Research confirms that homosexuals molest children at a rate vastly higher than heterosexuals, and the mainstream homosexual culture commonly promotes sex with children.[1] Homosexual leaders repeatedly argue for the freedom to engage in consensual sex with children, and blind surveys reveal a shockingly high number of homosexuals admit to sexual contact with minors.[2] Indeed, the homosexual community is driving the worldwide campaign to lower the legal age of consent.
This trend comes at the expense of our children’s safety. The incident in
GLASS’s own website should have been warning enough. GLASS believes that some children are born gay (a view not backed by any science) and announced that they target "youth who are confused about their sexual identities."[4] The website links to a myriad of gay sites targeting the youth, including one promoting a book that promotes sex with children.[5] GLASS’s founder and former executive director, Teresa DeCrescenzo, edited a book that helps youth discover their homosexuality.[6]
It came as no surprise that the California Department of Social Services found "on numerous occasions beginning at least as early as 1994, adults affiliated with GLASS, including staff members, members of the GLASS board of directors and volunteers, sexually abused or molested children who were placed with GLASS."[7] The Department of Social Services found that DeCrescenzo, aware of the allegations of molestation, determined staff conduct not to be inappropriate.[8] Apparently, DeCrescenzo believes molestation is part of the "coming out" process that she glorifies in her writings.
One would think that a molestation factory disguised as a group home would be a good reason for the State of
A Los Angeles Times investigation found that, in some cases, "it appears authorities never fully investigated those reports."[10] Indeed, not one person has been charged with child molestation or endangerment by state Attorney General Bill Lockyer, an avid promoter of the gay agenda.[11] After all, that would be hateful. If such a group home were operated by heterosexuals, the facilities would be shut down, any existing licenses revoked, and numerous criminal charges filed.
Homosexuals are targeting not just youth group homes, but all groups that work with youth. When a
Gay activists have spun the Scout molestation epidemic as a heterosexual problem. Examination of many of the higher profile cases, however, reveals that Scout molesters are attracted exclusively to boys and many lead mainstream gay lifestyles. John Hemstreet is a typical example. Hemstreet is a convicted child molester, former Boy Scout leader, and currently the President of the
Incredibly, the pro-pedophile group, North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which calls itself a homosexual group, wrote a letter to the national Scout office urging "the Boy Scouts of America to cease its discrimination against openly gay or lesbian persons in the appointment of its scout masters and scouters and in its membership. This will permit scouts to be exposed to a variety of life styles and will permit more of those individuals who genuinely wish to serve boys to do so."[14]
Using twisted logic, pro-gay academics argue in various social science journals that the molestation of boys is not a gay lifestyle issue and that such men are not really homosexuals. It is simply amazing that gay propagandists and sexology "experts" are successfully bamboozling the public and the media into believing that a man’s exclusive focus on young males should not be defined as homosexuality! But if an exclusive attraction of a male to other males of any age is not homosexuality, what is?
On one hand, homosexuals publicly claim that the molestation of boys is not part of the homosexual lifestyle. On the other, they are quietly establishing the legal parameters exempting the molestation of boys from prosecution on anti-discrimination grounds. For example, in
Research on the homosexual lifestyle confirms it is almost exclusively a youth oriented culture.[17] Very few gays exhibit a preference for older men. Some admit to a focus on teenage boys, some on prepubescent boys, and many cross over between categories. All are subsets of the homosexual deviancy. Moreover, most pedophiles consider themselves to be gay. In a 1988 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, 86% of pedophiles described themselves as homosexual or bisexual.[18] Child prostitution expert Dr. Jennifer James reports that the number of boy prostitutes who identify themselves as homosexuals has risen from 10% to 60% in the last fifteen years.[19]
Most of the public is by now aware of NAMBLA, a group that openly promotes sex with minor boys and claims that boy-lovers respond to the needs of the boys they love. NAMBLA is currently the target of a class action lawsuit by parents of children molested and, in one case, murdered by individuals associated with NAMBLA.[20] Publicly, the mainstream gay organizations distance themselves from NAMBLA. Clearly, this is merely a public relations ploy as the gay leadership realizes its agenda would suffer greatly if the public knew the truth.
