Article on Paul Cameron:
Jonathan Rowe on Jul 31st 2005
Brayton tipped me off to this article about Paul Cameron. It’s quite good. He is still disseminating false and misleading information about gays in the form of schlock studies. No reputable peer reviewed journals will publish his work so he finds some penny-ante journals or groups with legitimate sounding names (such as “American College of Pediatricians” and “Psychological Reports”) but who in reality are the equivalent of what mail-order degree colleges are to real colleges. And gullible members of the religious right then cite his work as if they have “real ammo” against gays.
It boggles the mind. Cite Kinsey and many religious conservatives will shriek about the problems with his work, but then they will suggest replacing Kinsey’s work with the “research” of Paul Cameron and Judith Reisman. As I have said, this reminds me of what Jesus said about being concerned with the mote in your neighbor’s eye while ignoring the log in your own!
My favorite part of the article:
Cameron’s work is controversial even among conservative groups. For example, the Traditional Values Coalition claims to speak for 43,000 churches. For three years, the coalition has quoted Cameron’s studies on its website in an article headlined, “Report Shows Homosexual Foster Parents Apt To Molest Children,” and has told its membership to “read and distribute Dr. Cameron’s report.”
But when The Boston Globe asked the Traditional Values Coalition last week about Cameron, the group responded within minutes by removing all references to Cameron from its website. The group’s spokeswoman, Daniella Lopez, said Cameron’s research had been “mistakenly” put on the website. She would not say why the group thought it was a mistake to publicize Cameron’s research.
Filed in The Boudoir
Jason has blogged about this extremely misguided individual before. This site has some interesting information on Cameron and his “publication” venues, none of which I’d even heard of, and I spend a good deal of time around psychology journals.
You might enjoy this series of posts by WWR on-again/off-again contributor Jon Darby, in which he argumentatively rips the nads from gay-haters Cameron, Benne, and McDermott and stuffs them up their asses. ‘Twas a beautiful thing.
More here.
The most frightening thing about this article is the final section, which is mostly a quote from Cameron:
I have no idea where he gets this term “death marketers.” There is no explanation for it in the article, and from what I can tell there is no logic behind it.
http://www.familyresearchinst.org/Default.aspx?tabid=85
Phillips –
You should see this page too. The chronology doesn’t exonerate Paul Cameron:
Cameron says he left the APA voluntarily — a suspicious step in any case for someone who wants to be a professional psychologist. But fine. How do we explain the above?
It looks like a lot more than just unpaid dues. An organization doesn’t issue a formal statement distancing itself from an individual over unpaid dues. It may well be true, as the FRI website claims, that “By this point [November, 1982], all previous disputes between him and the APA had been settled, and there were no other charges or inquiries into possible ethical violations pending against him.” Emphasis added. But in the following years we would see the APA denounce his research as shoddy and unethical. They’ve stuck by that position ever since.
The APA, and mainstream mental health associations in general, are a bunch of liber PACs advoacating social policy. That’s why Cameron left in the first place (see his editorial in the APA journal the Monitor - written per request of Dr. Bevin, president at the time who accepted his resignation - explaining his decision).
http://www.narth.com/docs/TheTrojanCouchSatinover.pdf (NARTH)
http://acpeds.org/ (American College of Pediatricians, founded by Dr. Joseph Zanga, formere president of AAP)
The APA, and mainstream mental health associations in general, are a bunch of liber [sic] PACs…
So I guess this justifies making up your research data? I guess “truth” is just some liberal propaganda or whatever…
Also take notice of the fact that many (but, alas, not all) religious right organizations no longer cite Cameron’s “research” because even they understand it is tainted by lack of credibility. For instance, the link to the group of religious conservative MDs you gave. They note, like Cameron, reduced gay lifespan. But do they cite him? No. I wonder why. BTW: The source that they do cite for reduced gay lifespan is not valid either as the authors of that very study attest.
http://acpeds.org/?CONTEXT=art&cat=10005&art=50&BISKIT=4127792629
Hardly made up. And has anyone been able to prove his studies wrong with their own data? No. Just complaints, and I predict no one will be able to.
http://www.familyresearchinst.org/PublishedArticles/tabid/57/Default.aspx
Phillips,
I can’t very well reach into your brain and make you stop believing pseudo-science. But you should know that even Dr. Warren Throckmorton — an advocate of reparative therapy for homosexuals — has posted some lengthy refutations of Cameron’s methodology, complete with disavowals of his bogus science.
Start here, then here. The linked material does exactly what you claim cannot be done — it proves that Cameron’s findings are spurious at best. Even Throckmorton, certainly no friend to mainstream gays and lesbians, concedes just how shoddy Cameron’s work was.
Given the lack of any study documenting gay lifespan, Cameron relied on other measures which had nothing at all to do with lifespan, including newspaper obituaries and willingness to self-identify as gay in a latitudinal (as opposed to longitudinal) study. These are serious errors, and it is difficult to see a social scientist making them in good faith.
Also, you should know that you are either lying or misinformed when you write (elsewhere on this site), “thanks to medication deliberate or careless infection has been on the rise among gays, and HIV respectively.”
Here are some numbers from the CDC:
And here’s a site with a graph showing where things really stand.
So… when you say that someone (like Paul Cameron) is to be trusted, and that he’s not just making stuff up, what grounds do I have to believe you? Gay men have done a great deal to slow the spread of the epidemic. It’s not as much as I would like, of course, but the reality is far better than the fantasy world you’re living in.
Kuznicki,
Perhaps you missed the fact that I had already commented on Warren’s blog (see your second link). I’m afraid Warren couldn’t muster up much of a response - only a tangent - and he even emailed me directly out of agitation saying I ‘wasn’t using my real name’, though I was.
Perhaps you also missed Kirk and Paul Cameron’s direct response to Warren, though Warren remaines .
http://wthrockmorton.com/2007/04/21/only-the-gay-die-young-part-3-kirk-cameron-responds-to-morten-frisch/
http://wthrockmorton.com/2007/05/02/only-the-gay-die-young-part-7-paul-and-kirk-cameron-reply/
As for the rest,
About a quarter of HIV+ gays had sex without condoms in the last 3 months according to a survey of 333 people from 2000 to 2003. Alas, this is a consequence of the new drugs that enable the HIV+ to live longer. The continued spread of HIV by those infected “is a really difficult thing for the gay community in general…to talk about” said Lee Klosinski, direcotr at AIDS Project Los Angeles. (Washington Blade 11/12/04)
http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041202-125443-1708r.htm
Philips,
Suppose I said that diaper rash was usually fatal.
