The insidious harm of ex-gay "therapy"

Courtesy of some people coming forward in Australia, the existence of "ex-gay therapy" in Australia is generating headlines, both in News Limited's holdings (Christian groups try to cure homosexual teens with brainwashing treatment) and in the Age (Ministries preying on gay shame). For once, it seems, the attitude of even News Ltd's holdings towards anti-gay sentiment is unabashedly negative.

The Age article actually features an interview from someone who works at an ex-gay program. Haydn Sennit, "pastoral care worker" for the Sydney ex-gay group Liberty Christian Ministries, answered a few questions, and in the process revealed something about the attitude that such ministries have to people who say they experience no change in sexual orientation. Simply put: if a person doesn't change, it's their own fault for not trying hard enough. Some sample quotes:

Some people give up, while others keep going and it’s different for every individual

Success is varied and it depends a lot on a person’s personal commitment.

And the kicker:

Some give up entirely because it’s so hard and it’s actually their disappointment with themselves that gets them undone.

Yes, they do get "undone" by disappointment in themselves. But not in the sense that they fail to experience change as a result of giving up. They get undone in the sense that their desire to give up after failing to experience change is turned into evidence of their weakness. The victim-blaming rhetoric that Sennit here is propagating prevents would-be ex-gays from acknowledging that they have tried to change as hard as they could, that they literally could not try any harder to change, and that they still wouldn't change even if they could. They are told to blame themselves for failing to do something impossible, and are told that their inability to experience change, even after monstrous effort at it, is evidence of their own weakness, not of the impossibility of the task before them.

Yes, ex-gay therapy teaches people to hate and fear their own desires for sexual intimacy. Yes, it teaches people to be ashamed of themselves, to think of themselves as "sexually broken" instead of just as gay. But the cruelest and most insidious lesson that they teach is that, no matter how much effort a person makes to change, it will never be enough. Those who admit to themselves that they will never change are made to think of themselves as weak-willed failures. No wonder so many of them become suicidal.

The parenthood of Janet Miller-Jenkins

A case between two lesbians (one of whom now claims to be ex-gay) in America has been at the periphery of my attention the past couple of months.

I don't have time to get all the links together right now, but here's the situation as I understand it: Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins got a civil union in Vermont. While living in Virginia, they had a child together, with Lisa conceiving through artificial insemination from an anonymous donor. Sometime later they separated. Under the terms of the dissolution of the civil union filed in Vermont by Lisa, Lisa would have custody of the child and Janet would have visitation rights. This did not happen, with Janet being refused visitation by Lisa after just one visit. Lisa then filed a new petition in Virginia requesting that the Virginia (not Vermont) court system grant Lisa exclusive access to the child, and deny any visitation rights to Janet, on the basis that same-sex marriage was illegal in Virginia, and that Janet was not really the child's parent (this in spite of the fact that the Vermont family court had ruled that she was).

The upshot: a 2006 Vermont Supreme Court ruling claiming that Vermont had exclusive jurisdiction over the issue, based on a law called (I think) the Parent Kidnapping Protection Act which explicitly prevented attempts at "jurisdiction shopping" in child custody disputes. In 2008, the Virginia Supreme Court also ruled that it was Vermont, not Virginia, that had jurisdiction. Finally, on November 20, the original Vermont judge that awarded custody to Lisa found Lisa in contempt of court and switched custody to Janet on the basis that this was the only way to ensure equal access to the child. Upon expiration of the time allotted for Lisa to give up the child, both Lisa and child vanished without trace.

Anti-gay arguments in support of Lisa's decision to go on the lam place much focus on the claim that, as biological parent, Lisa's needs should take precedence no matter what the law says. In the more extreme version of the argument, giving the child over to Janet is described by anti-gays as equivalent to forcing a mother to give her child over to the milkman.