The reality is that NAMBLA not only describes itself as part of the gay rights coalition, but its literature states that one of its goals is "cooperating with the lesbian, gay, and other movements for sexual liberation."[21] NAMBLA even "provide[s] financial and other assistance to GLB [Gay, lesbian, bi-sexual] youth organizations . . . ."[22] Indeed, some NAMBLA chapters meet at mainstream gay centers such as
The most comprehensive gay networking website, the Queer Resource Directory (www.qrd.org), links every gay group in the country including NAMBLA and other homosexual groups that focus on youth. NAMBLA marches in gay pride parades with the consent of the gay leadership. Many of the homosexual movement’s most prominent leaders endorse NAMBLA and its goals. Gay authors and leaders such as Allen Ginsberg, Gayle Rubin, Larry Kramer (founder of ACT-UP), Pat Califia, Jane Rule, Michael Kearns, and Michel Foucault have all written in favor of either NAMBLA or man-boy relationships.[23] Harry Hay, whom many consider the founder of the American homosexual movement, invited NAMBLA members to march with him in the 1993 "March on
Leading mainstream homosexual newspapers and magazines such as the Advocate, Edge, Metroline, The Guide, and The San Francisco Sentinel have not only published pro-NAMBLA articles and columns but also many have editorialized in favor of NAMBLA and sex with children. The editor of The Guide, Ed Hougen, stated in an interview with Lambda Report, "I believe they [NAMBLA] are generally interested in the right of young people to be sexual . . . . I am glad there is a group like NAMBLA that is willing to be courageous." The San Francisco Sentinel was more blunt: "NAMBLA’s position on sex is not unreasonable, just unpopular. [W]hen a 14 year old gay boy approaches a man for sex, it’s because he wants sex with a man."[25]
There is also the matter of NAMBLA’s membership status in the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA), recognized at one time by the United Nations as the official Non-Government Organization (NGO) representing the gay community worldwide. When NAMBLA’s ILGA membership became public, a whirlwind of international controversy erupted. Some gay leaders viewed this attention as harmful to the gay movement’s image and goals and urged the expulsion of NAMBLA for purely political purposes.
However, the media failed to report that ILGA itself had hosted workshops on pedophilia and passed resolutions in 1985, 1988, and 1990 to abolish age of consent laws claiming that "same sex age of consent laws often operate to oppress and not to protect" and supported "the right of every individual, regardless of age, to explore and develop her or his sexuality."[26]
Eventually, reacting to congressional legislation threatening the reduction of $119 million in financial support, the United Nations kicked out ILGA in 1995 for refusing to sever ties with a half dozen member groups that advocated or promoted pedophilia. Revealingly, even though ILGA did expel NAMBLA (many say it was for show), it could not muster enough support among its membership to expel other more powerful and discreet pro-pedophile organizations from
Aside from support for NAMBLA by the mainstream gay community, there is a wealth of evidence that homosexuals are the prime force behind the escalating child molestation epidemic. Indeed, over the last fifteen years the homosexual community and its academic allies have published a large quantity of articles that claim sex with children is not harmful to children but, as stated in one homosexual journal, "constitute an aspect of gay and lesbian life."[28] Such articles have appeared in pro-homosexual academic journals such as The Journal of Homosexuality, The Journal of Sex Research, Archives of Sexual Behavior, and The International Journal of Medicine and Law. The editorial board of the leading pedophile academic journal, Paidika, is dominated by prominent homosexual scholars such as
Indeed, the Journal of Homosexuality is the premier academic journal of the mainstream homosexual world and yet it published a special double issue entitled, Male Intergenerational Intimacy, containing dozens of articles portraying sex between men and minor boys as loving relationships. One article states that parents should view the pedophile who loves their son "not as a rival or competitor, not as a theft of their property, but as a partner in the boy’s upbringing, someone to be welcomed into their home."[29]
Similarly, mainstream gay publications make no effort to hide their pro-pedophilia views. For example, BLK, a leading black homosexual publication, defended pedophilia with an article entitled, "Must Men Who Love Boys Be Guilty of Sexual Misconduct?"[30]
In 1995, the homosexual magazine Guide stated:
We can be proud that the gay movement has been home to the few voices who have had the courage to say out loud that children are naturally sexual, that they deserve the right to sexual expression with whoever they choose . . . [w]e must listen to our prophets. Instead of fearing being labeled pedophiles, we must proudly proclaim that sex is good, including children’s sexuality . . . . We must do it for the children’s sake.[32]
Without equivocating, the Guide is saying that gays must molest children for their own sake!
While the mainstream media has apparently refused to engage in any kind of investigative expose of the gay movement, it is not difficult to find support for child sex among key homosexual leaders in their publications and literature. For example, the founder of the infamous homosexual group, ACT-UP, Larry Kramer, wrote in his book, Report from the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist, "In those instances where children do have sex with their homosexual elders, be they teachers or anyone else, I submit that often, very often, the child desires the activity, and perhaps even solicits it."
In a letter to the editor of a gay newspaper, Andy Humm, a key leader of one of America’s largest gay youth groups, Advocates for Youth, said, "No one should be denied basic civil rights because of his or her orientation, whether the person be homosexual, heterosexual, transsexual, transvestite, pedophile, sadist, masochist, asexual, whatever one can imagine . . . . They are in themselves natural variations."[33]
A 1995 content analysis by Dr. Judith Reisman of the Institute for Media Education, focusing on advertisements in the nation’s most influential homosexual newspaper, The Advocate, reveals that 63% of the personal ads sought or offered prostitution.[34] Many of them openly solicit boys.[35] The Advocate also advertises a "Penetrable Boy Doll . . . available in 3 provocative positions."[36] Reisman found that the number of erotic boy images per issue of The Advocate averaged fourteen.[37] Some homosexual publications, such as the southern Californian newspaper Update, are brazen enough to advertise for donations for the legal costs of homosexuals arrested for child molestation.