Then I looked at the average age of people who suffer from it. Surprise! No one in their twenties at all! Surely this is a terrible disease, since all of its sufferers just disappear out of the population!
I guess I’d have to conclude from that… just like Cameron did with gays… that suffering from diaper rash is, in itself, more likely to cause death, because this is precisely analogous to Cameron’s faulty study.
No, this isn’t how science works. You don’t make the kind of conclusions he made with the kind of data he had, and then bury your “concerns” in a footnote… meanwhile speculating about mass quarantines for gay people.
Additionally, I don’t much care about HIV+ people having unprotected sex, as long as they are doing it with each other. This, too, is a safe behavior, at least as far as transmitting HIV goes. Much of the unprotected sex you’re worried about is almost certainly of this type and therefore not a significant concern. If it were not so, we would see an increase in new HIV infections, particularly given all the people who are living longer with the disease. Since the new infection rate has been nearly flat (after a big decline in the late 90s), the evidence is against the suggestions you’re making here.
As to Cameron’s reply to Throckmorton, the less said the better. It was delusional. And I’ll just repeat what Throckmorton said to you in his comment: You can’t possibly be serious about saying that there are NO people over 54 having gay sex. (If you like, I can introduce you to some.)
I’m not sure your diaper rash analogy works. You see, FRI in their latest report used government records of the deaths of married ‘gays’ in Norway and Denmark to get a median age of death. It was relatively similar to the many obituary studies they’ve done here in the U.S., as well as a few widespread studies as well.
The national gay magazine, The Advocate, devoted all its April 13 cover stories to “barebacking” gays who deliberately have unsafe sex. It pointed out that it ran the same kind of issue 2/17/83 when AIDS was making its heavy mark. If you have any doubts about the reality of deliberate infection, read this issue!
Sabin Russell in the San Francisco Chronicle, 1/29/99, also ran a story about it being done there.
I’m not sure you followed my link, the title was “HIV rate for gay men rises, CDC says”.
Phillips,
You are fighting a losing battle. Cameron has all the credibility of a holocaust denier. That’s why most religious right figures no longer touch him.
From Wally Olson’s classic article:
http://www.slate.com/default.aspx?id=2098
“From this Cameron and company concluded not that newsworthy deaths tend to get into newspapers, but that gays must experience shockingly high rates of violent death. With a perfectly straight face they report, for example, that lesbians are at least 300 times more likely to die in car crashes than females of similar ages in general.”
Cameron is a crank. Case closed.
“Gay men of the same generation destined to live to old age, even if more numerous, won’t turn up in the sample.”
This is simply not true. I’ve been to ‘gay’ obituaries online myself (Washington Blade) and have a seen a few relatively old-age gays in them. I’d like to know why the author of that quote thought he had the basis to say that.
As for the rest, I’ll simply quote Cameron and Co.:
“Because social science is “messy,” just about any criticism of any work — including our efforts — has validity. But the empiricist principle is more important than a theoretical search for perfection in research.” – (Psychology of the Scientist: LXXXV. Research on Homosexuality: A Response to Schumm (and Herek), Psychological Reports, 2003)
You see, all science, if the authors are honest, will have variables.
It’s interesting that all Cameron’s opponents can do is cling on to those variables (though they are already admitted by FRI in their reports) instead of playing science and producing your own studies to counter him.
“I’d like to know why the author of that quote thought he had the basis to say that [Gay men of the same generation destined to live to old age, even if more numerous, won’t turn up in the sample].”
He explains it: They tend to be no longer or less active in the gay community. Plus, those types of papers tend to document more newsworthy deaths:
“It will overrepresent those whose passing strikes others as newsworthy and underrepresent those who end their days in retired obscurity in some sunny clime.”
Plus, a 77 year old gay man would be born in 1930 (and the gay men living that long when Cameron did the original study were born even earlier). Such folks, by necessity, would have lived most of their lives in the closet.
Gays, especially those of the older generation, oft-value something called PRIVACY, and many of whom prefer not to have their obituaries listed in gay publications anyway.
Actually, he doesn’t really. Just that “you’re only getting the ages of those who die” and that those of the same generation destined to live longer are not recorded. I’m sorry, but this reasoning is silly. The ones of the generation before that, and the generation before the one before that could have also been included in the obituary.
Further, FRI has continued their obituary collecting. So far they’ve published three separate studies, the latest in ‘02, using the obituaries as well as other lines of data, the latest being their Norway and Denmark study presented last March (as posted on Warren’s blog):
. . . FRI has done this using obituaries in the U.S. and age distributions reported in sexuality studies from 1858 through 1993 (published in Omega, 1994), as well as 4 other lines of evidence published in Psychological Reports, 1998 - 1) additional obituaries from the gay press, 2) findings from two national random-sample surveys, 3) the age distributions of registered homosexual couples in Scandinavia, and 4) the age distributions oh homosexuals and drug-abusers taking HIV tests in Colorado. As recent as ‘02, FRI published another study in Psychological Reports using additional obituaries from the gay press and findings from two large, nationwide random sexuality surveys - both of which were consistent with a shortened lifespan (in one of these, the CDC study, the oldest woman who reported sex with a woman in the previous 12 months was 49 yr., the oldest man who reported sex with a man in the previous 12 months was 54 yr.) . . .
No what’s silly is the notion “that lesbians are at least 300 times more likely to die in car crashes than females of similar ages in general.”
So you’re saying that newspapers find stories of ‘lesbians’ dying in car crashes more newsworthy than those of the general populace dying in car crashes.
Well, it’s an interesting supposition, but all it is is speculation. I’m sure there could be factors/variables that could have contributed to such a drastic rate, but that would also be ignoring the evidence that shows ‘lesbians’ to be much more apt to be mentally distressed, comsume alcohol, do drugs, etc.