So, I've found the 2006 Vermont Supreme Court ruling online, available here. The relevant section on the question of parenthoood, and why Janet Jenkins has it, is in paragraphs 56 to 58:

56.  Many factors are present here that support a conclusion that
  Janet is a parent, including, first and foremost, that  Janet and Lisa were
  in a valid legal union at the time of the child's birth.  The other factors
  include the following.  It was the expectation and intent of both Lisa and
  Janet that Janet would be IMJ's parent.  Janet participated in the decision
  that Lisa would be artificially inseminated to bear a child and
  participated actively in the prenatal care and birth.  Both Lisa and Janet
  treated Janet as IMJ's parent during the time they resided together, and
  Lisa identified Janet as a parent of IMJ in the dissolution petition. 
  Finally, there is no other claimant to the status of parent, and, as a
  result, a negative decision would leave IMJ with only one parent.  The
  sperm donor was anonymous and is making no claim to be IMJ's parent.  If
  Janet had been Lisa's husband, these factors would make Janet the parent of
  the child born from the artificial insemination.  See generally People v.
  Sorensen, 437 P.2d 495 (Cal. 1968).  Because of the equality of treatment
  of partners in civil unions, the same result applies to Lisa.  15 V.S.A. §
  1204.
   
       ¶  57.  Virtually all modern decisions from other jurisdictions
  support this result, although the theories vary.  See e.g., Brown v. Brown,
  125 S.W.3d 840, 844 (Ark. Ct. App. 2003) (husband estopped from denying
  child support where husband knew wife was using artificial insemination to
  have child); Sorensen, 437 P.2d at 498-500 (Cal. 1968) (husband is lawful
  father of child conceived through artificial insemination born during
  marriage to child's mother); In re Buzzanca, 72 Cal. Rptr. 2d 280, 286-87
  (Ct. App. 1998) (finding virtually all decisions hold husband to be parent
  based on his consent to artificial insemination); In re M.J., 787 N.E.2d at
  152 (mother of children conceived through artificial insemination may seek
  to establish paternity of man with whom she had ten-year intimate
  relationship based on theories of "oral contract or promissory estoppel"); 
  Levin v. Levin, 645 N.E.2d 601, 604-05 (Ind. 1994) (husband who orally
  consented to artificial insemination of wife estopped from denying
  fatherhood of child); R.S. v. R.S., 670 P.2d 923, 929 (Kan. Ct. App. 1983)
  (husband who orally consented to artificial insemination of wife estopped
  from denying fatherhood); State ex. rel. H. v. P., 457 N.Y.S.2d 488, 492
  (App. Div. 1982) (wife estopped from denying husband's paternity where she
  fostered parent-child relationship); Brooks v. Fair, 532 N.E.2d 208, 212-13
  (Ohio Ct. App. 1988) (public policy disallows wife from denying paternity
  of husband where parties agreed during marriage to conceive via means of
  artificial insemination); In re Baby Doe, 353 S.E.2d 877, 878 (S.C. 1987)
  (husband is legal father of child where he consented to artificial
  insemination of wife during marriage); see generally A. Stephens,
  Annotation, Parental Rights of Man Who Is Not Biological or Adoptive Father
  of Child But Was Husband or Cohabitant of Mother When Child Was Conceived
  or Born, 84 A.L.R.4th 655 (1991).  Some courts find the party a parent as a
  result of contract theory or estoppel.  E.g., R.S., 670 P.2d at 928. 
  Estoppel is often invoked because of the strong reliance interests that
  arise from consensual artificial insemination.  Other courts reach the
  result more as a matter of policy, particularly stressing the adverse
  consequences of leaving the child without a parent despite the clear
  intention of the parties.  E.g., Brooks, 532 N.E.2d at 212-13.  We adopt
  the result in this case as a matter of policy, and to implement the intent
  of the parties.
   
