have access to children or computers.

According to an FBI affidavit, an unnamed person "distributed more than 600 files containing graphic images and movies of child pornography to an undercover detective that [the person] believed was a 13-year-old boy" over the course of more than 15 online chats during a three-week period in January. In that person's computer, the FBI found information suggesting the person had exchanged pornography with Rosato.

So what's the problem? Poor screening? Or is just that the density of sick and deranged sorts is higher than usual where Senator Boxer is hiring? Oh yeah, the article goes on to mention another female Democratic senator with bad luck in hiring:

Last month, a former Senate aide, James Michael McHaney, was sentenced to three years in prison on a federal charge of possession of child pornography. McHaney, 28, was arrested last year in a sting and fired from his job in the office of Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.).

What's With Leftists & Children?

What's With Leftists & Children?

This isn't the first time--not by a long shot. From the May 9, 2008 San Francisco Chronicle:

(05-08) 18:49 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Bernie Ward, the most prominent liberal voice on Bay Area talk radio for more than two decades, admitted Thursday to distribution of child pornography by e-mail in a plea deal that will send him to federal prison for at least five years.

Ward, 57, a former Roman Catholic priest, was a fixture on KGO-AM 810 for three hours every weeknight, known in recent years for his fervent denunciations of President Bush and the war in Iraq during his news talk show. He also hosted "God Talk," a Sunday morning program on religion, and was a prolific fundraiser for the station's charity drives.

But his career disintegrated Dec. 6 with the unsealing of a federal grand jury indictment, issued three months earlier, that charged him with two counts of distributing and one count of receiving Internet images of child pornography. KGO fired him Dec. 31.

At a 30-minute hearing in federal court in San Francisco, Ward admitted he was guilty of a single charge of distributing child pornography, saying it involved "exchanging an image of a minor engaged in sexually explicit activity" in December 2004. The plea agreement he signed, quoted in court, contained an admission that he had sent between 15 and 150 pornographic images via e-mail.

People that believe that there is nothing right or wrong (except being a Republican) not surprisingly sometimes act on it.

Sexual Abuse & Adult Homosexuality

There's a surprising number of journal articles about this subject. The abstracts alone are pretty telling. Lynda S. Doll, "Self-Reported Childhood and Adolescent Sexual Abuse among Adult Homosexual and Bisexual Men," Child Abuse and Neglect: The International Journal, v16 n6 p855-64 Nov-Dec 1992:

This study of 1,001 adult homosexual and bisexual men found that 37% reported they had been encouraged or forced to have sexual contact with an older or more powerful partner before age 19. Median age at first contact was 10. Ninety-three percent of participants reporting early sexual contact were classified as sexually abused.

Median age at first contact was 10?

Beitchman JH, Zucker KJ, Hood JE, daCosta GA, Akman D, Cassavia E., "A review of the long-term effects of child sexual abuse," Child Abuse Negl. 1992;16(1):101-18:

Adult women with a history of childhood sexual abuse show greater evidence of sexual disturbance or dysfunction, homosexual experiences in adolescence or adulthood, depression, and are more likely than nonabused women to be revictimized.

By the same authors: "A review of the short-term effects of child sexual abuse," Child Abuse Negl. 1991;15(4):537-56:

This is the first of a two-part report that critically evaluates empirical studies on the short- and long-term effects of child sexual abuse. With the exception of sexualized behavior, the majority of short-term effects noted in the literature are symptoms that characterize child clinical samples in general. Among adolescents, commonly reported sequelae include sexual dissatisfaction, promiscuity, homosexuality, and an increased risk for revictimization.

Here's an article that isn't specifically addressing homosexuality, but that is the major risk factor in the U.S. for HIV--which is what this study examines. S Zierler, L Feingold, D Laufer, P Velentgas, I Kantrowitz-Gordon and K Mayer, " Adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse and subsequent risk of HIV infection," American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 81, Issue 5 572-575:

METHODS: In an adult cohort enrolled to investigate causes of transmission of human immunodeficiency virus, we identified current behaviors affecting risk of infection that were associated with a history of early sexual abuse. One hundred and eighty-six individuals provided information on the occurrence of abuse and subsequent sexual and drug using activities. RESULTS: Approximately half of the women and one-fifth of the men reported a history of rape during childhood or adulthood. Twenty-eight percent of the women and 15 percent of the men recalled that they had been sexually assaulted during childhood. People who reported childhood rape compared with people who did not were four times more likely to be working as prostitutes (90 percent confidence interval = 2.0, 8.0). Women were nearly three times more likely to become pregnant before the age of 18 (90% CI = 1.6, 4.1). Men who reported a history of sexual abuse had a twofold increase in prevalence of HIV infection relative to unabused men (90% CI = 1.0, 3.9). CONCLUSIONS: The disturbing prevalence of early sexual abuse and its possible health-related consequences call for prompt and routine investigation of sexual abuse histories. Identification of sexual victimization may be an important component for management of risk factors for human immunodeficiency virus.

