Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters: Apr 16, 2010

Friday, April 16, 2010

Know Your LGBT History - Designing Women

Generally, this is the time when I post my weekly Know Your LGBT History segment. Before I do today, I want to make a short mention of three items I may be posting about this weekend:

Judge strikes down adoption ban - Voters in Arkansas voted this law in specifically to keep lgbt couples from adopting. When the "will of the people" goes against the Constitution, then the "will of the people" needs to lose.

National Institutes of Health Director condemns anti-gay pediatrician group - That's three rebukes for the American College of Pediatricians (counting the ones from Dr. Gary Remafedi and the American Association of Pediatrics). I want more and I want to make them ALL known.

Lafferty: ENDA Will Allow The VA To Molest Our Disabled Veterans - How low can Andrea Lafferty go?" God! That's YOUR child.

Now onto Know Your LGBT History:

I got a request last week for Designing Women before one of the stars, Dixie Carter, passed away.

This show is legendary amongst the gay community because of its astute portrayal of the trials and tribulations of four Southern women and designing firm they own.

This particular episode (airing in 1987) is one of the most famous and is actually the first episode of Designing Women I ever saw. Naturally after it, I was hooked. It's called Killing All the Right People and it's about a friend of the women hiring them to decorate his funeral. You see, he is dying from AIDS.

At the same time, another one of the characters, Mary Jo (Annie Potts) has to speak at a PTA meeting advocating the position of teaching complete sex education and condoms in schools

The two storylines mix when a "friend" of the women gives her unsolicited opinion of the young man dying from AIDS:

The tirade she received from Dixie Carter's character (Julia Sugarbaker) was indicative of the nature of the show. Ironically, Carter was a bit more conservative than her character and she made a deal with the producers. For every tirade her character voiced, she got to sing in a later episode.

That's not to say that Carter was not supportive of the lgbt community because she was. And if you ask me, viewers got a doubly good deal. Carter was an excellent singer and her character's tirades were awesome. What the hell, here are a few:

Family Research Council accuses gays of pedophilia without any proof

Yesterday, Tony Perkins from the Family Research Council had this to say about the abuse of children in the Catholic Church:

While activists like to claim that pedophilia is a completely distinct orientation from homosexuality, evidence shows a disproportionate overlap between the two. About a third of all child sex abuse cases involve men molesting boys--and in one study, 86% of such men identified themselves as homosexual or bisexual. Try as they might, gays and lesbians can't shrug off the link. This is a homosexual problem.

Only one thing. Perkins never gave a name of the study. He supplies a link to an abstract of a 1988 Netherlands study but the link does nothing to either prove or disprove Perkins's claim.

The abstract says the following:

Despite intense interest in the problem of child sex abuse, base rates for different offense characteristics are poorly defined. The likelihood of otherwise uncorroborated allegations of sexual abuse could be assessed in light of known frequencies of alleged behaviors, if such were available. This paper reviews the current literature on the topic of the specific behaviors of child molesters, along with other epidemiological characteristics, and provides new data drawn from experience with 229 convicted child molesters.

It's ironic that Perkins choose to delve into the territory of claiming that the majority of pedophiles are gay. His organization, the Family Research Council, has a history of distorting research to prove this claim and being called out for it. According to author Mark E. Pietrzyk:

The Family Research Council’s analyst Timothy Dailey, who argues that there is a link between homosexuality and child molestation, admits that pedophiles who target boys may also have sexual relations with women. However, he implies that such men are merely closet homosexuals and refuses to admit that heterosexual men may well be attracted to women and to underage boys at the same time. This tactic leads Dailey to again distort the work of a reputable researcher, W. L. Marshall. Marshall's paper, “Sexual Offenders Against Male Children: Sexual Preferences,” discusses the results of a study of the sexual orientation of a sample of male sex offenders against boys. Marshall measured the sexual orientation of the offenders by means of a plethysmograph, a device which measures arousal responses. Marshall found that out of his sample of 21 offenders against boys, two‑thirds of the offenders were predominantly heterosexual in their adult orientation. Yet Dailey completely omits this result, and cites Marshall's paper as evidence for the notion that sex offenders against male children are invariably homosexual.

In fact, Marshall's study found that not only could heterosexual males be attracted to women and young boys simultaneously, the heterosexual males were more inclined to be attracted to the very young, whereas the homosexual offenders chose older victims

Then there was the 1992 controversy with A. Nicholas Groth, former director of the Sex Offender Program at the Connecticut Department of Corrections. Dailey distorted Groth's work to draw the conclusion that gay men molest boys at a high rate, when Groth's research said the opposite.

Needless to say, Groth wasn't happy about this and he wrote a letter to FRC saying so (I have an original copy of the press release with the letter if anyone wants to see it):

Dear Dr. Dailey:

On the web site www.frc.org you reference my work in your article on "Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse". I am writing you to object to my name and research being associated in any way, shape, or form to lend legitimacy to the views proposed in your paper.

If you are, in fact, familiar with my research, you must realize that my studies have indicated that homosexual males pose less risk of sexual harm to children (both male and female)--from both an absolute and a percentage incidence rate--than heterosexual males. Your statement that "the evidence indicates that disproportionate numbers of gay men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners" appears to come from the assumption that if an adult male is attracted to a male child, this adult male's sexual orientation is ipso facto homosexual.

Since your report, in my view, misrepresents the facts of what we know about this matter from scientific investigation, and does not indicate that my studies on this topic reach conclusions diametrically opposed to yours, I would appreciate your removing any reference to my work in your paper lest it appear to the reader that my research supports your views.
Yours truly,

A. Nicholas Groth, Ph.D.

So taking all of this in, I think I understand why Perkins conveniently didn't give the name of the study which he claims proves his point.

How many times can an organization suffer the embarrassment of having it's face cracked and on the ground?

Rachel Maddow pokes fun at Mike Huckabee's hypocrisy

Good luck to all of the schools and students participating in today's Day of Silence.

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow weighed in on the recent controversy involving Fox News's Mike Huckabee in a hilarious fashion. Her take on the situation is both truthful and amusing. But one thing disturbs me. It turns out that Huckabee was paid $20,000 for the interview. Whatever happened to being interviewed without being paid?