Indeed, NAMBLA and other pro-pedophile literature can be found wherever homosexuals congregate (homosexual bookstores, bathhouses, festivals, gay bars, etc.). When Americans for Truth About Homosexuality leader Peter LaBarbera asked the manager of one of
The owner of a prominent Philadelphia gay book store, Giovanni’s Room, pulled NAMBLA’s literature off its shelves only due to boycott threats but commented, "I think it’s a strange day for gay culture when we start banning something because it makes us uncomfortable . . . especially when that thing is a foundation of gay literature. If we pulled all the books that had adult-youth sexual themes, we wouldn’t have many novels, memoirs, or biographies left."[39]
The most popular gay fiction books on the market today are rich with idyllic accounts of intergenerational relationships according to writer Philip Guichard in a Village Voice article. Doubleday published a book in 1998, The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read, which recommends numerous works that portray sex with boys in a positive manner. The Border bookstore chain sells a book, A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition, which includes a chapter devoted to the history of pro-pedophile literature as an indisputable part of homosexual literary history.
The Gay Men’s Press publishes a bestsellers list on which appear such books as Dares to Speak: History and Contemporary Perspectives on Boy-Love, Some Boys, and For a Lost Soldier. All these books can only be described as pro-pedophile. The authoritative Encyclopedia of Homosexuality claims to acknowledge, "the fact that until very recently man/boy love relationships were accepted as a part, and indeed were a major part, of male homosexuality."[40] The leading dictionary of the homosexual culture, The Queens’ Vernacular, lists 254 of its 12,000 words as having to do with sex with boys.
One of the nation’s largest publishers of homosexual literature and books, Alyson Publications, also publishes pro-pedophile books such as Gay Sex: A Manual for Men Who Love Men. This book contains detailed instructions for homosexuals on how to avoid discovery and arrest when having sex with boys: "Avoid situations where a number of men are having sex with the same boy, or group of boys, over a period of time."[41] Unknown to most people, Alyson Publications is also probably
Even the alleged birthplace of the modern day homosexual movement, the Stonewall Bar in
"Mainstream" homosexual conferences commonly feature speeches about intergenerational sex as it is now called. For example, at one of the nation’s largest homosexual gatherings, the annual National Gay Lesbian Task Force convention, featured a workshop at its 2001 confab entitled, Your Eyes Say Yes But the Law Says No, which included a speech by an S&M activist about laws affecting intergenerational sex. The convention also featured another workshop entitled Drag 101: How to Turn Kids in Make-up into Kings and Queens.
Pick up any gay newspaper or gay travel publication and one finds ads for sex tours to
The government of
Homosexual Internet sites are no different. A quick search using the words "gay" and "boys" easily locates thousands of homosexual sites that promote sex with young boys and/or contain child pornography. Indeed, it is the mainstream homosexual groups who filed suit to block Virginia Legislation, passed in 2001, restricting Internet use that proves harmful to children (such as chat rooms commonly used by pedophiles to find victims).[43] Similarly, a pedophile’s conviction in
The Holy Grail of the pedophile movement is the lowering or elimination of all age of consent laws. The main warriors in this political and legal battle are "mainstream" homosexual groups. Robert Knight and Frank York of the Family Research Council have thoroughly documented this in a report. "As far back as 1972, the National Coalition of Gay Organizations adopted a ‘gay rights platform’ that included a demand to ‘repeal all laws governing the age of sexual consent.’"[45]
It is homosexual activists within the United Nations who are lobbying to give sexual rights to underage children. In
The liberation of pedophilia must be viewed as a gay issue . . . [and that] ages of consent should therefore be abolished . . . by acknowledging the affinity between homosexuality and pedophilia, the COC has quite possible made it easier for homosexual adults to become more sensitive to the erotic desires of younger members of their sex, thereby broadening gay identity.[46]
In
What then does the academic literature say about the relationship between homosexuality and child molestation? Quite a bit, actually. Scientific studies confirm a strong pedophilic predisposition among homosexuals.