       ¶  58.  This is not a close case under the precedents from other
  states.  Because so many factors are present in this case that allow us to
  hold that the non-biologically-related partner is the child's parent, we
  need not address which factors may be dispositive on the issue in a closer
  case.  We do note that, in accordance with the common law, the couple's
  legal union at the time of the child's birth is extremely persuasive
  evidence of joint parentage.  See People ex. rel. R.T.L., 780 P.2d 508, 515
  n.11 (Colo. 1989) ("We acknowledge that the presumption that a child born
  during wedlock is the legitimate child of the marriage was one of the
  strongest presumptions known to the common law."); Cicero v. Cicero, 395
  N.Y.S.2d 117, 117 (App. Div. 1977) (presumption of legitimacy attached to
  "issue of the marriage"); LC v. TL, 870 P.2d 374, 380 (Wyo. 1994) ("The
  presumption of legitimacy is one of the strongest in the law."); see also
  Godin, 168 Vt. at 522, 725 A.2d at 910 ("Thus, the State retains a strong
  and direct interest in ensuring that children born of a marriage do not
  suffer financially or psychologically merely because of a parent's belated
  and self serving concern over a child's biological origins."). 

Needs to be summarised for the attention-addled, obviously, but that's the argument. Unsurprisingly, most people that take Lisa's side in this dispute haven't even glanced at it.

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.

21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Footnote 67, promiscuity and fidelity

From page 10 of the anti-gay pamphlet "21 Reasons Why Gender Matters":

Indeed, high rates of multiple partnering in the homosexual community continues to be the norm. As one recent report notes, “The majority of the 2006 respondents had engaged in sex with between one and 10 partners in the six months prior to the survey [over 63 per cent], while almost 20% of the men reported having had sex with more than 10 partners.”67

I do wish the Fatherhood Foundation would be more accurate in their referencing. Footnote 67 lists the quoted text as coming from the "Gay Community Periodic Survey. Sydney: National Centre in HIV Social Research, 2007, pp. 14-15", by Iryna Zablotska, et. al. Close, but not quite: the NCHSR conducts multiple surveys in multiple cities around Australia, and they all specify the city in the title. There is no single "Gay Community Periodic Survey".

There is, among others, a "Gay Community Periodic Survey: Canberra 2006". This marks the second time that the pamphlet garbled the title of the work they referenced, and the error is more severe this time. It took me quite a while to locate the one they were talking about. I suppose I should be thankful they gave me page numbers, and that they were the right ones: many of the references in anti-gay literature in general and in this pamphlet in particular fail to go that far.

Despite the inaccurate referencing of the title, the text of the quote is accurate. Whether it supports the conclusion that the authors are trying to suggest - that homosexual relationships are all fundamentally unfaithful and unstable - is less clear. The pamphlet's authors could have mentioned that this survey was not limited to gay men in regular relationships: on page 6 the survey notes that "about 60% of the men in the sample were in a regular sexual relationship with a man at the time of completing the survey". So 40% of the men were, how shall we say, "swinging singles", "footloose and fancy free"? Gee, you think that should be taken into account when reporting the findings about number of sex partners? Or is it more convenient for the pamphlet's authors to just let readers leap to the wrong conclusion that this says something about "infidelity" in gay relationships?

Perhaps more suited to the pamphlet authors' purposes are the figures on men who are both in a "regular sexual relationship" and have "regular casual sexual relations" as well. They comprised 29.1% of the 2006 respondents according to the Table on page 6 of the survey, which sounds like a lot. Yet it is still less than the number of respondents who reported having sex only with a regular partner: 31.6%. Furthermore, despite the stereotype of all gay men being horribly oversexed, 14.5% of the 2006 survey respondents reported having no sexual contact over the 6 month period at all.

I feel strangely sorry for that 14.5%. Here everyone is saying how much sex gay men have and this lot isn't getting any. Or then again, maybe they prefer it that way. It's impossible to tell just by looking at the numbers.

Of course, the survey was only asking about behaviour during a six month period, so it's entirely possible that the "monagamous" and "no sexual partners" entries for that particular period were in part due to circumstance rather than choice. Some clarification is available on page 21. Figure 28 provides a breakdown of "Agreements with regular male partners about sex outside the relationship". The figure is about split 3 different ways: 30.4% "Anal intercourse is permitted only with a condom", 33.3% "no sexual contact with casual partners is permitted", 26.7% "no spoken agreement about sex" (remaining percentages are 5.2% "no anal intercourse with casual partners is permitted" and 4.4% "anal intercourse without a condom is permitted"). I would say that the figures for monogamous and non-monogamous relationship arrangements seem about equal, but that large chunk who report no agreement makes such estimates impossible. It is not possible to say which is more common. It is possible to say that (a) monogamous male-male relationships exist, and (b) the number is far from miniscule, if we view the results of this survey as representative of relationships.