You would think that it might have been interesting to ask if there was some connection between childhood sexual abuse and adult sexual orientation.

Here's another study examining childhood sexual abuse and HIV status among homosexual and bisexual men. Samuel Jinich and Thomas J. Coates, Jay P. Paul, Ron Stall, Michael Acree, Susan Kegeles, Colleen Hoff, "Childhood Sexual Abuse and HIV Risk-Taking Behavior Among Gay and Bisexual Men," AIDS and Behavior, Volume 2, Number 1 / March, 1998. The abstract:

We explored the prevalence of childhood sexual abuse among adult gay and bisexual men and measured the association between childhood sexual abuse and high-risk sexual behavior in adulthood. Two separate population-based samples of gay and bisexual men (n = 1,941) residing in Portland and Tucson were surveyed. Over one quarter reported a history of childhood sexual abuse (sexual behavior with someone at least 5 years older prior to age 13, or with someone at least 10 years older when between ages 13 and 15). Men who were abused were more likely to engage in sexual risk behavior than men who were not abused (e.g., unprotected anal intercourse with non-primary partners in the previous 12 months: 21.4% vs. 15.0%, p < .001). Perception of having been coerced was associated with greater sexual risk. Furthermore, childhood sexual abuse and level of coercion were associated with reported levels of HIV infection among gay and bisexual men.

Hmmm. More than one-quarter of gay men reported that they had been sexually abused? That's almost three times the rates of sexual abuse among men in the general population. Isn't anyone noticing what might be an obvious connection here?

And there are lots of other articles out there, again ignoring the elephant in the bathtub--the high rates of childhood sexual abuse among adult gay men.

UPDATE: Just to clarify: these studies suggest that adult homosexuals were disproportionately victims of child sexual abuse--not the other way around.

Gangs and Child Sexual Abuse

Michael Williams points to this disturbing statement in a disturbing article about Los Angeles street gangs in the December 12, 2007 LA Weekly:

Sherills told me he became a gangbanger because he was sexually molested. “But that’s taboo,” he said. “You don’t say that. Feeling worthless, like you are an object. In this neighborhood 90 percent of young men have been sexually abused. I will say 99 percent of ladies. Everybody is operating within the cloud. It’s the elephant that is sitting in the room that no one speaks of.”

I wouldn't take those numbers as meaning anything more than Sherills' statement that sexual abuse of children is not just the norm, but extremely common. I can remember reading a collection of surveys done in the 1970s, and while the percentage of adults reporting sexual abuse as children was much higher than anyone had expected, one survey done of females in South Central Los Angeles was extraordinary--half reported being sexually abused.

One of the shocking discoveries of the 1980s was not just how common sexual abuse of children was, but that it wasn't just in ghettos. I can remember how amazed a lot of people were when magazine and newspaper articles first started reporting that this was surprisingly common in middle class suburbs in Silicon Valley. These days, there is a tendency to overemphasize its ubiquitousness across all classes--perhaps in overreaction to the former tendency to assume that this was almost entirely a ghetto behavior.

Banned For Life From Free Speech

My heavens, what did this guy do? Express an interest in little boys? Oh, no, he expressed his disgust with those who are interested in little boys:

REGINA, Saskatchewan, December 13, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission's decision to impose a "lifetime" ban on a local Catholic's freedom to publicly criticise homosexuality, was upheld this week in its entirety by Saskatchewan Court of Queens Bench.

Bill Whatcott, a licensed practical nurse who lives in Saskatchewan, is a campaigner against the homosexual political movement that is sweeping the Canadian legal system. In 2006, the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission (SHRC) ordered Whatcott to pay $17,500 Cn. to four complainants who complained that their "feelings" and "self-respect" were "injured" by Whatcott's pamphlets denouncing the "gay lifestyle" as immoral and dangerous.

Whatcott responded to the decision, "This fine is for telling the truth [that] homosexual sodomites can change their behaviour and be set free from their sin and depravity through the forgiveness of sins and shed blood of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ."