Family Research Institute founder and psychologist Paul Cameron, reviewing more than nineteen different academic reports and peer reviewed studies in a 1985 Psychological Reports article, found that homosexuals account for between 25% and 40% of all child molestation. Sex researchers Freund, Heasman, Racansky, and Glancy, for example, in an 1984 Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy article, put the number at 36%. Erickson, Walbek, Sely, in a 1988 Archives of Sexual Behavior article, places it at 86% when the children being molested are male.[47]
However, it should be noted that homosexuals account for only 2% of the population which statistically means that a child molester is ten to twenty times more likely to be homosexual than heterosexual. In other words, heterosexual molestations proportionally are a fraction compared to homosexual molestations. More recent studies confirm this statistic. In 2000, the Archives of Sexual Behavior published an article by seven sex researchers concluding that ‘‘around 25-40% of men attracted to children prefer boys. Thus the rate of homosexual attraction is 6-20 times higher among pedophiles."[48]
Sexual violence expert and professor of psychiatry Eugene Abel, in a 1987 study published by the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, concluded that homosexuals sexually molest young boys with an incidence that is five times greater than the molestation of girls.[49]
In a 1992 study published in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, sex researchers K. Freud and R. I. Watson found that homosexual males are three times more likely than straight men to engage in pedophilia and that the average pedophile victimizes between 20 and 150 boys before being arrested.[50]
Other data has come to the forefront confirming that sex with young boys is a way of life for many homosexuals. In 1993, the United States Army, Office of Judge Advocate, issued a study that analyzed 102 court martial convictions having to do with soldiers involved in homosexual acts over a four-year period. The study found that in 47% of the cases, homosexual men victimized a youth.[51]
A content analysis of molestation stories by the Family Research Institute involving five major newspapers found around 40% involved homosexuals, but this number is low due to the fact that many reporters will not report if a child molester is homosexual even if he knows that to be the case.
A study by sex researchers Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg found that 25% of white gay men have had sex with boys sixteen years and younger.[52] The Family Research Institute conducted a similar study and found that "11 times more gays than exclusively heterosexual men reported sex with a man while they were under the age of 13."[53] A study by homosexual activists and researchers Jay and Young revealed that 73% of homosexuals surveyed had sex with boys sixteen to nineteen years of age or younger.[54]
In a study on male rape published by the American Journal of Psychiatry, it was found that 6% of rape victims reported to a
This type of behavior, however, is considered normal in psychiatric circles due to the influence of homosexual psychiatrists within the American Psychiatry Association. It is the homosexual caucus within that body that pushed to rewrite the diagnostic criteria for pedophilia. The new definition defines sex with children as a psychological disorder only if it causes "clinically significant distress" for the molester! Under that definition, most molesters are perfectly normal people!
The American Psychological Association appears to have similar sympathies when it published a sloppy and error-filled article in its Psychological Bulletin in July 1998, arguing that there is no research documenting that sexual child abuse is harmful to children and that "a willing encounter with positive reactions would be labeled simply adult-child sex" instead of using terms such as child abuse and victim. There was no outcry from the homosexual community. Indeed, they either remained silent or publicly defended the article. One of the nation’s most prominent homosexual journalists, Andrew Sullivan, attacked critics of the study in the New York Times. In the National Journal, gay journalist Jonathan Rauch strongly defended the study and argued that child molestation should be called "adult-adolescent sex."[56]
The epidemic in male child molestation occurring simultaneously with the rise of an aggressive homosexual subculture is not coincidental. Due to the AIDS virus, molestation is often a death sentence. Further, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that 50% of male AIDS victims reported having sex with an adult male by the age of 16, and 20% had sex with an adult male by the age of 10.[57]
The Center of Disease Control (CDC) recently reported that as of the year 2000, there are now 31,293 AIDS cases in the 13-24-age category.[58] The HIV/AIDs Surveillance Reports maintained by the CDC demonstrate that for the last few years around half of the age group 13-24 HIV victims were infected with the disease as a result of sex with adult men.[59] However, one must bear in mind that due to the incubation period of the HIV/AIDS disease, many of these boys and young men were infected as long as ten years previous to the reporting of their cases. This translates into roughly 15,000 boys that have been infected by adult men since the CDC started to compile this information. This is an epidemic no one seems to want to talk about.
Indeed, the response instead has been an escalating effort by the homosexual community to compromise every major youth group possible and to inundate our public schools with pro-homosexual curricula, counseling, and social activities. The YMCA, Girl Scouts, and the Big Brothers, despite also being plagued by molestation incidents, have all capitulated to homosexual pressure campaigns. Indeed, Girl Scout leaders writing in the 1997 book, On My Honor: Lesbians Reflect on their Scouting Experience, reveal that the Girl Scouts are inundated with lesbians─a third of its professional staff is lesbian─and they have even initiated a lesbian mentoring program! The Boy Scouts now stand alone among America’s major youth groups in resisting the homosexual agenda - and that explains why they are under such ferocious legal, legislative, and cultural attack.
Moreover, the liberal media omits any mention of a person’s homosexuality in covering molestation stories. This is reinforced by pressure from homosexual groups. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLADD) disseminated a "media guide" to reporters nationwide in which they urge:
A criminal’s . . . sexual orientation is not always obvious (or relevant) based simply on the circumstances of a crime . . . . [A]s a rule avoid labeling an activity or emotion as "homosexual’’ unless you would call the same activity "heterosexual" or "straight" if engaged in by someone of another sexual orientation.