And that is the final problem with the way the pamphlet uses the survey, what is it really measuring? Seems to me that it's a measure of sexual behaviour of a specific subsegment of GLBT individuals, not an overall examination of the quality of our emotional partnerships.

"Regular sexual partner" as used in the survey could include everything from "man of my dreams" to "fuckbuddy", the survey doesn't care about such distinctions. The recruiting strategy of the survey described on pages 1-2 also seems biased in favour of gay men who identify strongly with the existing gay community, under-representing those gay men who might not identify with mainstream gay culture and its urban liberal sexual morality.

And of course, as in each and every one of these anti-gay statistics, we only ever hear the scary stories about the alleged sexual proclivities of gay men. Where are women in all this? I begin to understand why some lesbians view the lesbian experience and more problematic than that of gay men: their very existence is totally disregarded in so many fundamental ways.

21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Footnote 66 is another mistake

The pamphlet "21 reasons why gender matters" can be found online here.

Footnote 66 is the alleged source of these statistics on the length of male same-sex relationships:

a study of the Melbourne homosexual community showed that 40 per cent of men had changed partners in the past 6 months; 9.8 per cent had been in a relationship for only six months to a year; 18.8 per cent for 1-2 years; 15.3 per cent had lasted for 3-5 years; and only 15.7 per cent were in a relationship of more than five years – meaning 84 per cent had broken down after five years.

They supposedly come from the "Melbourne Gay Community Periodic Survey, 2000" by Clive Aspin et al, published by the National Centre in HIV Social Research.

The survey results are available online. It is simply impossible for the statistics attributed to it to have come from there. The Periodic Survey only measures whether the regular relationships of those surveyed have lasted for "less than 1 year" or for "at least one year" (see Table 9 on page 12 of the Periodic Survey). Even the most statistically illiterate person around would have trouble getting the Fatherhood Foundation's alleged statistics from the data actually in the Periodic Survey: in 2000, 31.8% of those in a regular relationship had been in it for less than a year, while 68.1% had been in it for a year or more.

The website of the Australian Christianist group the Saltshakers includes a statistics page on relationships which quotes the same numbers but gives a different source, although it's easy to get confused (which the Fatherhood Foundation apparently did. Again). Their source for the numbers is "Men and Sexual Health", by the National Centre in HIV Social Research, 1997. There doesn't appear to be any kind of study with this name. Are they referring to the longitudinal cohort study called "Sydney Men and Sexual Health" (SMASH)? It's hard to say, as the main report that I can find on that study is a book called "Methods and sample in a study of homosexually active men in Sydney, Australia" that was, er, published in 1995. The book is accessible to me, once university libraries end their holiday closing period next week.

So the Fatherhood Foundation has, for the third time that I've now found, supplied a reference in their pamphlet "21 Reasons Why Gender Matters" that is verifiably wrong. I hope people keep that in mind when anti-gay activists rabbit on about how "well-referenced" this little smear pamphlet supposedly is. And the only alternative source given for the quote - from another anti-gay organisation - does not appear to be correct either. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to find the true source next week, but we'll see.

By the by, the reason that anti-gay groups continue to get away with telling these lies is because nobody effectively challenges them. That's one of the reasons I continue to hunt these misquotes down despite the obstacles and frustrations that their inaccurate referencing throw up. I hope it proves useful to somebody someday.

Statistical skullduggery from the Fatherhood Foundation: "proving" gay relationships shorter

On page 10 of the anti-gay pamphlet "21 reasons why gender matters" there is a piece of statistical deception that is very popular among anti-gay circles. It is one that needs no examination of references to spot.

