Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Anti-LGBTQ publication LifeSite News fails in attempt to smear gay male couples

I present you with something short and sweet which demonstrates how members of the anti-LGBTQ industry distort research to denigrate and demonize our community.

The anti-LGBTQ publication LifeSite News (which blocked me from commenting on its site years ago) posted the following tweet about a July article on its site:



This sounds terrible and it is terrible . . . the way LifeSite News shamelessly lied to create a hideous factoid about gay male couples. And what's more pathetic is that the first two paragraphs of the article  exposes this distortion:

Nearly half of men in same-sex relationships have been abused by their partner in some way, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Men's Health.

 The study found that among 160 homosexual male couples, 46% of the men reported “some form of intimate partner abuse” in just the past year, HealthDay News reports. The abuse took forms such as physical violence, sexual violence, emotional abuse, and controlling behavior.

So in a study of 160 gay male couples, 46 percent of the men said they had suffered some form of intimate partner abuse.  That's less than 100 couples. Yet in the configurations of LifeSite News, that less than 100 couples equals half of all gay male couples.

Also, even though LifeSite News attempts to paint the study as proof that gay couples is a negative concept, the article continues to contradict the site's intent. The study's authors clearly say that it is outside negative influences which may contribute to the violence:

To explain the discrepancy between straight and gay abuse, the study purported to show an “important connection between internalized homophobia and violence reporting among couples.” Stephenson also noted that health care providers tended not to ask male couples about domestic abuse. It also asserted that violence was “more common among partners who had experienced homophobic violence and who had traditionally hegemonic views of masculinity that they had difficulty negotiating.”

“A gay man who’s struggling with his identity might lash out at his partner with physical or emotional abuse as a stress response behavior,” a University of Michigan news release about the study explained, “similar to heterosexual couples, where an unemployed man lashes out at his female partner because he feels inadequate.”

Nice try LifeSite News but you get an "F" for effort. And that's only because I can't think of a lower grade.

Editor's note - This is the original study  which LifeSite News distorted.

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