The homosexual community knows that the capture of all major youth groups is absolutely necessary to the expansion of its movement. They know what most social scientists and sex researchers know but refuse to talk about: homosexually-molested children are likely to become homosexual. After all, one of the most common characteristics of homosexual molesters is the fact that they were molested themselves during boyhood. An article published by the American Medical Association reported that, "Abused adolescents, particularly those victimized by males, were up to 7 times more likely to self-identity as gay or bisexual than peers who had not been abused."[60]
It is high time that America’s elected officials, health authorities, education leaders, and law enforcement officials act to not only tell the harsh truth─the homosexual community has targeted America’s youth─but act now to counter this horrible trend. Failure to do so will have disastrous consequences for both our culture and for the health of our children.
[1] See W.D. Erickson et al., Behavior Patterns of Child Molesters, 17 Archives Sexual Behav. 1, 83 (1988); see also K. Jay et al., The Gay Report: Lesbians and Gays Speak Out About Sexual Experiences and Lifestyles 275 (1979); Eugene Abel et al., Self-Reported Sex Crimes of Nonincarcerated Pedophiliacs, 2 J. Interpersonal Violence 3, 5 (1987) (“Child molestation, by comparison, was a relatively infrequent crime, occurring from an average of 23.2 times by a pedophile (nonincest) with female targets to an average of 281.7 times by a pedophile (nonincest) whose targets were males.”); R. Blanchard et al., Fraternal Order and Sexual Orientation in Pedophiles, 29 Archives Sexual Behav. 464 (2000); K. Freund & R.I. Watson, The Proportions of Heterosexual and Homosexual Pedophiles Among Sex Offenders Against Children: An Exploratory Study, 18 J. Sex & Marital Therapy 34, 34-43 (1992).
[2] Frank York & Robert Knight, Homosexual Activists Work to Lower Age of Consent (1999), available at http://www.frc.org/get/bl057.cfm (last visited Apr. 2, 2002).
[3] See Plaintiff’s Complaint at 3, In re Gay & Lesbian Adolescent Soc. Serv. Inc. v. California Dep’t of Soc. Serv. (March 15, 1996) (No. 6395284001) (on file with author) (hereinafter Plaintiff’s Complaint) (At least five Southern California Counties contracted GLASS to receive troubled children which resulted in GLASS receiving federal, state, and county funding).
[4] Gay and Lesbian Social Services, Our Mission, at http://www.glassla.org/company.htm (last visited Apr. 2, 2002).
[5] See Pat Califla, Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex (2000).
[6] Helping Gay and Lesbian Youth: New Policies, New Programs, New Practice (Teresa Decrescenzo ed., 1994).
[7] See Plaintiff’s Complaint, supra note 3, at 4.
[8]
[9] K.L. Billingsley,
[10] Bettina Boxall, Beleaguered
[11] As a former member of the California State Assembly the author requested all documents relating to this case from the Department of Social Services and found no evidence of any proceedings initiated by the Attorney General’s office.
[12] Brief of Amici Curiae Public Advocate et al., Dale v. Boy Scouts of America, 734 A.2d 1196 (N.J. 1999) (No. 99-699); Steve Geissinger, Scouts Remove 1800 Scoutmasters for Suspected Abuse Over Two Decades, Assoc. Press, Oct. 14, 1993 (on file with author).
[13] Joe Farah, Who’s Afraid of the Boy Scouts?, World Net Daily, Aug. 23, 2000 at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?Article_ID=15032; see also Culture Facts (Family Research Council,
The Problem of Pedophilia
(Published in 1998)Editor's note: Through publicity generated by this paper, and followed up by radio personality Dr. Laura Schlessinger and the Family Research Council, the American Psychological Association and (even more strongly) the American Psychiatric Association have issued statements clarifying that they reject the normalization of pedophilia. We applaud them for making such a strong public statement.
Yet we continue to see editorials which defend the A.P.A. for offering a publishing platform to researchers who fail to see pedophilia as intrinsically harmful. Some well-known psychologists say they see no conclusive evidence of harm to victims of pedophilia. Furthermore, the Journal of Homosexuality continues to prominently feature articles which champion the pedophile-rights movement.
We hope that the A.P.A.'s will continue to reject the claims of pedophile advocates. As a final step, we would like to see the American Psychiatric Association revise its diagnostic terminology back to its former definition, which leaves no room for the possibility of a "psychologically normal" pedophile.
For many years, Western society has considered adult-child sex to be legally, socially, and morally taboo. Pedophiles have been judged criminal by the courts, sinful by theologians, and psychologically disordered by the mental-health profession.
Slowly, however, that situation has been changing.
A Fringe Element Begins to
Make Inroads into the Mainstream
NAMBLA--the North American Man-Boy Love Association--was once the lone voice lobbying for the normalization of pedophilia. NAMBLA representatives marched in gay-pride parades as a fringe element of the gay-rights movement.