He added, "Shame on the Saskatchewan Court of Queens Bench for pandering to homosexual activism and ignoring the truth."

In its 2005-2006 Annual Report, the Commission noted that Whatcott was "ordered to discontinue distributing any materials that promote hatred against people because of their sexual orientation."

The tribunal held that "preventing the distribution of such materials was a reasonable limit on Whatcott's right to freedom of religion and expression as guaranteed by section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms".

Whatcott appealed the decision to the Court of Queen's Bench and received the news on Tuesday that the court would not overturn the HRC's ruling.

Whatcott himself says he was fined for his pamphlets that used "verbatim" a text from a classified personal advertisement in a local homosexual publication that ran, "Man seeking boys.... age not so relevant".

I have not been able to find any other Internet discussion of this situation, and the website I'm quoting above is an explicitly Christian organization, so it is possible that they made the whole thing up. But unless someone can find me some evidence that this is complete fabrication, or grossly distorts the facts, it really shows where Canada is going.

UPDATE: A reader points me to evidence that Bill Whatcott's hostility towards homosexuality isn't based on ignorance:

Bill Whatcott is a Canadian social conservative activist who campaigns against homosexuality and abortion. The dramatic nature of his activities have attracted attention from the media, including an appearance on The Daily Show. He has also run for political office.
He was born in Ontario and spent his youth in a number of foster homes, where he reports having been physically and mentally abused. At the age of 14 he went to live on the street. By the age of 18 he had an addiction to sniffing glue and supported himself through theft and work as a gay prostitute.^[1][2] At age 18 he reports having found God, and transformed his life.

Bernie Ward's Problems--A Lot More Serious

Bernie Ward's Problems--A Lot More Serious

I was lambasted over here for moral relativism on the Bernie Ward matter. It turns out that December 6, 2007 KTVU channel 2 in San Francisco reported that Ward didn't just download child pornography, but exchanged it with other adults. If true, that pretty well destroys Ward's claim about being engaged in research.

Bernie Ward's Problems

Those of you who have lived in San Francisco know who Bernie Ward is. He's a very, very liberal (or progressive, depending on your mood) radio talk show host out there. I've never been able to take him seriously--he combines the worst errors of progressivism with the worst of talk show host traits into a very unappealing package.

So you might think that I am crowing about Ward's federal child pornography indictment, discussed in this December 6, 2007 San Francisco Chronicle article. No, I am not. Yes, he's a former Catholic priest, so I don't find the charges implausible. He is a progressive--so I don't find the charges implausible. But the claim that his attorney makes:

Ward's attorney said today that the charges are based on incidents that occurred more than four years ago and were part of research for a book.
"As everybody knows, Bernie, for over 20 years, has been a progressive, opposed to insensitive authority - he has been a champion of charities, nonprofits for the homeless," said Doron Weinberg, who appeared in federal court today as Ward's lawyer.
"More than three years ago, Bernie was doing research for a book he was doing on hypocrisy in America," Weinberg said.
As part of the research, Ward downloaded "a few images" of child pornography, and, Weinberg said, "it came to the attention of the government in late 2004."
"They investigated and they never found any involvement in child pornography other than this period that he accessed these images," Weinberg said. "The government knows that Bernie was doing this for an investigation he was doing for a book. But the government believes he violated the letter of the law and they have gone ahead and prosecuted him."

This is now known as the Peter Townshend defense, and as with Townshend, I am prepared, in the absence of other evidence, to give Ward the benefit of the doubt. The fact is that there are some subjects that are hard to research without actually seeing at least some examples of the subject. You can write a book or a paper about neo-Nazi hate literature without reading it--but it isn't going to be a terribly impressive piece of scholarship. You can write a book or a paper about child pornography without ever seeing any of it--but it is unlikely to be a very persuasive piece of research.

This does present a real problem: how do you distinguish legitimate research from the purpose for which the child pornography statutes exist? It would be very easy for someone whose interest in child pornography was prurient, not scholarly, to use that as an excuse.

Now, if the federal prosecutor actually believed what Ward's attorney says, why are they prosecuting him? Prosecutors have some discretion on whether to file a criminal charge--and if they have known about this since 2004, why are they only filing charges now? Either some additional information has come to their attention that raises questions about Ward's claim, or the federal prosecutor is showing a distinct lack of discretion.

For now, I'm prepared to give Bernie Ward the benefit of the doubt, until some clear evidence shows up that he was not engaged in research on the subject.