So in the end, while an exact number may not be able to be pinned down (no empiracle research can be interpreted as exact) what we’re left with is a pretty clear conclusion.
Oh, they were talking about the ones in ‘gay’ obituaries. Okay so scratch my first sentence, I think the rest still stands though.
Phillips,
First: I seriously doubt you’ve spent much time looking at gay obituaries, given how you failed in your most recent comment even to understand that obituaries in the gay were the subject of discussion here, not obituaries anywhere else. This entirely vitiates your most recent effort (which presupposed equal selection factors for gay and lesbian obits versus others). Since we’re talking about different publications with different audiences and selection standards, absolutely none of your claims in this comment stand.
So let’s look at your previous attempts. You write,
If it is “simply not true” that gay men of the same generation destined to live to old age fail to turn up in obituaries, then it must — contrawise — be true that gay people of the same generation as those who died young simultaneously turn up in obituaries even though they haven’t died and will not die for years yet! (I’m guessing, to be charitable, that you are entirely out of your depth here, and that you have not understood the nature of the objection being made, and why it sinks this methodology entirely. If you understood it at all, you would not have made a claim with such absurd implications.)
Second, if you really have been to gay obituaries online and seen “a few relatively old-age gays in them,” then good for you. But this proves nothing either way: It could be that this few is representative of the population at large. Then again, it might not be. It doesn’t prove anything.
And I daresay you’ve missed the entire point here, which is that people who die sudden or shocking deaths during the prime of life are more likely to appear in the obituaries section of the gay press. Those who die peacefully after many years of life are less interesting and less likely to be remembered, therefore they are not featured as regularly in the obituaries sections of the gay press, which are highly news- and interest-driven. Meanwhile, the obituaries of the general-audience press are much less selective and are akin to classified ads. Anyone and their grandmother can post them, and usually they do.
(Oh, and you say you’ve seen “a few relatively old” people turn up in obituaries. Can I just say that this is the least quantitative claim I have ever seen in the entire history of social science? Maybe we only mention the holes in your research so often because, considered honestly, your research consists of nothing else.)
As to your earlier post, I’m not sure I’ve been able to find the “recent” FRI article about people in same-sex marriages. Are you thinking of this one?
If so, this is not especially recent and does not measure anything about same-sex marriages, since same-sex marriage did not exist at the time of the study.
Further, the above article still suffers quite obviously from the methodological problems we’ve been discussing: If younger people are more likely to get into same-sex domestic partnerships, then of course the study will find that people in same-sex domestic partners are younger. But it doesn’t mean that they are dying sooner! It means that they are younger, and that’s all. You would have to do a longitudinal study to measure life expectancy with any kind of rigor.
As to heterosexuals being “4 times less apt to be widowed young,” well, duh. The age at widowhood is always going to be fairly young, given how younger people are more apt to self-identify as homosexual anyway. This is apart from the fact that many gay people may rush to register a longtime partner who has been terminally ill the moment a new law is enacted that will protect their rights. (For heterosexuals, who always could get married, there would be no similar rush to marriage, and for gays, the effect may be expected to disappear in a few years, as all those who faced this situation will have been through it by then.)
Note also that I am comparatively uninterested in deaths occurring at the height of the AIDS epidemic, which is now well behind us. Sure, gays died a great deal more often back then. AIDS almost certainly does shorten gays’ lifespans on the whole. I don’t believe anyone doubts this. The point I’ve been trying to make here is that Cameron’s research does not demonstrate or measure this difference in any meaningful way, since his work is shot through with methodological flaws.
As to similar age profiles between gays and IV drug users, I have to say I don’t see any particular connection here, except perhaps guilt by association. No wonder this article could only get published in a pay-by-the-page vanity journal with no peer review at all.
So much for that study. Or did you mean this one? If so, it’s even less reputable — since Cameron lied about the materials he was presenting in order to evade peer review:
In other words, he could never get this stuff presented straightforwardly at the meeting since it’s just more of the same methodological garbage he’s been pushing all along. Instead he lied about what he was going to present — and then offered a full-length article full of junk science at a “poster” session. Classy fellow, that Paul Cameron.
And, once again, the relative rarity of older homosexuals can be explained by two very obvious factors. First, older people in general have not been as willing to admit that they were gay; and second, the HIV epidemic really did kill a lot of them, back in the bad old days. But since Cameron made no serious effort to deal with either of these methodological problems, the study is worthless as an estimate of gay lifespan for people alive today.
Oh yes, and about your final zinger:
I’m not sure you followed my link, the title was “HIV rate for gay men rises, CDC says”.
…it was a tiny jump, after years of essentially a flat line. It’s worrying, but it’s absolutely not what you claimed above: Previously you posited a continual rise in new HIV infections following the introduction of anti-retroviral therapy. What really happened was quite different: New infections plummeted for several years, then stabilized. Now, in the most recent year for which we have data, there has been a slight increase which may either be the start of a trend toward more new infections, or a statistical blip of little importance, or even just an artifact of more thorough testing.
1. Oh, I have, I just didn’t know that’s what they were talking about with the “‘lesbians’ 300 times more apt” thing.
2. Not my research.
3. No, the recent one was the one they did in Norway and Denmark using government data (the recent one they used using obituaries was down in ‘02).
4. FRI has done studies accroos the board that shows there are less ‘gays’ in the older age brackets.
5. I honestly don’t feel like disecting every statement since you’re acting like this is my own research.
6. Ad hominem does not invalidate someone’s research as much as Frisch would like it to, and they didn’t like about what they submitted, they simply included new information they had recently found into the report they presented at the conference.
7. Yes I know you can explain away less ‘gays’ in the older age-brackets, but that and obituaries up to now have been all FRI could use up to this point since governments won’t segmatize their surveys (ever since the NHSDA did in ‘96 they stopped flat after they saw the devastating results). Now, of course, they’ve been able to access government records however from Denmark and Norway, and even if they hadn’t, reason still tells us that for some reason there’s less ‘gays’ in the older age brackets, and given all the health problems among ‘gays’, it’s safe to say that it’s because they’re dying out early (it could also be conjectured that ‘homosexuality’ is anything but inborn since your numbers are apparently being added, then you say “but they’re just ‘coming out’ now!”, well we don’t know either way since it’s speculation, though there’s evidence against the born that way claim).
whew…and I stand by my statement, more and more gays are having unprotected ’sex’, seems like it’s thanks to the medicine that lets them ‘live with it’. I’m glad you finally admitted that it has in recent years begun to rise again.
and yes, the above is me. That name was there automatically for some reason.