Then in 1990, the Journal of Homosexuality produced a special double issue devoted to adult-child sex, which was entitled "Male Intergenerational Intimacy" (1). One article said many pedophiles believe they are "born that way and cannot change" (p. 133). Another writer said a man who counseled troubled teenage boys could achieve "miracles... not by preaching to them, but by sleeping with them." The loving pedophile can offer a "companionship, security and protection" which neither peers nor parents can provide (p. l62). Parents should look upon the pedophile who loves their son "not as a rival or competitor, not as a thief of their property, but as a partner in the boy's upbringing, someone to be welcomed into their home..." (p. 164).
A British university professor wrote: "Boys want sex with men, boys seduce adult men, the experience is very common and much enjoyed" (p. 323). A professor of social science at the State University of New York says he looks forward to the day when Americans will "get over their hysteria about child abuse" (p. 325) and child pornography.
A.P.A. Publishes a New Study:
Not All Pedophile Relationships are Harmful
The American Psychological Association did not denounce the positions advanced within the that journal. In fact, just recently, the A.P.A. published a new, major study (2) written by one of those same Journal of Homosexuality writers.
This latest article appears in the A.P.A.'s own prestigious Psychological Bulletin. It provides an overview of all the research studying the harm resulting from childhood sexual abuse.
The authors' conclusion? That childhood sexual abuse is on average, only slightly associated with psychological harm--and that the harm may not be due to the sexual experience, but to the negative family factors in the children's backgrounds. When the sexual contact is not coerced, especially when it is experienced by a boy and is remembered positively, it may not be harmful at all.
The authors of the article propose that psychologists stop using judgmental terms like "child abuse," "molestation," and "victims," using instead neutral, value-free terms like "adult-child sex." Similarly, they say we should not talk about the "the severity of the abuse," but instead refer to "the level of sexual intimacy."
The authors conclude that behavior which psychotherapists commonly term "abuse" may only constitute a violation of social norms. And science, they say, should separate itself from social-moral terminology. Religion and society, these writers argue, are free to judge behavior as they wish...but psychiatry should evaluate behavior by its own set of standards.
In fact, the authors of the Psychological Bulletin article propose what they consider may be a better way of understanding pedophilia: that it may only be "abuse" if the child feels bad about the relationship. They are in effect suggesting a repetition of the steps by which homosexuality was normalized. In its first step toward removing homosexuality from the Diagnostic Manual, the A.P.A. said the condition was normal as long as the person did not feel bad about it.
Few laymen are aware that the American Psychiatric Association recently redefined the criteria for pedophilia. According to the latest diagnostic manual (DSM--IV), a person no longer has a psychological disorder simply because he molests children. To be diagnosed as disordered, now he must also feel anxious about the molestation, or be impaired in his work or social relationships. Thus the A.P.A. has left room for the "psychologically normal" pedophile.
Theology and the Law Are Led By Psychology
If psychology indeed recognizes consensual pedophilia as harmless, then civil law and social norms will be under pressure to follow the lead of social science...as indeed they did on the issue of homosexuality. When psychiatry declared homosexuality normal, our courts and theologians began to re-write both civil law and moral theology based on what psychiatry said it had discovered through the medium of empirical science.
But What is a Psychological Disorder?
The problem with the law and society being a follower of psychology, is that what is categorized as a "psychological illness" depends on psychiatry's view of the good life, and of human nature. And today, there is grave disagreement on those subjects.
So when psychiatry decided to redefine homosexuality as normal, it moved the condition from one category labeled "undesirable" to another category labeled "desirable." (4) It did so based on a study showing that a selected group of homosexual individuals evidenced no obvious psychological abnormality (5), and also as a result of listening to personal testimony from a number of gay people who were happy with their homosexuality. In essence, these individuals said, "We aren't psychologically unbalanced or distressed, and we're happy being gay ...So psychiatry has no right to label us disordered."
Psychology Yields to the Authority of Personal Experience
The A.P.A. agreed with them. In doing so, it surrendered its authority to contradict personal experience. At the same time, it chose to ignore a vast body of literature on unconscious motivation and established personality theory. It also relinquished the age-old conviction that human beings are governed by certain immutable laws of nature relating to male-female psychological and physical complementarity.
As psychiatry becomes detached from its foundations, we hear more opinions such as these--expressed by world-renowned, Professor Emeritus (Johns Hopkins U.) sexologist Dr. John Money:
"If I were to see the case of a boy aged ten or eleven who's intensely erotically attracted toward a man in his twenties or thirties, if the relationship is totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally mutual...then I would not call it pathological in any way" (6)
And so we can see that a door has been opened.
Psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover reflects on the Journal of Homosexuality's "Male Intergenerational Intimacy":
"This special issue reflects the substantial, influential, and growing segment of the homosexual community that neither hides nor condemns pedophilia. Rather they argue that pedophilia is an acceptable aspect of sexuality, especially of homosexuality. Indeed, the San Francisco Sentinel, a Bay Area gay-activist newspaper, published a piece arguing that pedophilia is central to male homosexual life" (7).
Gay advocates correctly state that most child molesters are heterosexual males. However, this is a misleading statement, since most males are heterosexual.