UPDATE: This December 6, 2007 KTVU channel 2 report says something a lot more damaging:

San Francisco radio talk show host Bernie Ward has been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of using the Internet to send and receive child pornography, his lawyer said.

The indictment is under seal, but the charges were confirmed by Ward's lawyer, Doron Weinberg, and by his employer, KGO radio.

Weinberg said Ward, 56, pleaded not guilty to the indictment before a federal magistrate in San Francisco Thursday.

He said Ward is due to reappear in court in late January before U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker for a status conference and scheduling of a trial date.

Weinberg said the case stems from an "error of judgment" Ward made when he spent a few days in 2004 looking at pornography images and exchanging images with other adults when doing research for a book on hypocrisy.

Exchanging images? Okay, that pretty well blows out Ward's claim of researching the topic.

The Scum of the Earth...

seem to collect checks from the government. I don't just mean polygamists living off welfare checks, or guys who can't keep their hands in their own stall. There's also this charming news story from December 4, 2007 KOMO channel 4 in Seattle:

WASHINGTON (AP) - A former aide to Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., was in federal custody after being arrested on a charge of attempting to sexually exploit a minor.

James Michael McHaney was fired Friday from his job as a scheduler for Cantwell, hours after he was arrested by FBI agents. The FBI said in court papers that McHaney is accused of trying to set up a meeting with a witness posing online as a teenage boy.

McHaney, who appeared in federal court on Saturday, was being held without bond pending a court hearing on Wednesday, said Channing Phillips, a spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office for the District of Columbia.

According to court papers, McHaney, known as Mike, tried to arrange a lunchtime meeting with an unidentified person posing as a 13-year-old boy. When the witness, working under the supervision of the FBI, asked whether McHaney was interested in sex with a 13-year-old, McHaney allegedly replied, "I'll be there," the court papers said. He later asked for a photo of the child, the FBI alleged.

For Those Who Think There's No Overlap

For Those Who Think There's No Overlap

In some circles, I am considered a "homophobe" for pointing out that there are homosexual activists who are pedophiles--and don't see these two categories as disjoint sets. For a very long time, homosexual activists were reluctant to separate themselves from groups like the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

There are still a number of pedophiles out there who apparently didn't get the memo, and are still loudly homosexual and loudly pedophiles, like this guy, who runs the NGblog. Here he is whining that ENDA (the sexual orientation non-discrimination bill working its way through Congress) doesn't go far enough in protecting the "transgendered." Here he is complaining that sex offender laws and laws against child pornography are a bad thing. Here he is organizing a boycott of a particular business because they contribute to what he calls the "homophobic Boy Scouts."

Oh, and according to this website, it is the NGblog because "NG" is "Nelson Garcia," a level one sex offender in New York State, and a member of NAMBLA. Unfortunately, the New York State Sex Offender Registry doesn't let you look up level one sex offenders online. It sounds like the ACLU has been busy:

You can access the Subdirectory on this web site by clicking on the "Search Subdirectory " button. You can search for level 2 and level 3 offenders by name, county or zip code. Please note that a federal court injunction currently prohibits the release of information on this web site concerning sex offenders who committed their crime prior to January 21, 1996 and were assigned a risk level prior to January 1, 2000, unless they have had an opportunity for a due process hearing.

Of course, to be a sex offender you have to have been convicted of a crime, which should qualify as due process, but I am guessing that someone argued that being listed as a sex offender requires a separate due process hearing.

There is this Bronx District Attorney's office report (on p. 26) that discusses a "Nelson Garcia" who was convicted of mailing a DVD of child pornography to what he thought was a 14 year old. (Actually a cop.) There are a number of other items that make it likely that NGblog is that of Nelson Garcia, the convicted sex offender.

This pretense that pedophiles are fundamentally different from homosexuals--that a person who identifies himself as a homosexual can't be a pedophile and vice versa--is simply false. There are pedophiles who identify themselves as heterosexual, as homosexual, and bisexual. The media have done a really good job of pretending that there's no overlap--and yet the NGblog is one of those reminders that this is simply not true.

If pedophilia is truly a "sexual orientation," will ENDA protect pedophiles who want a job at the day care center? And on what basis will you reject such person, if ENDA passes?

I Smell Some Justification Coming

I've mentioned in the past that some parts of the academic community is in the process of trying to come up with justifications for adults having sex with children, and pointed to the ACLU's efforts to find a "due process liberty interest" for minors having sex with adults--in a case where the minor said No.

