21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Plagiarism?

This is odd. Section 15 of the pamphlet 21 Reasons Why Gender Matters is the section of the leaflet primarily concerned with homosexuality (or "gender identity disorder", as they pseudoscientifically call it). It starts out like this:

Consider first the issue of pathology. The whole notion of gender
disorientation has been highly politicised in the past few decades.
Objective scientific debate has been overwhelmed by advocacy
groups driving specific agendas. For example, in 1952, the first edition
of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official catalogue of mental
disorders used by mental health professionals, listed homosexuality
as a sociopath personality disturbance. In 1968, the revised DSM II
reclassified homosexuality as a sexual deviancy. But in the midst of the
sexual revolution, homosexual protestors began picketing the APA’s
annual conventions, demanding that homosexuality not be identified
as a pathology. In 1973, under enormous pressure from homosexual
activists, the APA removed homosexuality from its DSM III edition to
the dismay of about 40 percent of psychiatrists - particularly those who
specialized in treating homosexuals.

Now look at the section "Understanding: Gender-Disorientation Pathology" in this paper from the far-right website the Patriot Post:

n order to understand how to respond to the homosexual agenda in the Church and society, it is helpful to understand the underlying pathology.

In 1952, the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official catalogue of mental disorders used by mental health professionals, listed homosexuality as a sociopath personality disturbance. In 1968, the revised DSM II reclassified homosexuality as a sexual deviancy. But in the midst of the sexual revolution, homosexual protestors began picketing the APA's annual conventions, demanding that homosexuality not be identified as pathology. In 1973, under enormous pressure from homosexual activists, the APA removed homosexuality from its the DSM III edition to the dismay of about 40 percent of psychiatrists -- particularly those who specialized in treating homosexuals.

The second paragraphs of each section are likewise almost identical. Gender Matters pamphlet:

Dr. Ronald Bayer, author of the book, Homosexuality and American
Psychiatry, writes: “The entire process, from the first confrontation
organized by homosexual demonstrators, to the referendum demanded
by orthodox psychiatrists, seemed to violate the most basic expectations
about how questions of science should be resolved. Instead of being
engaged in sober discussion of data, psychiatrists were swept up in
a political controversy. The result was not a conclusion based on an
approximation of the scientific truth as dictated by reason, but was
instead an action demanded by the ideological temper of the times.”106
It is hoped that the APA will reverse its position.

From the Patriot Post article:

Dr. Ronald Bayer, author of the book, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry writes: "The entire process, from the first confrontation organized by gay demonstrators to the referendum demanded by orthodox psychiatrists, seemed to violate the most basic expectations about how questions of science should be resolved. Instead of being engaged in sober discussion of data, psychiatrists were swept up in a political controversy. The result was not a conclusion based on an approximation of the scientific truth as dictated by reason, but was instead an action demanded by the ideological temper of the times."

But the APA is not likely to reverse their position.

It continues. Gender Matters pamphlet:

Some homosexuals report that they over-identified with their opposite
sex parent and peers - thus a boy becomes increasingly feminized
while a girl becomes more masculine.107 In both cases - lack of identity
and over identity - there is a common denominator, which is emotional
deprivation. In their formative years, all children need emotional and
physical closeness with their parents - particularly with their samesex
parent, and they need to develop a healthy sense of their gender
identity as male or female.

Skip a little in the Patriot Post article until:

Many homosexuals report that as children, they had a dysfunctional relationship with their same-sex parent, such relationships being their primary means of gender identification and affirmation. For some children, particularly those whose parents are separated or divorced, the dissociation from their same-sex parent can cause an unconscious but directive drive for gender identification and affirmation among same-sex peers, which, after puberty, can manifest as sexual behavior. The search for closure to a dysfunctional relationship with a parent can lead to a lifetime of misery.

Some homosexuals report that they over-identified with their opposite sex parent and peers -- thus a boy becomes increasingly feminized while a girl becomes more masculine.

In both cases -- lack of identity and over identity -- there is a common denominator, which is emotional deprivation. In their formative years, all children need emotional and physical closeness with their parents -- particularly with their same sex parent, and they need to develop a healthy sense of their gender identity as masculine or feminine.

The number "107" you can see up there sandwiched in the quotes from the Gender Matters pamphlet refers to this footnote:
107 Mark Alexander, “The Homosexual Agenda”, http://www.patriotpost.us/papers/03-32.asp 6/6/2006, although the URL didn't work for me when I tried it. The link to the Patriot Post piece above references the URL by IP address, not domain name.