In proportion to their numbers (about 1 out of 36 men), homosexual males may be more likely to engage in sex with minors: in fact, some research suggests a possible 3-to-one ratio (8). However, research in this area is not conclusive because the sexual orientation of male-on-male abusers was not always clear (some abusers are bisexuals).
These statistics do not, of course, take into account the cases of homosexual child abuse which are unreported. NARTH's Executive Director Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, for example, says that about one-third of his 400 adult homosexual clients said they had experienced some form of homosexual abuse before the age of consent, but only two of those cases had been reported to legal authorities.
While no more than 2% of male adults are homosexual, some studies indicate that approximately 35% of pedophiles are homosexual (9). Further, since male-on-male pedophiles victimize far more children than do heterosexual pedophiles (10), it is estimated that approximately 80% of pedophilic victims are boys who have been molested by adult males (11).
Homosexual Men were Often Childhood Victims
Dr. Nicolosi says that many of his clients' childhood sexual contacts occurred with a trusted older person, and were perceived at the time of the abuse as loving. Other sexual-reorientation therapists report similar high rates of molestation among their clients (12, 13).
Tragically, the abused child is then more likely to become an abuser in adulthood (14). Thus, it would not be surprising that pedophilia could be more common among homosexual men: since they are more likely to have been victims of abuse themselves, they would also be more likely to initiate a repetition of that abuse with a same-sex child.
Which Child is Most Likely to Become a Victim?
Certain children are especially vulnerable to abuse--especially the boy who is predisposed to homosexuality. The prehomosexual boy is very often lonely, alienated from his father, and experiencing frustrating and deficient same-sex peer relationships. He quite naturally craves male attention, affection and approval.
Often the same boy is also experiencing an overly intense and intimate relationship with his mother, which makes normal masculine individuation difficult. An intimate relationship with a man is one place of separation and individuation "where Mother cannot go" (15).
When this lonely boy receives flattering attention from an older male, then a link is established between love and homoerotic sex. The boy comes to believe, "If I want love from men, I must have sex with them." Thus the normal and natural developmental need of same-sex love and approval has become eroticized. The boy may then develop a compulsive, promiscous sexual habit pattern, which in gay life is seen fairly frequently.
Many Gay Biographies Tell the Story
In his life story, Breaking the Surface, Olympic diver Greg Louganis tells the poignant tale of his own experience with adult-child sex. He was an unusually sensitive boy, with an intense closeness with his mother, and a distant, fearful relationship with his father. Lonely and starving for male affection, he was molested by an older man he encountered on the beach. In his childish neediness, Louganis--like many victims of man-boy molestation--perceived that relationship as loving.
Who is Likely to be an Abuser?
Psychoanalysis recognizes the child abuser as typically an immature man who wants to "give love" to a boy which he did not himself receive in childhood. He makes a narcissistic identification with the child, seeing him as an idealized version of himself, and perceives himself as giving the same love which he wishes he had received from his own father. Thus the pedophile cannot understand that he is inflicting emotional damage.
Gay Fiction Presents Pedophilic
Relationships Positively
Popular gay and lesbian fiction often portrays adult-child sexual relationships as fondly remembered, tender "coming-of-age" stories. Much of this fiction is clearly pornographic--is aimed specifically at teenagers--and is recommended to them on reading lists distributed by gay-advocacy groups such as P-FLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) (16), or offered to them in some public-school libraries (17).
What is the Harm of Childhood Seduction?
Dutch psychologist Gerard van den Aardweg points out that "non-coerced" sex is a misnomer because there is always an element of coercion -- involving a misuse of adult authority, and a misuse of the child's need for affection. If a researcher sees no harm, "it may be because he is using the wrong glasses...not because there is nothing to see." Even adult-child sex which is mutually enjoyed, he says, is always an intrinsic injustice to the integrity of the person (18).
Dr. David Finkelhor, a leading U.S. researcher in the field of child sexual abuse, similarly disputes the conclusions of pedophile advocates.
He describes some of the consequences of childhood seduction: confusion about sexual identity and sexual norms; inability to differentiate sex from love; confusion between care-getting and care-giving, with lowered respect for adult authority; guilt, shame, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, depression, vulnerability to drug and alcohol abuse, and impaired ability to judge the trustworthiness of others. We also see an age-inappropriate sexual knowledge, and sex acts sometimes compulsively reenacted with other children (19).
Victims of sex abuse also appear to be at higher risk for suicide (20), and may repeat the sexual abuse in adulthood, in order to gain a feeling of psychological mastery over the experience (21). Children who experience prolonged abuse are more likely to view the abuse as positive or neutral, suggesting that as the molestation continues, children eventually identify with the molester (22).
If the abuse was homosexual, the boy is likely to question his sexual orientation; if the abuser was a male and the child a girl, she may defensively turn to lesbianism (23).
But even if pedophile advocates proved to be right that children don't often suffer psychological damage in adulthood (and Dr. Finkelhor believes they're wrong), the impact of pedophilia must not be judged simply on the basis of empirical findings.