1. Oh, I have, I just didn’t know that’s what they were talking about with the “‘lesbians’ 300 times more apt” thing.
It pays to read your bigotry before reflexively agreeing with it. Spares you mistakes like this one.
2. Not my research.
By this I only meant your reading of Cameron, which as far as I can tell adds errors to his.
3. No, the recent one was the one they did in Norway and Denmark using government data (the recent one they used using obituaries was down in ‘02).
I talked about that one as well. See above. Helps if you read your opponents, too.
4. FRI has done studies accroos [sic] the board that shows there are less ‘gays’ in the older age brackets.
Yes, and we have explained, in tedious detail, why these studies are useless.
5. I honestly don’t feel like disecting [sic] every statement since you’re acting like this is my own research.
Okay, fine. Then don’t defend it anymore. You weren’t doing particularly well as it was.
6. Ad hominem does not invalidate someone’s research as much as Frisch would like it to…
It’s not ad hominem to point out that a paper’s author lied about its content to avoid subjecting it to peer review. It’s simple research ethics to condemn shenanigans like this.
As to point seven, I don’t believe anyone has ever disputed that getting AIDS can take years off someone’s life. I agree with this, as does everyone else. It was never in dispute.
What’s absurd beyond description, however, are Cameron’s attempts to quantify some mysterious overall trend toward early deaths for all gays, using methods that are entirely ridiculous and that couldn’t possibly withstand peer review.
I know, I know, the big bad gay conspiracy is keeping them out of the press. Well tell me something — if the gay conspiracy has so much power, how come we still do hear many things about gay sexual health that aren’t always so flattering? Some of these claims are legitimate, and I have never disputed them. Cameron’s, though, are not in this group.
Oh, and your last paragraph is entirely a distortion of what I said. I’m not sure you are honest enough to figure it out, so I will repeat what I wrote above. Think about it. Consider it a test:
(Hint: “One year” is different from “in recent years.” But then, quantities are clearly not your strong suit.)
We’re not talking about a year ‘blimp’ hear, the CDC said that from 2000-2003 HIV rates among ‘gays’ had begun to rise, and it’s continued through ‘04 and ‘05. I also found this statement somewhat unhelpful for your cause:
“Homosexual and bisexual men are thought to account for a majority of the estimated 850,000 to 950,000 Americans living with HIV, the virus that causes the disease.”
“Homosexual and bisexual men are thought to account for a majority of the estimated 850,000 to 950,000 Americans living with HIV, the virus that causes the disease.”
Yes. And worldwide, it’s a heterosexual disease. Maybe we should forbid heterosexuality?
Also, HIV rates for the years 03-04 are so similar to previous years that they are insignificant, particularly in light of the many, many more people living with the disease — and not transmitting it. And there still remains the problem of how thoroughly the population is tested, which may skew the results in either direction — but almost certainly enough that a small fraction out of forty thousand people is smaller than this effect.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that world-wide it’s a ‘heterosexual’ disease, promiscuity certainly seems to be the problem in Africa, but if you tally up ‘gay’ HIV vs. hetero. HIV and take into account that ‘gays’ make up less than 3% of most societies’ populations…
…and if we’re going to start talking world-wide, we should probably go ahead and mention LGV, hepatitis, gonnhorea, etc.
As to gays versus straights, there are more straight people in many parts of Africa who have HIV by percentage than gay people in the United States. In places this reaches 50% of the straight population. Doctors argue about why this should be, but failure to use condoms and also secondary STDs are the top suspects. So if you’d like to talk about other STDs, sure. Straights get those, too. And it’s killing them. (I think we should maybe quarantine all Africans, like your hero Paul Cameron would do with gays. Seems about fair to me!)
You know, it also occurred to me that it might be helpful to post the graph that we’ve been discussing. First, though, I’d like to repeat your original claim:
Now here’s the graph:
What this shows is
1. A very substantial decrease in new infections starting in the years when anti-retroviral drugs became widely used.
2. A slight increase in some of the later years, which may be due to any number of factors, including, but not limited to, changes in sampling and testing practices.
It amazes me how much ground you’ve given up here, and how hard you continue to fight over what’s left. What really drives you, man?
Governments, unless they happen to have ’same-sex’ marriage laws, do not keep record of the ’sexuality’ of their citizens, so I’m not sure where you would come up with the statement that “by percentage” it’s higher among “straights”, HIV cases are simply characterised by their mode of transmission. However, I didn’t say that when anti-retroviral was introduced it immediately spawned higher deliberate or casual infection rates (though it may well have, I’m not seeing any graphs for HIV infection), but as the disease became more familiar and more people realized you could live with it… = new bump.
As to your graph, you do realize that it is only AIDS cases, not necessarily HIV cases, which is what I had said. ..and I’m not aware of many ’straights’ that get LGV…and gonnhorea was imported here by ‘gays’ from Hawaii, hepatits A they make up around 60% of (and in some studies 70% knowingly risked the health of their partners), and we’re not even mentioning syphillis.
“AIDS was certainly unexpected and more horrifying than anyone could have imagined. And yet to an extent, it should not have been unexpected. For in the ten years or so before the bright young men began turning up in major medical centers with alarming purple splotches and rare infections, the scientific literature showed a startling increase in gay-related conditions: hepatitis B causing sometimes fatal liver collapse; bowel parasites causing systemic infections rare outside the homosexual community; immune dysfunction less severe than AIDS would prove to be, but serious nonetheless. The medical community understood that as the influence of the 1960s’ counterculture had lifted all constraint on human sexuality — not just the homosexual variety — so too had it lifted the constraints on every imaginable form of sexually related illness.” - Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth, Jefferey Satinover, M.S., M.D.
Governments, unless they happen to have ’same-sex’ marriage laws, do not keep record of the ’sexuality’ of their citizens, so I’m not sure where you would come up with the statement that “by percentage” it’s higher among [African] “straights”, HIV cases are simply characterised by their mode of transmission.