The text is as follows:

Heterosexual married couples have a far lower rate of relationship breakdown than homosexual couples. As an Australian Government report stated, “According to a 1995 study, ten per cent of marriages failed within six years, 20 per cent within ten years, 30 per cent by twenty years, and 40 per cent by thirty years.”65 In comparison, a study of the Melbourne homosexual community showed that 40 per cent of men had changed partners in the past 6 months; 9.8 per cent had been in a relationship for only six months to a year; 18.8 per cent for 1-2 years; 15.3 per cent had lasted for 3-5 years; and only 15.7 per cent were in a relationship of more than five years – meaning 84 per cent had broken down after five years.

The lie is glaringly obvious to anyone within even a slight understanding of statistics: the Fatherhood Foundation is comparing every single homosexual relationship to only those heterosexual relationships that are called "marriage". They've deliberately and dishonestly weighted the heterosexual side of the comparison by excluding all unmarried opposite-sex couples, and then used that false data to try and paint homosexual couples as inherently inferior across the board. Unmarried opposite-sex couples, and not married opposite-sex couples, would be the real equivalent of unmarried same-sex male couples such as those allegedly studied in Melbourne. But making a comparison that's actually valid wouldn't give the Fatherhood Foundation the opportunity to smear the gay community with their misinformation now, would it?

Homosexuality and Tolerance in the Netherlands: The Real Story

Significantly, the study sampled residents of the Netherlands, where social acceptance of same-sex behavior is high. This would call into question the assumption that the high rate of psychiatric problems is primarily due to social or internalized homophobia.

This is what the "pro-treatment of homosexuality" group NARTH recently said about the study "Same-Sex Sexual Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders: Findings from the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS)" published in Archives of General Psychiatry 2001, vol 58(1), pp 85-91. While NARTH may chauvinistically choose to view the entirety of a Western European country like the Netherlands as some sort of gay mecca where no anti-gay sentiment ever exists in any form at all, the truth is that anti-gay sentiment does exist there, and it causes serious problems for gay people. Perhaps NARTH should engage in an honest assessment of the Dutch attitudes towards homosexuality instead of misleadingly trying to handwave past it.

The Dutch study itself actually references three works that assess attitudes towards homosexuality in the Netherlands. I have traced one of them: a study called "Attitudes towards nonmarital sex in 24 countries" by E D WIlmer, J Treas, and R Newcomb, published in Journal of Sex Research 1998, vol 35, pp349-358. Its measurement of sexual attitudes in the 24 countries included a question on whether respondents believed that homosexual sex was wrong. With 65% of Dutch respondents saying that it was "not wrong at all", it is true that tolerance in the Netherlands for homosexual sex is relatively high, especially compared to the USA where fully 70%said it was "always wrong". But the fact remains that 19% of Dutch respondents believed that homosexual sex was "always wrong". Intolerance for homosexuality still exists in the Netherlands, and it is reasonable to believe that this will be reflected in an increased toll on the mental health of people who engage in homosexual behaviour. (To round out the percentages, 4% of Dutch respondents believed that homosexual sex was wrong "almost always", while a further 12% believed it was wrong "only sometimes". I will not speculate at this time on why those people answered the question like that.)

And the attitudes of people who do find fault with homosexuality would seem to be especially virulent. A study on anti-gay violence by the University of Amsterdam called "As long as they keep away from me" (an English translation of the summary is available at the bottom of the page) noted that "gays fall victim to violence in Amsterdam on a regular basis. In 2007, 201 cases were recorded, of which 67 were of physical violence", 17 of robbery and 38 of serious threat". Yet anti-gay groups like NARTH would have you believe that gay people in the Netherlands experience no kind of discrimination that would tax their mental health whatsoever.