"Ultimately," says Dr. Finkelhor, "I do continue to believe that the prohibition on adult-child sexual contact is primarily a moral issue. While empirical findings have some relevance, they are not [to be] the final arbiter."
Some slaves, he says, experienced slavery as good; likewise, many child sweatshop workers said their work was beneficial. Despite this, we know better than to conclude that either slavery or child labor are ultimately good, he argues.
Similarly, research reveals that the birth of children is correlated with a drop in marital satisfaction for several years. Yet in spite of that empirical evidence, we do not declare childrearing to be "bad for marriage." We know that psychological distress, or the lack of it, only gives us a partial understanding of any particular life issue.
Dr. Finkelhor concludes: "Some types of social relationships violate deeply held values and principles in our culture about equality and self-determination. Sex between children and adults is one of them. Evidence that some children have positive experiences does not challenge these values" (24).
Endnotes
1. The Journal of Homosexuality, "Male Intergenerational Intimacy: Historical, Socio-Psychological, and Legal Perspectives," vol. 20, Nos. 1&2, 1990. This back issue can be ordered by calling 1-800-HAWORTH.
2. Rind, Bruce, Tromovitch, Philip, and Bauserman, Robert. (Temple U. Dept. of Psychology, Phila., PA)., A Meta-analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples. Psychological Bulletin, 1998 (July), vol. 124 (1), 22-53.
3. Pedophilia Not Always a Disorder? NARTH Bulletin, April 1995, page 1.
4. Satinover, Jeffrey (1996). Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. P. 43.
5. Hooker, Evelyn, The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual, Journal of Projective Techniques, 1957, 21, 1831.
6. Interview: John Money. PAIDIKA: The Journal of Paedophilia, Spring 1991, vol. 2, no. 3, p. 5.
7. Satinover, Jeffrey (1996). Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, p. 63.
8. Freund, K. and R. I. Watson, The Proportions of Heterosexual and Homosexual Pedophiles Among Sex Offenders Against Children: An Exploratory Study, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 18 (Spring 1992): 3443.
9. K. Freund et al., Pedophilia and Heterosexuality vs. Homosexuality, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 10 (Fall 1984): 197.
10. Freund, K. and R. I. Watson, The Proportions of Heterosexual and Homosexual Pedophiles Among Sex Offenders Against Children: An Exploratory Study, Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy 18 (Spring 1992): 3443.
11. Schmidt, Thomas (1995). Straight and Narrow? Compassion and Clarity in the Homosexuality Debate. Downers Grove, Ill.: Intervarsity Press, p. 114.
12. Byrd, A. Dean. Integrating Treatment of Unwanted Male Homosexual Attractions: Clinical Interventions. Paper presented at the NARTH Annual Conference, October 23, 1998, Los Angeles, Ca.
13. Dickson, Gregory, An Empirical Study of the MotherSon Dyad in Relation to the Development of Adult Male Homosexuality: An Object Relations Perspective, doctoral dissertation available through UMI, 300North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346.
14. Siegel, J., Sorenson, S., Golding, J., Burnam, J., Stein, J., The prevalence of childhood sexual assault: the Los Angeles epidemiological catchment area project. American Journal of Epidemiology 126,6:1141.
15. Dickson, Gregory, An Empirical Study of the MotherSon Dyad in Relation to the Development of Adult Male Homosexuality: An Object Relations Perspective, 1998.
16. "Be Yourself: Questions and Answers for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth," published by Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, 1101 14th Street, N.W., Suite 1030, Washington, DC 20005.
17. "Action Group Forms in Seattle," by Eleanor Durham, Parents and Teachers for Responsible Schools, P.O. Box 28519, Seattle, Washington 98118-8519, from the NARTH Bulletin, April 1998, p. 11.
18. Van den Aardweg, Gerard, (The Netherlands), private correspondence to NARTH, October 26, 1998.
19. Finkelhor, David, et al (1986). A Sourcebook on Child Sexual Abuse. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
20. Beitchman, J., Zucker, K., Hood, J., DaCosta, G., Akman, D. (1991) A Review of the Short-Term Effects of Child Sexual Abuse. Child Abuse and Neglect 15:537-556.
21. Rekers, George (1995). Handbook of Child and Adolescent Sexual Problems. N.Y.: Lexington Books, p. 158.
22. Doll, L., Joy, D., Bartholow, B., Harrison, J., Bolan, G., Douglas, J., Saltzman, L., Moss, P., Delgado, W. (1992), Self-reported childhood and adolescent sexual abuse among adult homosexual and bisexual men. Child Abuse and Neglect 16:825-864.
23. Engel, B. (1982) The Right to Innocence. Los Angeles, CA: Jeremy P. Tarcher, p. 193.
24. Finkelhor, David, "Response to Bauserman," Journal of Homosexuality, vol. 20, Nos. 1&2, 1990, pp. 314-315.
