do you suppose she is reading that study, as David recommended, and especially that paragraph he highlighted, which basically says quite the opposite of what she claims the study says.

Naaah, I doubt it. Personally, I don’t understand how someone can live with themselves and carry around that much dishonesty.

Oh wait, yes I do. I wrote extensively on it. It isn’t about honesty, or morality, or whatever the lying rationalization du jour is. It’s just about get the gays, whatever the cost to honest, morality, or self-respect..

William, you’re welcome. However, I don’t think Mael gives even close to a small goddam about what I have to say, because she/he is so twisted with her own stuff that nothing short of a bobby Griffith moment will ever get through to her. but I believe that one strategy in dealing with Narth Vader is to keep pointing out the subtext. It’s always there, but it is frequently not acknowledged by our side.

David, a reasonable person, one who actually has a mind, and dare I say a heart and a soul, would look at what oyu wrote and say, “Hmmm. I seem to have that wrong.” At least enough to go and check out the source to see if you quoted it accurately. Mael won’t because Mael is an ideologue, and her hatred and fear are all that is important to her.

Conclusion: frequrently, when I write, I’m not writing for the Maels of the world. they have been irretrievably poisoned by their hate, their fears, their religion, or some dark expereience from the past that only they can see through a glass darkly.

I’m writing to (I hope) enlighten people on our side. And I am writing for all of the people who read here but do not post, who need a different emotional and intellectual understanding of themselves and the meaning of being gay in our world.

I want the parade of Bobby Griffiths, Lawrence Kings, and even of Ted Haggards (as much as I despise the man) to stop.

Which is why I’m under the firm belief that, at the heart of homophobia really lies misogyny and sexism against women.

I found Emily’s comment above particularly interesting because I just saw the Bruno movie this weekend. As has been noted here, Paul Cameron makes an appearance, and in his brief time on screen, he talks a lot more trash about women than about gays. He seems to think the worst problem facing a gay man who wants to become straight will be dealing with women, whom he describes (not exact quotes) as annoying, whining, and irritating.

I’d love to hear someone from Concerned Women of America or Focus on the Family respond to his comments.

(I don’t particularly recommend Bruno, BTW. I was not offended, and even laughed a lot. But it’s a one-joke movie, and the joke wears thin long before the credits run.)

The hypothalamus studies of 20 years ago were never as important as they are in anti-gay literature. If I recall, they were done on those who died of AIDS and the conclusions were never as certain has the press made them out to be. But they do make a nice Straw Man to argue about don’t they? The twin’s studies have revealed important data, adding to the certainty that homosexuality is at least in part genetic. If you want to be honest, you will have to admit that.

The link you did provide leads to what I believe is good data, but it has nothing to do with what you assert. What it shows is that those gay men who have a history of childhood sexual abuse are more likely to have a later history of depression, substance abuse and risky sexual encounters. There is noting in the data to suggest a causal relationship between sexual abuse and homosexuality. In fact, the authors say exactly that:

“despite the high rates of childhood sexual abuse in the sample, these data do not suggest anything causal regarding the association of abuse and later homosexuality…the majority of men in EXPLORE did not report any type of childhood sexual abuse, so there is little to suggest that childhood sexual abuse ‘causes’ homosexuality, but rather, childhood sexual abuse makes men who have sex with men more likely to engage in HIV risk behaviours.”

They were careful enough to make it that clear and you still managed to get it wrong. Who is doing the twisting? Is it possible that big conspiracy doesn’t really exist?

but here is your subtext again– gay men are kinda girly, and girly is bad in a man. Girly is REALLY bad. Girly men are a danger. They corrupt true manhood– as if such a thing actually exists.

Which is why I’m under the firm belief that, at the heart of homophobia really lies misogyny and sexism against women. Two women together isn’t threatening because woman are “already” the weakest sex. But two men together means one of them is taking on the “weaker, lower” female role, right? And that’s bad because men are better than that; they have a duty not to “lower” themselves to the status of women. and really this has been around for thousands of years. Even in the oft-lauded “accepting” societies of Rome and Greece there were definite rules to courtship for pederasts and men who took other men as partners. Certain behaviors were mocked and considered lowly. I have a strong suspicion that it wasn’t the free and accepting society we all think it was.

Not to mention, of course, that I’ve yet to meet a male couple that considers one to be the “wife” and the other the husband. Hence the use of “husbands” or “partners.” I mean, come on.

In the whole of my 59 years, I have known exactly one man whom I would describe as gay who was interested in ADOLESCENT boys– 15 16 17. Just one. I myself once met a 14 year old whom I could only describe as stunning. But I had no sexual interest in him. My comment: makes me wish I was 14 again. I found his 45 year old father far more attractive.

In the whole of my 59 years, I have met exactly TWO men who had been sexually molested as boys, this among several hundred people I have known well enough to know about this, as well as several years as a peer counselor. Just TWO. And in both cases, they had been molested by their fathers, men (and I knew one of these fathers, and he molested one of his daughters as well) who would have been described as heterosexual in terms of their interests and experiences.

It is hardly a scientific study, but it is very telling nonetheless.

Mael, you accuse us of being deliberately, ideologically self-blinded, engaged in a vast conspiracy to hide the truth, which you and your AXIS cohorts alone know. Of course it isn’t true. The only conspiracy here is that we wish to be treated like functioning human beings instead of diseased pariahs, a threat to all that is holy.

What is important in what you have to say is the subtext, that you yourself may not actually be aware of.

Though I sincerely doubt that.

What you really are saying is in the subtext– the gays are gonna get your children. They’re sick, diseased individuals, not merely different. they’re going to molest your children. Your children will be exposed to homosexuality. they’re trying to turn your children gay.