Further, and disturbingly, a person who might claim homosexual sex is not wrong can still be a gaybasher. As the Dutch study on anti-gay violence discovered, the "tolerance" expressed towards homosexuality among some Dutch youth can be highly conditional:

The major cause of the aversion to homosexuality felt by perpetrators of anti-gay violence lies in their views and emotions regarding masculinity and sexuality. Four aspects of homosexuality that particularly appear to arouse annoyance, disapproval and loathing are anal sex, feminine behaviour, the visibility of homosexuality, and the fear of being hit on by a gay.
It is remarkable that the perpetrators do not reject homosexuality on all fronts. Indeed, in many cases the perpetrators declare not to hate gays at all and realise that homosexuality is a part of Dutch society. They reject homosexuality, however, on express conditions: gays should not openly show the four aspects of the behaviour mentioned above. The perpetrators tend to copy the prevailing gay-tolerant rhetoric of Dutch society, but do not refrain from all sorts of violence as soon as homosexuality comes close to them or if gay men do not fulfil their supposed obligations[emphasis added].

It may be premature for me to accuse NARTH on capitalising on the anti-European bigotry prevalent among their usual audience of Christianist fanatics, who tend to inaccurately view Amsterdam as a modern-day Sodom where homosexuality is not just tolerated, but glorified. But I would hope that this examination of the actual evidence will help to correct the misinformation propagated by anti-gay activists that increased mental health problems among homosexual men and women in the Netherlands cannot be the result of discrimination against gay people. Overt anti-gay bigotry does exist in the Netherlands, and even some Dutch youth who might call themselves "tolerant" of homosexuality can show an especially violent side if the conditions put on providing that "tolerance" aren't perceived as being met.

21 Reasons why Gender Matters: shonky referencing and the mental health of gay people

I found a second serious referencing error in the anti-gay pamphlet 21 Reasons why Gender Matters. Like the earlier one, it falsely claims that a study includes text which it doesn't actually include. Unlike the earlier one, I can actually see how they got it wrong.

On page 14 of the pamphlet, the following text appears:

One study revealed that “the lifetime prevalence for two or more psychiatric disorders for men who engaged in homosexual behaviors was 37.85 per cent versus 14.4 per cent for men who did not engage in homosexual behaviors. For women engaging in homosexual behaviours, the rate for two or more psychiatric disorders was 39.5 per cent versus 21.3 per cent for women not engaging in homosexual behaviours. Society’s oppression of homosexual people is a hypothesis unlikely to find support in this study, concluded the Netherlands [sic], which is perhaps one of the most homosexual-affirming and tolerant countries in the world.”110

Footnote 110 refers to a study that is very popular among anti-gay activists trying to "prove" that homosexual behaviour itself directly causes the person engaging in it to become mentally disturbed: "Same-sex Behavior and Psychiatric Disorders", by TGM Sandfort et al, published in volume 58(1) of the Archives of General Psychiatry in 2001.

I have now read the complete study, and the text quoted above as appearing in the study itself does not appear anywhere within in. Given the actual sentiments expressed by the authors in the study, particularly their fairly clear statement in the "Comment" section that "because of the study's cross-sectional design, it is not possible to adequately address the question of the causes of the observed differences" in mental health, it is highly misleading to claim that they made any statement of fact as clear-cut as the one that the pamphlet falsely attributed to them.

The actual source of the quoted text is this article from the so-called "research and therapy" group NARTH, a little way in to "Section D:Mental Health, Physical Health, Stability of Homosexual Men and Women and Longevity of Homosexual Relationships". The shoddy use of HTML, in which a separate font is used when quoting a study, but that font accidentally spills out of the closing blockquote, could, if you're not reading carefully, give the misleading impression that the paragraph after the quote from the study is also a quote from the study. Apparently the Fatherhood Foundation didn't notice the problem.

The study itself that they're misquoting is interesting, and probably deserves a more thorugh consideration given the multiple lies that a great deal of anti-gay organisations tell about it, not just NARTH and the Fatherhood Foundation. For now I'll just point to a news article about a much more recent study about the issue of homosexuality and mental health, one which should give pause to any anti-gay activist trying to encourage negative attitudes to homosexuality: Parents' response key to health of gay youth:

Kids with parents who reacted negatively 8 times more likely to try suicide
by Lisa Leff
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO - Young gay people whose parents or guardians responded negatively when they revealed their sexual orientation were more likely to attempt suicide, experience severe depression and use drugs than those whose families accepted the news, according to a new study.