Now you’re just being absurd. Are you really prepared to contend that, in large swaths of Africa, more than 50% of the population is homosexual?
I’m not seeing any graphs for HIV infection…
You know, you’re right. I was using numbers of new AIDS diagnoses instead, which was a mistake. It wasn’t what you’d asked for.
So I did a bit more digging — and here you go. It’s not a graph, but it is a table, and it actually supports my point even better than the graph did: The new infection rate has been pretty much flat in recent years, which contradicts your previous claims, and which tracks very closely with the newly diagnosed AIDS cases. Oh, and new HIV infections are even fewer than new AIDS diagnoses, which portends even better for the future.
gonnhorea [sic] was imported here by ‘gays’ from Hawaii
And here you’re making stuff up. Gonorrhea has been endemic in western society for centuries.
Finally, as to this quote:
It may surprise you, but I agree entirely with the sentiments expressed. AIDS was a horrific human tragedy, but in a sense it was only to be expected. Celebrating promiscuity nearly destroyed the gay community of thirty years ago.
Trouble is, it’s not thirty years ago anymore. Like many other gay men, I wasn’t even born back then, and I’m not the type of person to do the things gays did back in the 1970s. Gay promiscuity kills. Gay monogamy doesn’t. (Even just using condoms does a lot.) Staying faithful to one partner — which is difficult, but possible — does even more. Times have changed, and gays are not the promiscuous hedonists they used to be.
Now I suppose you’ll tell me that there is no such thing as gay fidelity, and that we’re all secretly barebacking whenever we can. And I guess you may believe whatever nonsense you wish. Some of us, though, know that you’re wrong. The real enemy here is not homosexuality, but promiscuity. Which I’ve always been against.
I’m not sure where your comparison is going, you say in some parts 50% of ’straights’ in Africa have HIV, but could not ALL of the ‘gays’ have HIV even if the 3% of their population doesn’t show up on the graph? I probably just don’t understand what you’re saying.
hm…I wonder why only 33 states are reporting their HIV statistics…could those states abstaining possibly be those with the most ‘gay’ influence? …and if so, I wonder why they don’t want the disease being reported among them…
If you look at the numbers in the MSM category, you’ll see they’ve been rising every year
Male-to-male sexual contact 13,112, 13,483, 14,355, 14,532
It seems like it’s actually the heterosexual line that’s remaining mostly flat.
Atlanta: The CDC announced that drug-resistant gonorrhea is on the rise among gays. Among straight men, the rate increased from 0.2% in 2002 to 0.4% in 2003; among gays from 1.8% to 4.9%. Injectable drugs must be used to cure the disease, and where the injection goes depends upon whether the “person is infected in the mouth, anus, or penis” said the CDC’s Dr. John Douglas. He believes the germ was imported to the West coast from Hawaii by male homosexuals, and is being marched toward the East coast by the same pleasure seekers. (Washington Blade 5/7/04)
..even if I were to believe your attempt at covering up the universal fact of ‘gay’ promiscutiy, pretending that the anus, which is one cell thick, is the vagina, which is naturally designed to be protective, is simply unhealthy.
Atlanta: The CDC announced that drug-resistant gonorrhea is on the rise among gays. Among straight men, the rate increased from 0.2% in 2002 to 0.4% in 2003; among gays from 1.8% to 4.9%. Injectable drugs must be used to cure the disease, and where the injection goes depends upon whether the “person is infected in the mouth, anus, or penis” said the CDC’s Dr. John Douglas. He believes the germ was imported to the West coast from Hawaii by male homosexuals, and is being marched toward the East coast by the same pleasure seekers. (Washington Blade 5/7/04)
..even if I were to believe your attempt at covering up the universal fact of ‘gay’ promiscutiy, pretending that the anus, which is one cell thick, is the vagina, which is naturally designed to be protective, is simply unhealthy.
I think I’m starting to understand how you operate:
1. You make a claim that you can’t possibly substantiate (e.g., that it was the gays who brought gonorrhea to the mainland from Hawaii, or that HIV infections took off once anti-retrovirals were introduced).
2. Then you point to a source that says something with only a vague resemblance to your original claim. (In the above example, the words “Hawaii” and “gonorrhea” both seem to appear in the story. That’s about where the similarities end, however.)
3. Finally you declare victory and claim that being gay is inherently unhealthy.
Simply put, it ain’t necessarily so.
Now, act for act, anal sex is without a doubt more risky than vaginal sex. I’m not disputing this. What I am disputing is that every single act of anal sex is equally risky or equally unhealthy. Not all are alike.
Monogamous anal sex between uninfected partners cannot possibly give you HIV or any other STD. And condoms decrease the risk as well if one of the partners is infected. Monogamy, getting tested, using barriers — these are sensible harm-reduction strategies, and consenting adults should be allowed to use them according to their own judgment, just as we allow consenting adults to do other risky things, including smoking, skydiving, and eating junk food. These are all choices that consenting adults should be allowed to make without interference.
And consider this: Oral sex is vastly less dangerous even than vaginal sex, in that it’s very, very hard to get HIV from it. It’s certainly not impossible, but it’s almost unknown. What if I told you that nearly all of my sex life consisted of oral sex? With one man? For the last eight years? It’s fully possible to be gay, to have a very satisfying sex life, and not to incur any substantial risk.
I know from your second paragraph that you probably won’t believe me. And this leads me to wonder whether it’s even worth talking to you, since it is becoming increasingly apparent that you do not credit anything I might offer out of my own life as evidence. Without at least some level of mutual trust, our conversation cannot continue much longer.
See, I trust that you are sincere in your beliefs, even if I have a hard time accepting or understanding them. I’m really trying to get where you’re coming from, and I trust that you are not deceiving me (at least, not on purpose). But if you cannot do the same in return, then it’s best that you admit it, and we can simply end the discussion right there.
Or you can take a different route — and actually trust that I’m telling the truth, and that many gays, myself included, are radically less promiscuous and far safer than most gays were in the 70s and 80s. This approach has two distinct advantages: First, it means that you and I will still have a lot to talk about. And second, it agrees with the statistics, which to the best of our knowledge show an overall drop in HIV infections since the mid-90s.