That’s ALWAYS the subtext, and always has been. That gays molest children is only really good for the right-wing nutcases. No one else really believes it, and so if they say it, it just makes them look bad.

so the subtle appeal to fear is what they do so that it looks reasonable. but it is just the same old hate, just wearing a cheap tuxedo instead an easily opened raincoat.

Understand? Because everything you have to say about gay people is not justified by the “studies” you claim “prove” your point. But what is really happening that this proof just gives your flailing arms a straw– or a gold ring– to grasp at, a cheap justification, however weak, but something, anything, that allows you, and Narth Vader’s merry band of homobigots, to hold on to your cheap knuckle-dragging prejudices towards gay people whom you do not know, nor know anything about, but who for some reason, scare the HELL out of you– or attracts the hell into you.

You would know, but the only thing you allow yourself to know is your prejudice. That has safety in it. But here’s the dilemma. Your gutter-crawling prejudices are not something you can be proud of. But you can’t parade that in public, lest someone catch on to the true game here. Only Freddy Krueger-Phelps is brave enough, or dim enough, to say I HATE FAGS. That must be very frustrating to you when deep down inside you can’t fathom why anyone in their right mind would think attacking gay people is wrong, especially with lies, distortions, and half-truths.

The most merciful interpretation of what you have to say is that is junk science. Really, though, it’s just a lousy, lazy lie, but a useful one. It does what it is supposed to do– make gay people into inhuman, or subhuman, or at least, terribly damaged people, who hate all that is good and holy and wholesome, who want to bring all good things down into the GLBT sewer, where we can molest and make it as dirty as we are.

This whole idea you keep putting forth of gender confusion is just more of the same. I’ve always been a “manly man”– and a Really Big Queer. I have no confusion with it, and I don’t think it makes me better than an effeminate man. I have a number of effeminate friends. but here is your subtext again– gay men are kinda girly, and girly is bad in a man. Girly is REALLY bad. Girly men are a danger. They corrupt true manhood– as if such a thing actually exists.

Quoting someone else, who said it brilliantly: “This is the stock and trade of bigotry: make the target impossible to relate to by destroying the most basic connections between members of the in-group and out-group. It is the fundamental mechanism all haters use to divide and isolate for persecution those they despise. Watch for this pattern, it’s far more common than most of us might expect, and is almost universal in everything this type of individual says against LGBT people, their relationships, and the way LGBT people approach their duties to society. Bigots love to masquerade as rational when in fact they have only one objective: dehumanization of the target of their hatred.”

you might have noticed that you are far more successful with this on your web troglo-sites than you are here at XGW or BTB.

Just a couple of points (and there are several more to cover).

1. There is evidence that a higher percentage of gay men than straight men have been sexually abused as children. It needs to be pointed out, however, that correlation and causation are not the same thing. The majority of gay men, like me, were never sexually abused as children (or as adolescents), so abuse couldn’t have been the cause of our homosexuality. There are also large numbers of men who were sexually abused by men when they were children, and it certainly caused them serious and often long-lasting problems, but they didn’t grow up gay. The editors of the book Unequal Opportunity: Health Disparities Affecting Gay and Bisexual Men in the United States (Oxford University Press) have recently repudiated the thesis that homosexuality is caused by sexual abuse in these words:

…the Focus on the Family characterization of the literature on childhood sexual abuse among gay men represents a misunderstanding of scientific approaches to distinguishing between correlation and causation. The book chapter in question reports that gay men are more likely to report childhood sexual abuse by men than are heterosexual men. This correlation does not mean that the reported abuse caused the adult sexual orientation. If that were the case, then the fact that some heterosexual men report sexual abuse by women means that sexual abuse by women “causes” heterosexuality in men. It is also worth noting that the argument that childhood sexual abuse causes homosexuality in gay men is undermined by the fact that the vast majority of gay men are not sexually abused as children.

(See the Truth Wins Out web-site.)

The danger in leaping from correlation to causation was underlined some years ago in the British magazine The Skeptic. It was noted that there was a statistical correlation in the UK between the increase in crime and the increase in street lighting. That didn’t mean that the increase in crime was caused by the increase in street lighting, and that the solution was to turn out some of the street lamps.

2. You seem to be confusing homosexuality with gender identity problems. They are not the same thing. Some gay men do have gender identity problems, of course (as do some straight men), but the vast majority do not.

Let everyone be very clear about your relationship with NARTH, and about you.

The Narth publication is just that, a Narth publication. There is no “journal of human sexuality”…that is just the title of the “journal” that holds the article.

Those are true. Unfortunately they were true the entire time you were associated with NARTH; including being a committee member.

You resigned only when NARTH published a vile piece of racism.

You never did that over any of their vile views about gay people. You never did that over the fake ‘peer-review’ NARTH publications. You never did it over the NARTH links with the fake ‘journal’ of human sexuality. You never did it because they quoted Paul Cameron. You never did it over any the things you now claim cause a “sad day for Christians”.

You could have. You should have. But you failed too. Your claim as an ‘evangelical Christian’ to ‘tell the truth’ was obviously lacking for some extended period of your life.

David, you are not some innocent person who was mugged by NARTH.

You, and people like you, are NARTH.

So don’t come crying to us. And don’t blame “NARTH” as if it was no part of you.

Your history will never leave you, but you can humbly accept your fault and make amends.

Go ahead and do that. When you’re ready.

(ps: the exgay Emperor is still wearing no clothes, and we’re not about to let anyone forget who sold him the outfit. Even if they wish to forget. QED, say hi to Warren from us.)