Follow the link for the full article.

21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: footnotes 4, 5 and 6

The pamphlet "21 reasons why gender matters" can be found online here.

Footnote 4 is intended to act as clarification rather than an academic cite. The footnote is used to back away somewhat from the claims made in the pamphlet so far that give the impression they believe that gender variation is 100% biologically determined. The footnote mentions that "environmental influences certainly have a role to play". Unfortunately such acknowledgement of environmental influence extends only to a concern about resisting "cultural norms which may constrain the free and natural expression of males and females". I take issue with the argument that environmental factors have such a tiny role to play, but the footnote serves a reasonable function even though it isn't citing anything.

Verdict on Footnote 4: Null Verdict (explanatory footnote, not a cite)

Footnote 5 once again offers an opportunity to explain just what the writers mean when they define homosexuality with the pseudo-scientific sounding label "gender disorientation pathology". This footnote once again fails to do so, once again merely citing the pamphlet itself by saying "See Section 11". Section 11 will (if I ever get there) be dealt with in due course.

Verdict on Footnote 5: DISQUALIFIED DUE TO BEING SELF-REFERENTIAL

Footnote 6 is from the book "Taking Sex Differences Seriously", by Steven Rhoads. The quote is "Sex differences are large, deeply rooted and consequential. Men and women still have different natures, and, generally speaking, different preferences, talents and interests....These differences can be explained in part by hormones and other physiological and chemical distinctions between men and women. Thus they won't disappear unless we tinker with our fundamental biological natures".

The full quote in the original source, with the small amount of redacted text emphasised here, reads "Men and women still have different natures, and, generally speaking, different preferences, talents and interests.The book provides evidence that these differences can be explained in part by hormones and other physiological and chemical distinctions between men and women. Thus they won't disappear unless we tinker with our fundamental biological natures".

The omitted text is logical to remove, but removing it may give the impression that the book is repeating established and uncontested fact about the hormonal/physiological basis of sex difference, while keeping it in illustrates that the author is making an argument and preventing evidence which is contestable. I'm unsure if I should consider this misleading or not.

In any case, examining this footnote means examining the merits of the argument of the book.

The book author - Rhoads - has this to say in response to possible criticism of his work, on page 6: "I will not consider my argument disproved if some of my evidence is questioned. There is so much of it that what remains will be enough to challenge the dominant ideology of the last thirty years that sees men and women as having fundamentally equivalent natures and goals".

So, to challenge Rhoad's argument, Rhoad thinks I need to read his whole book, and then examine each and every book and study that he cites. You begin to see why critically engaging with footnotes like this is very rarely done. I'll say for now that the original source was represented accurately in footnote 6 of the pamphlet (well, except for that slight omission), without going into the relative merits of the source itself. I'd like to though, someday.

Verdict on Footnote 6: Accurately Represented

I wonder how long I can keep doing this?

21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Footnote 2

Footnote 2: inaccurately listed as a second "footnote 1" in the main text. It's purportedly a source for the claim that "some people" refer to a condition called "gender disorientation pathology" (by which they mean "homosexuality"). It isn't a real academic footnote, saying only "refer to Section 15" of the exact same pamphlet.

Section 15 of the pamphlet concerns homosexuality and is predominantly, but not completely, unfootnoted pseudoscientific gobbledygook like "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". Those limited areas which were footnoted in that section will, hopefully, be dealt with in time.

Verdict on Footnote 2: DISQUALIFIED DUE TO BEING SELF-REFERENTIAL

PS Failing to footnote correctly by repeating "footnote 1" twice in the text? Sloppy.

21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Footnote 1

Well, this is going to get old really quickly, but I said I'd do it. I'm going to attempt to go through each footnote of the pamphlet 21 reasons why gender matters and check their validity. Having already seen 1 outright lie buried in footnote 82, I'd like to go through as many as I can for as long as I can. Can I do all 178? Probably not, but I'll attempt it.

To start with, Footnote 1: used to support the claim that "The great majority of single-parent families are fatherless". The footnote reads "In 2006, 87% of one-parent families with children under 15 years were headed by mothers. “Australian Social Trends, 2007: One Parent Families.” Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2007."