I’m not sure where your comparison is going, you say in some parts 50% of ’straights’ in Africa have HIV, but could not ALL of the ‘gays’ have HIV even if the 3% of their population doesn’t show up on the graph? I probably just don’t understand what you’re saying.
I don’t have a clue, since gays in many African countries are routinely beaten to death before they have the chance to die of HIV. Most of the rest are in hiding, in fear of the same. (Thanks, of course, to people who share your opinions.)
But let’s assume for the sake of argument that 3% is the correct number of gay people in these countries, and that every single one of them has HIV. That still leaves huge numbers of straights who have contracted HIV, making it more a straight disease there than a gay one.
Not, mind you, that I would blame “straights” as a group. I am an individualist. I think that everyone is responsible for their own decisions, not for the decisions of others who happen to share certain characteristics with them. Thus I do not commit the error of blaming “heterosexuals” or “heterosexuality” for the devastation in Africa. I ask, in return, that you not blame “homosexuals” for AIDS in the United States, and that you only blame those who have been promiscuous or unsafe. Many of them have been homosexuals, but not all. And many homosexuals have not been promiscuous.
I wonder why only 33 states are reporting their HIV statistics…could those states abstaining possibly be those with the most ‘gay’ influence?
Truly, you have a paranoid view of the world.
I will admit that the data are potentially unrepresentative of the country as a whole, on one condition: You must likewise admit that adding more states to the study might skew the trendline in either direction. There is no necessary reason to believe that, if we added in their numbers, the new totals would also show increases year over year. They may very well show the opposite. (Yes, the individual yearly totals would certainly increase. But would the trend point upward or downward? This is anyone’s guess.)
Male-to-male sexual contact 13,112, 13,483, 14,355, 14,532
It seems like it’s actually the heterosexual line that’s remaining mostly flat.
Okay, so there are small increases, which is consistent with the overall small increases as well. I worry about them, but still they are dwarfed by the enormous decreases that took place in the late 90s (that is, precisely the era when you erroneously claimed that there were increases).
I’ve discussed the possible reasons for this trend above. I’ve acknowledged repeatedly that it exists. This line is nearly flat, but it’s slowly moving upward now. There simply isn’t any dispute here about what’s going on.
It’s a problem, of course, but it’s not to be taken as an indictment of gays overall. This is because many of us actually do act responsibly in our sex lives. Many gays have consistently opposed the hedonism and promiscuity that was formerly so common in gay culture.
I don’t think you help prevent HIV/AIDS by insisting that all gays are promiscuous. On the contrary, I think you encourage promiscuity. Yes, you. Tell someone that he cannot help being promiscuous, and he will continue to be that way. But tell someone that he can be — and is expected to be — faithful, and he might just do it.
Also, it’s worth asking what you’re really trying to accomplish by arguing about new HIV infections ad nauseam. It seems to me that you are trying to extrapolate from a few hundred additional new HIV cases to… what, exactly? I wish I could tell.
Whatever it is you would propose, I would suggest that the purported rationale for it is still dwarfed by the sheer fact of how much new HIV/AIDS diagnoses have fallen since the height of the epidemic. Any policy proposal you’re going to make (quarantine? tattoos? executions?) is betrayed by the sheer fact that people can change their behavior, and that millions already have.
That’s the big story, and the story that you are choosing to evade, particularly given the way that people with AIDS are living so much longer and healthier lives now: Even though people with AIDS are around for much longer, and even though they are now healthy long enough to pass on their infections many times over, they simply are not doing so in the numbers we formerly saw.
Here’s a hint: If gays had not changed their behavior, we would expect to see at least around 100,000 new cases per year, as it was at the height of the epidemic. Clearly something has changed, at least for most gay men. I wonder, though, are you honest enough to admit it? A slight increase after a massive decrease is disappointing, but it’s not damning.
The fact that we have not seen more cases, despite more opportunities for infection, means that a lot has changed in gay culture. You can quote statistics to me about the 1970s or 1980s all that you like, but they just aren’t valid anymore. The baths are mostly either closed or unpopular now. Safe (or at least safer) sex is the norm. Marriage — yes, with monogamy — is increasingly the ideal. That’s why things aren’t nearly as bad as they used to be. They could be better, but they’ve certainly been a whole lot worse, and the overall trend has been for the good.
Ha, yes, “Hawaii” and “gonnorhea” appear, and you have yet to dispute the point over-all.
Sorry, but constant blood shed, and constant exposure to fecal matter, and constant exposure to blood both pathogens most certainly is not sanitary. It’s pretty much immoral. I’m afraid the next thing you mention isn’t sanitary either
You’re right, I don’t.
Sabin Russell, San Francisco Chronicle, 1/29/99:
“Barebacking”, in this practice, condoms are abandoned so that the “excitement” of possibly getting or giving the virus (HIV) - among a mixture of anonymous ‘homosexuals’ - is promoted.
In a Castro Street ‘bareback house,’ the “act of seeking HIV” is called “bug chasing” and seeking to infect others with the virus is “giving the gift.” Said Michael Scarce, 28, “who now works at a resource center for ‘homosexuals’ and ‘lesbian’ students at the University of California at San Francisco,” “homosexual men need to recognize the appeal of unprotected sex in order to come to terms with it. We have to stop kidding ourselves that safer sex is hotter sex. It’s just not. There is a particular appeal to barebacking because it sexier. It is hotter. It amazes and impresses me that gay men value their sexuality, and that they find such meaning in it that they are willing to take certain kinds of risks. That is an important and beautiful thing, although it can have harmful and dangerous consequences.”
CDC reports at the time in San Francisco and other gay centers also showed that condom use was decreasing among younger gay men, while the rate of HIV infection among them was increasing.
http://www.familyresearchinst.org/Default.aspx?tabid=80 (See Fact #1)
Yes, I blame promiscuity for the spread in Africa, that and things like dirty medical supplies, etc., it’s a village setting. ..and, yes, I actually can blame ‘homosexuals’ for its importation and spread in the U.S. If you look at a graph of the percentages of HIV broken up with lines by their mode of contact, you’ll see that MSM line dominates at first, the het. amount in virtually non-existent. Gradually through the years the two lines have leveled out, though they never crossed, and just recently the MSM % began to shoot upwards.