I've mentioned in the past studies that suggest that early sex for girls is very destructive, leading to increased suicide attempts. Now I see this November 11, 2007 Washington Post article:

Researchers at Ohio State University garnered little attention in February when they found that youngsters who lose their virginity earlier than their peers are more likely to become juvenile delinquents. So obvious and well established was the contribution of early sex to later delinquency that the idea was already part of the required curriculum for federal "abstinence only" programs.
There was just one problem: It is probably not true. Other things being equal, a more probing study has found, youngsters who have consensual sex in their early-teen or even preteen years are, if anything, less likely to engage in delinquent behavior later on.

The phrase that ought to scare you witless is: "preteen years."

Now, it is entirely possible that this study is correct that there is no statistically significant correlation between early sex and juvenile delinquency. But I would be very surprised if this "consensual sex in their ... preeteen years" isn't doing considerable damage.

Over at Volokh Conspiracy, the usual commenters (largely lawyers, law professors, and law students) have turned to argue in favor of often and young, such as:

I actually have some personal experience with this one -- I lost my virginity at age 12 (to a 26 year old). Looking back on it 30 years later I don't see that waiting would have hurt me, but neither do I see that not waiting did me any harm, and I'd be surprised if there is any kind of a cause and effect relationship between early loss of virginity and anything.

and:

As bad as the neo-puritans, prudes and government say pre-teen sex, teen sex and child pornography are, the exact opposite is true. They are every bit as GOOD as their detractors are maintaining that they are bad.

Watching the crowd that shows up to comment at Volokh Conspiracy is part of why I am increasingly of the opinion that instead of making law school a requirement to be a judge, it should be a disqualifier. For reasons that I don't entirely understand, it seems like a really unsavory bunch have been going to law school the last few years.

The American Elite

A while back, it was a former ACLU official pleading guilty to trying to buy child rape videos. Now it's a CBS producer trying to trade football tickets for sex with an 11 year old:

Daniel Barron, 56, was arrested and charged with solicitation to commit sexual battery on a child under the age of 12 Saturday.

Police said Barron, a CBS sports television producer, chatted on the Internet with an undercover detective who was posing as a father willing to let Barron have sex with his 11-year-old daughter as well as sleep nude with her in exchange for tickets to the Miami Dolphins football game Sunday.

According to a police report, Barron told the undercover officer that he was looking forward to meeting the daughter, allegedly telling the detective, "I will be very gentle with her."

St. Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara said that Barron was arrested when he went to meet the people he thought would be the father and daughter in the parking lot of a Ft. Lauderdale hotel on Saturday.

What's with the American elite? Are they really the lowest scum of the planet?

That Incident in Sheboygan

I mentioned some days ago a woman who had been arrested when she came home and found a relative molesting her children, and proceeded to stab him. This news report from WTMJ 620 says:

Prosecutors in Sheboygan County have filed a misdemeanor charge against a mother who stabbed a teenager after he was caught sexually assaulting the woman's 8-year-old daughter.
According to a criminal complaint, the mother readily admitted to authorities that she stabbed the 17-year-old. According to the complaint, the mother, her boyfriend, another friend and her nephew were staying at her apartment along with two of her children. At some point, the mother, her boyfriend and other friend left to go to a food mart, leaving the nephew with the children.
When they returned, they found the nephew in the room with the children. He was engaged in a lewd act in front of the girl, who was partially naked. The friend says he became enraged and grabbed the nephew, throwing him to the floor. He began to punch and kick the nephew. At some point, someone got a knife, but it was not used at that point.
The mother apparently later used the knife to stab the 17-year-old nephew. But she didn't stab him until after her daughter was safe.

This makes it sound like the stabbing took place some time after they caught the nephew--purely an act of revenge. If so, I can see why she is being charged. But the somewhat graphic criminal complaint (which has been edited to remove the mother's name), is actually quite a bit more ambiguous:

Simon stated he began to punch and kick Martin, forcing Martin out of the bedroom into the apartment living room where he continued to punch and kick Martin. Simon stated that _______ and Jason then returned to the apartment and attempted to stop Simon. While it is not completely clear from the various statements as to from where and who obtained a knife, at one point Simon stated he was struggling with Martin for a knife, using a toy snow shovel and a portable fan to beat Martin to gain control of the knife, which he did. Simon stated _______ and Jason convinced him to wait outside the apartment for police to arrive, which he did. At some point during Simon’s beating of Martin, ______ was told of what had happened in the bedroom and she apparently called police.