Original source is here. The footnote's characterisation of the data is accurate.

However, the main text of the pamphlet's characterisation of this data is not. Note that the claim is that children in these families "grow up fatherless". However, according the ABS study quoted, the majority of single-parent families are created from divorce. A further substantial proportion are created from the break-up of de facto couples. Therefore the children from these families have had fathers in the lives, and in some cases may still do so, albeit only in the form of the father's visitation rights. They are not "fatherless" in the alarmist sense that the pamphlet claims.

This is not the evidence of masculinity in crisis that the pamphlet authors claim it is. It is evidence of the unfortunate prevalence of divorce, and possibly an argument that courts in custody battles side with the mother of a child much more than the father (a VERY common complaint of fathers in custody battles, by the way). But the conclusions drawn by this pamphlet here are misleading.

Verdict on Footnote 1: HALF-TRUTH

ANTI-GAY LIE EXPOSED

Rare it is that I get a chance to show in unequivocal terms how dishonest anti-gay people are in their use of academic resources. Today I have that chance.

I first discovered the unequivocal lie I'm about to expose when checking footnote 82 of the pamphlet "21 reasons why gender matters". It is alleged that in an academic article entitled "Lesbian mothers and their children: A comparison with solo parent heterosexual mothers and their children", published on pages 167-184 of Volume 15, issue 2, of the academic journal 'Archives of Sexual Behavior', the researchers Green et al found

developmentally important statistically significant differences between children reared by homosexual parents compared to heterosexual parents. For example, children raised by homosexuals were found to have greater parental encouragement for cross-gender behaviour (and) greater amounts of cross-dressing and cross-gender play/role behaviour”.

The anti-gay pamphlet specifically quotes this text as allegedly appearing in the "Lesbian mothers" article. Well, I found the article in question (thank you, university access to academic databases). The text they say is in there is not there.

Really, the fact that the article's title plainly specified that it was comparing single-parent families, and not comparing "homosexual parents" (plural) with "heterosexual parents" (plural), should have been a slight clue that it couldn't possibly include the quote that these anti-gay fraudsters say it includes. But they went ahead and used it anyway. Ponder what that says about their ability to understand the whole concept of "evidence".

But the best part for me is what the article they're lying about actually does say. The summary at least is available to the general public here. Emphasis is mine. The study's real conclusions were that:

No significant differences were found between the two types of households for boys and few significant differences for girls,. Concerns that being raised by a homosexual mother might produce sexual identity conflict and peer group stigmatization were not supported by the research findings. Data also revealed more similarities than differences in parenting experiences, marital history, and present living situations of the two groups of mothers. The postulated compromised parental fitness of lesbian mothers, commonly asserted in child custody cases, is not supported by these data.

Gee, it seems to me that the study that the anti-gay people are using to "prove" that a difference was found between gay and straight parents is actually saying that they can't find any difference at all - at least as far as comparing single lesbian mothers to single heterosexual mothers goes.

The only question left for me is what the real source of this quote may be. I've searched for it online, unsuccessfully. It's definitely not in any article published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior that I can find (and my access to that journal is total). And all I get on the web is people repeating the lie that it's this 1986 study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior that is the source. I wonder how long it would take to visit each one in turn and correct them?

I'll keep looking for the true source I guess. If there is one.

"21 reasons why gender matters" - the whole pamphlet

Looking closer at the "21 reasons why gender matters" issue, apparently the NARTH page I linked to earlier was just the summary of the main points. The full text is much more detailed, and is available online. Like most anti-gay tracts, it's brimming with footnotes, based on the usual anti-gay assumption that pointing to the sheer volume of footnotes is a good enough substitute for actually examining their quality and accuracy. Seriously. One of the first footnotes (footnote 2 to be precise) doesn't really qualify as an academic footnote at all, being just an exhortation to "refer to section 11" of the exact same document.

The pamphlet has its own dedicated site here. I'll give the footnotes a stab if I have time.