Actually, I know for a fact that it’s most of the states with the most ‘gay’ rights, accepting attitudes, etc. that do not report their statistics (I was just testing whether you’d admit it or not). e.g. Washington D.C. isn’t included, yet they have 5 times an HIV rate as that of N.Y. state (which I believe has the second highest). Neither are MA, CT, CA, etc.
Those are not small increases, the increases among hets. are small increases, and I didn’t necessarily say the new ant-retrov. immediately spawned more carelessnes, deliberateness, etc. among ‘gays’, but that eventually as it became more normalized, around ‘00…
By the logic of your Hawaii claim, I could say that heterosexuals have brought gonorrhea from every foreign country in the world. And I’d be right. The way that you stated it earlier was deliberately misleading, and what’s more, the danger here is remote for anyone (like me) in a committed relationship. So I’m still unimpressed.
As to Africa, I think it’s remarkable that over there you blame promiscuity, while over here you blame “homosexuals.” Promiscuity is to blame in both places.
Also consider me unimpressed by one anecdotal story about barebacking from almost a decade ago. Sure, you could certainly find more anecdotes if you wanted. What do they have to do with me? Nothing.
Actually, I know for a fact that it’s most of the states with the most ‘gay’ rights, accepting attitudes, etc. that do not report their statistics (I was just testing whether you’d admit it or not).
Maybe they don’t report their statistics because anything at all that they ever report will be distorted by people like you. Just saying. And maybe those states also show a little bit of compassion for people suffering from a disease, rather than reporting their names to the government. Jesus befriended lepers, after all.
Sure, you could say it, but you’re not a CDC professional.
Well, sure, but it’s kind of a universal fact that ‘homosexuality’ = promiscuity (and unhealthy, highrisk behavior).
Yup, I could, the Advoacte dedicated it’s April 13, ‘99 issue to the subject - they noted they ran a similar issue in ‘83 (incidentally when AIDS was beginning to make its heavy mark).
Oh, right, the big bad government’s going to do a lot to the ‘emotions’ of ‘gays’ with confidential name-based-reporting? I think you’re on the mark though that the ‘gay’ rights states or those with the most influence don’t want ‘people like me’ to get a hold of the data to ‘distort’ (show it as it is) it.
“I think you’re on the mark though that the ‘gay’ rights states or those with the most influence don’t want ‘people like me’ to get a hold of the data to ‘distort’ (show it as it is) it.”
LOL. You and your lesbians are 300 times more likely to die in car crashes data are about as credible as those folks who argue the “data” show that much less than a million Jews died in the Holocaust.
Well, that’s not my statement, though I’ve already acknowledged that it’s probably such a drastic figure because of different variables. It’s about as rediculous as the data Kinsey did, but at least the conclusions follow the data: lesbians seem to be more likely to dis in car crashes. You’re not going to prove it right or wrong by throwing it out, you test it by replicating the study…
Phillips,
I’ll let you add whatever you like after this comment, but, barring any real surprises, this will be my last contribution to the discussion.
There are risks to homosexual intercourse, and I have readily acknowledged them. There are risks to many things in life, and only a fool would deny them.
There are, however, some very obvious ways of minimizing or even eliminating these risks altogether. I have pointed out these approaches repeatedly, and you have always either changed the subject or doubted my honesty. I have to admit I don’t understand why you would bother even discussing with me if this were your real attitude toward me.
But this neither means that risk-avoidance strategies do not exist, nor that you have won the debate. In the face of real, concrete steps that one might take to avoid STDs, you have presented only bogus science, anecdotes, ridicule, and paranoia.
Indeed, I can’t even begin to fathom where you’re coming from. To accept your worldview, I must accept first an enormous excess mortality for gays and lesbians, even apart from AIDS. And then I must accept an even larger conspiracy to keep it all out of the media. This is just ridiculous, as the simpler and therefore more probable explanation is merely that Paul Cameron is a liar and a fraud.
So I give up. I am tired of repeating myself, and I have wasted far too much of my blogging time on you already. I’m done. I will leave it to others to judge who has been the more honest and fair in this debate, and whose position has been the more reasonable.
Not that I am at all interested in meeting “Phillips,” but I know of a couple gay bars in the Bucks/Phila area where 1/2 of the patrons are (or seem to be) over 50. He would probably respond that these fellows who look like old rich white guys are in reality just really ill 25 year olds whose hair has turned prematurely gray from their illnesses.
Rowe, statistics are statistics, if you’d like to offer your own statistics, then do so. Personal accounts don’t contribute anything.
Au revoir, Kuznicki.
“Reports at a national conference about sexually transmitted diseases indicate that gay men are in the highest risk group for several of the most serious diseases….Scientists believe that the increased number of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) cases is the result of an increase in risky sexual practices by a growing number of gay men who believe HIV is no longer a life-threatening illness.”
– Bill Roundy, “STD Rates on the Rise,” New York Blade News, (Dec. 15, 2000).
“The exclusivity of the relationship did not diminish the incidence of unhealthy sexual acts, which are commonplace among homosexuals. An English study published in the same issue of the journal ‘AIDS’ concurred, finding that most “unsafe” sex acts among homosexuals occur in steady relationships.
– G.J. Hart et al., “Risk Behavior, Anti-HIV and Anti-Hepatitis B Core Prevalence in Clinic and Non-clinic Samples of Gay Men in England, 1991-1992,” ‘AIDS’, July 1993.
“Rowe, statistics are statistics,”
Unless they are phony like Paul Cameron’s.
Well he certainly didn’t make them up like gay Dean Hamer did (in fact it was Cameron who snuck into their building and actually got one of Hamer’s team members to realize no one had seen the data but Hamer himself - she then of course accused him of falsifying data - and Hamer was transfered, bwaha!).
You laugh all you want. The bottom line is Cameron is viewed as having all of the crediblity of a holocaust denier. And it’s not just the “liberals” who view him that way but his fellow researchers from the religious right like Throckmorton and now even James Dobson I understand.
The notion that gay men die young, absent the historical anomoly AIDS, defies credulity. Some stereotypes have a kernel of truth in them; but that never was the stereotype before AIDS.