When officers entered the apartment, they observed Martin sitting on the couch bleeding from his left arm and leg, with Martin’s shirt and pants covered in blood. Paramedics were immediately called and when Officer Kehoe asked ______ and Jason why Martin was bleeding, stated, “I stabbed him.” ______ was subsequently fully identified as _____, DOB 7/14/80, the defendant, with Jason identified as Jason ______, DOB 3/26/78. Officers subsequently recovered a steak knife with blood and what appeared to be human flesh on it.

At least from what appears in the criminal complaint, it would take a very liberal jury to convict the mother. I'm not sure that a jury that liberal exists, except if the jury pool consists of ACLU members.

If You Put This Book On The Same Shelf With Heather Has Two Mommies

Would you get the philosophical equivalent of a matter/anti-matter explosion? Would both books be mutually annihilated with a burst of X-rays?

It is interesting that the book combines two different explanations of homosexuality--one a traditional view (strong mother, weak or emotionally absent father), the other an explanation based on the disproportionate reporting of child sexual abuse by adult homosexuals.

I find the book (at least the sample pages shown here) to be simplistic because there may well be multiple causes of homosexuality. The fact that there does seem to be a weak genetic factor in homosexuality suggests that there might be a genetic predisposition towards it. The disproportionate child sexual abuse reporting by adult homosexuals could indicate that both the predisposition and the victimization are required--or perhaps these could be two different, unrelated factors that both lead to homosexuality. (Obviously, most sexual abuse victims don't become homosexuals--the surveys that I have read would suggest that about 1/3 of girls and about 9% of boys are sexually abused.)

Still, this book doesn't appear to be anymore propagandistic and simplistic than other books aimed at children that discuss homosexuality. Wouldn't it be entertaining if school districts started to include this book in their curriculum? At least, it would be amusing to watch the ACLU file suit to get this book removed from the public schools, while insisting that parents had no right to have Heather Has Two Mommies or Hello Sailor or King and King.

UPDATE: A reader asked if he had misread (or I had miswritten) above where I indicated that about "1/3 of girls and about 9% of boys are sexually abused" or if that referred only to the percentage of homosexuals who had been sexually abused. No, sorry, but as I pointed out several years ago:

First of all, it's important to recognize that until the late 1970s, child molestation was regarded as a rare, bizarre, and unusual phenomenon--how shockingly common it was just wasn't recognized. Even today, many people are startled to find out how large the percentages are of children who are sexually abused. The data that I have is somewhat dated--but then again, before Political Correctness had taken over the field.

How many victims of childhood sexual abuse are there? A variety of surveys have been conducted, using a variety of methodologies, none of which can be considered perfect. Many of the studies before 1990 were conducted among college students, and so tend to leave out those victims of child sexual abuse who fail to reach college because of their problems. [Christopher Bagley and Kathleen King, Child Sexual Abuse: The Search for Healing, (New York, Tavistock/Routledge: 1990), 69-70.]

The range of the 11 studies summarized in Bagley & King are 12%-40% of females, and 3%-8.6% of males.[Bagley and King, 76] Faller quotes the same studies, though in less detail. [Kathleen Coulborn Faller, Child Sexual Abuse: An Interdisciplinary Manual for Diagnosis, Case Management, and Treatment, (New York, Columbia University Press: 1988), 150] The Everstines use the figures 15%-45% of females and 3%-9% of males, but "believe that the currently accepted percentages for males who have been molested will be revised to 10% or 15% of the population when more accurate data are forthcoming." [Diana Sullivan Everstine and Louis Everstine, Sexual Trauma in Children and Adolescents: Dynamics and Treatment, (New York, Brunner/Mazel Publishers: 1989), 2] These studies were conducted in Britain, Canada, and the United States, with Bagley and King asserting that child sexual abuse survey reports in California are unusually high, though it is unclear whether this is a methodological problem, or reflects higher incidence in California. [Bagley & King, 69]

Another problem is that we really don't know how accurate our sampling methodology is. Boys who are molested may be less willing to report it than girls because there is a homosexuality shame associated with their victimization. There may also be more repression of memories among boys for this same reason.

Surveys of homosexuals report substantially higher rates of sexual abuse as children than these shocking and disturbing numbers. If there is a causal connection between sexual abuse as a child, and adult homosexuality, it is not surprising that homosexuals have higher rates of substance abuse and what anecdotally seems like abnormally high rates of dysfunctional behavior relative to straight people.