In any case, it is remotely conceivable that reference 107 is an attempt to reference all this apparently plagiarised text. If so, it was done so badly that it makes it look like the text presented here was actually original work by the Gender Matters people. I don't suppose Mark Alexander (author of the Patriot Post piece) would mind being plagiarised overmuch so long as his writing is being used to further an anti-gay agenda somehow, but I wonder how such plagiarism would reflect on the people doing the plagiarising?

The only other possibilityI can see here is that Mark Alexander himself was involved in the production of this pamphlet somehow. I've found no evidence of that as yet.

21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Paul Cameron references

I go back to university soon, so I won't have much time to write here. I didn't get through nearly as many of the references of the local anti-gay pamphlet "21 Reasons Why Gender Matters" as I would have wanted over the holidays, but realistically I suppose it's too tough a job for one person. There are still a few things I have found, though. The most significant would probably be the use of not one, but two, direct references from Paul Cameron, an "expert on homosexuality" so discredited that there are even anti-gay groups who consider his work too shoddy and unreliable to use (and that's saying something).

The first is using his recent distortions about the average lifespan of gay and lesbian partnered people in Europe:

Scandinavian research has shown that married homosexuals’ and
lesbians’ life spans are 24 years shorter than heterosexual couples.
In Denmark over the 12 years after 1990, the average age of death
of hetero men was 74, whereas the 561 partnered homosexual men
who died in the same period did so at an average age of 51. Married
women died at an average age of 78, whereas the nine lesbian women
who died, did so at an average age of 56. In Norway the figures were
similar – married heterosexual men died at an average age of 77, the
31 homosexuals at 52; heterosexual women died at 81, while the 6
lesbians who died, did so at mean 56.151

With footnote 151 being none other than

151 Paul Cameron,. “Federal Distortion of The Homosexual Footprint.”:

which has already been debunked in detail by Box Turtle Bulletin.

The second is the usual conflation of homosexuality and child molestation

A recent review of the child molestation literature as it appears in
medical and psychological journals concluded that between 25 and 40
per cent of all recorded child molestation was homosexual.169

With footnote 161 being

169 Reported in Paul Cameron, Exposing the AIDS Scandal. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1988, p39.

Child molestation is child molestation of course, and it's only anti-gay activists who falsely treat molesters of boys and girls as subsets of the larger heterosexual and homosexual population. But I am somewhat amused by the description by the Gender Matters pamphlet of a Cameronite writing from 1988 as a "recent review of the child molestation literature". Getting desperate for relevance, these anti-gay types are.

Origin of the homosexual recruitment myth?

It's probably one of the most powerful lies in the anti-gay lobby's rhetoric: that homosexuals recruit. I'm curious about where it first appeared.

The usual "deduction" to justify it is that homosexuals can't procreate, therefore they must need to recruit. There are a whole load of problematic assumptions in this "deduction" that, I think, would not be so conveniently skipped over if there wasn't such a long history of the belief of homosexual recruitment in Western culture. It's the social entrenchment of the belief rather than any internal logic to the idea that is the problem I think.

Believing the recruitment myth is not a requirement of believing that homosexuality is wrong. It is a requirement of believing that homosexuality is a "social disease" which needs to be "contained". Is there any other society that viewed homosexuality as socially contagious before Western culture introduced the idea to the world? I honestly don't know. I suspect not.

What few writings I've examined about the recruitment myth so far merely try to refute it or, in the case of anti-gay tracts, support it. I've found almost nothing about the origin or spread of the belief. Has anyone actually ever bothered to research it?

There is just one reference I've found, in a newsletter from 1993 put out by Paul Cameron's Family Research Institute. He points out a single passage in an early writing by the Christian founders. The Didache contains the single line "you shall not corrupt children", which Cameron portrays as a prohibition on attempts at homosexual recruitment. Another work called the Apostolic Constitutions, chapter 7 of which is apparently an expansion of the Didache, suggests that the "corruption" referred to is indeed male homosexuality: "Thou shall not corrupt boys: (5) for this wickedness is contrary to nature, and arose from Sodom, which was therefore entirely consumed with fire sent from God."

That's the only reference to an origin of the recruitment myth I can find, and it's still vague (does "corruption" specifically refer to the idea of recruitment here? I'm not 100% convinced that it must do so). I'd be very interested in further exploring the origin and trajectory of the idea if at all possible.