Many stereotypes about gays, I find to be true. For instance, that gays tend to be better educated and affluent. And those two factors correlate with longer, not shorter lifespans. Indeed, another accurate gay stereotype is the vast disproportionate involvement of gays in not just musical theater, but classical music and theater in general.
Indeed, about 50% of the famous conductors and composers over the past 100 years have been gay (Bernstein, Copland, Sondheim, and hundreds others). As well as great theater actors (Oliver, Gielgud, McKellen) I’d like to see Cameron and company do an obituary study on them. Because one thing I notice about that disproportionately gay crowd is they tend to live on into their 70s, 80s or 90s.
Statistics, puhleaze, statistics.
..and you’re still ignoring HPV - which is almost universal among gays, Hepatitis A, B, and C, Gay Bowel Syndrome, Kaposi Sarcoma (KS), Anal Canncer, syphillis, gonnhorea, mental health problems, alcohol abuse, suicide, etc., and as if HIV/AIDS even with anti-retroviral treatment doesn’t effect one’s health/lifespan, even if not as dramatically.
“STDs are rampant in the homosexual community. The CDC reports: ‘Several recent reports have documented alarming increases in sexually transmitted infections rates among men who have sex with men (MSM), and a corresponding decline in safer sex practices. After years of seccessful prevention efforts, this trend may portend a resurgence of HIV infection in the MSM community.’”
– “Abstract 418 from the 2002 National STD Prevention Conference ‘Patterns of STD Infection, HIV Coinfection, and Risk-Behavior among MSM at a Boston Community Health Center’,” National Center for HIV, STD and TB Prevention Division of Sexually Transmitted Diseases (March 5, 2002).
I can’t talk “statistics” with Paul Cameron because he has no valid ones, or someone who cites the phony “gay bowel syndrome.” Virtually every std save AIDS either can be cleared up with antibiotics or is chronic and doesn’t otherwise affect lifespan.
Cameron et al. ask folks to believe the unbelievable — that AIDS really didn’t affect gay lifespan. Sorry, but there were few obituaries in gay papers before AIDS, for a short time, they dramatically increased, and now, much to your chagrin, we are back to a point where they are few again.
Oh, and I forgot LGV, which gays mutated from chlamydia in the Netherlands.
The Journal of the American Medical Association refers to GBS (Gay Bowel Syndrome) problems such as proctitis, proctocolitis, enteritis as “sexually transmitted gastrointestinal syndromes.” (1999)
There are many strains of STDs that are incurable (e.g. drug-resistant gonnhorea is on the rise), as well as anal cancer, Kaposi Sarcoma (KS) - a type of cancer, and some STDs like syphillis, if left untreated, can spread throughout the body resulting in serious body malfunction or death.
And gays are much more likely to consume alcohol and do drugs.
Why should we take you seriously when you talk of “Kaposi Sarcoma,” as though it were something different from AIDS; it is not. It is only something that one gets with AIDS. And anyone with elementary knowledge of HIV and AIDS knows this. You are either ignorant or duplicitous (or worse, both).
The bottom line is gays weren’t dying young before AIDS. And relatively few are dying young today. No credible evidence systematical early death and homosexuality uncoupled with AIDS to be the case. The only statistics that have been done on the matter are Cameron’s which have been proven to be phony, and the IJE’s who said,
And I wonder if you are even aware of the behavior that causes the so called “gay bowel syndrome.” I’ll give you a hint: It’s not anal sex. Rather it’s a behavior that Monica Lewinsky performed on Bill Clinton and was written about in “The Starr Report.” It’s also something that gays or straights ought not do without a barrier and probably rarely do without such. And consequently those diseases are only found in a very small percentage of hyper-promiscuous gays. And btw, it’s been proven that hyper-promiscuous gays are a small minority of the gay population.
BTW: I’m going to exercise some editorial privilege. If you are going to continue to post here, I’m going to remove your quotations from the term “gay.”
You stole the word, it used to mean happy, therefore I cannot seriously use that term. Plus it gives it a sense of being innate instead of simply a bad habit, a deviation.
Yes, KS emerged as a common complication in people with AIDS - it was the sudden appearance of this type of KS (KSHV) in young males at the start of the AIDS epidemic that led doctors to realize a new disease had emerged. It can - and usually is, however, be spread through oral sexual contact. Doctors reached this conclusion because during the time when AIDS cases were decreasing (because of certain unmentionable reasons), KSHV did not. It also explains why it is concentrated among ‘homosexual’ men without seeing a steady spread to heterosexual groups. (Journal of the American Medical Association, 2002)
And if if Cameron’s studies have been ‘disproven’, I’d love to see you try, because the bottom line is that they have not been for a few reasons,
1) You have not produced any studies to contradict it,
2) All you can do is nit-pick and cry “limitations” on the data. These perhaps apply a little more to the obituary sambles than to their latest study since it was with government records, but ultimately there’s really nothing much to discredit them.
I’m not sure you’re fully disclosing the details of GBS.
Many of the bacterial and protozoa pathogens that cause GBS are found in the feces and transmitted to the digestive system: According to the pro-homosexual text ‘Anal Pleasure and Health’,”sexual activities provide many opportunities for tiny amounts of contaminated feces to find their way into the mouth of a sexual partner…The most direct route is oral-anal contact.” Jack Morin, Anal Pleasure and Health: A Guide for Men and Women, 1998.
According to a report in The Health Implications of Homosexuality by the Medical Institute for Sexual Health, some pathogens associated with enteritis and proctocolitis “appear only to be sexually transmitted among men who have sex with men.” — p. 55
Well, yes the articles I’ve reproduced show Cameron’s “data” to be about as valid as the “data” of folks who deny the holocaust. Holocaust deniers, btw, argue their case just as zealousy as you do. (Or if you want another analogy — Cameron’s “facts” are about as valid as those of folks who argue science proves man has never walked on the moon.)
Anyone familiar with my writing knows that I almost never invoke Nazi comparison’s, as I am acutely aware of “Godwin’s Law.” But sometimes the shoe fits.
It makes me so happy that Paul Cameron and his studies have all the credibility of holocaust deniers and even the “mainstream” of the religious right (Throckmorton, Dobson et al.) realize this.
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