Posted on 11/21/2003 9:50:23 AM PST by scripter
"... Currently there is a great deal of literature going around to the nation's schools that has been prepared by homosexual teachers. This material tells children that they have "legitimate sexual alternatives." This may not create homosexuals; but certainly will contribute to any sense of insecurity and gender role doubts that are normal in children (especially pubertal and early teens).
Instead of contributing to their freedom to think and feel and explore their world; it can significantly contribute to their anxiety and confusion. Teenagers commonly experience homosexual feelings and even a homosexual experience. This usually leads to a normal heterosexual development. The preceding literature of "legitimate sexual alternatives" can only add to their doubts, insecurity and depression. It will increase the tendency toward suicide. Please recall the earlier comments about the potential organic brain effects of this type of stress.
Currently the gay/lesbian community is presenting the concept that homosexuality can be a normal and reasonable choice. The material on the subject, with that opinion, is being offered to many school systems in United States. Therefore, many students in high school and college who experience conflict and anxiety about their sexual feelings and activities with the opposite sex may take the less tension-evoking position of seeing themselves as "bisexual."
It is not uncommon during the teenage years for individuals to struggle with their homosexual and heterosexual fantasies (both conscious and unconscious). This may even result in some homosexual activity. This is not unusual in the normal transition from adolescence to the adult world for those teens who are basically heterosexual. However, for those who are like the preceding group with marked sexual tensions, they may move to a "bisexual" defensive position, particularly when it is enhanced by some of the current literature from the gay/lesbian community.
For those teenagers who find their homosexual fantasies and feelings ego dystonic, they are more likely to more easily work through this period of tension and discomfort. Support from the gay/lesbian community in accepting their homosexual feelings as ego syntonic will make their transition to full heterosexuality more difficult and tension laden. It may take these individuals years to recognize their fundamental heterosexual position. (Socarides, 1965, 1979) What effect it has on brain development and the sexual/hormonal neuronal axis is likely to be significant..."
Experts: Anti-AIDS Drugs Encourage Risky Behaviors
An excerpt from: "From mental disorder to civil-rights cause"
"WORLD: How and why did the American Psychiatric Association misrepresent the evidence concerning homosexuality?
JS: In 1957, with quiet political support largely from the prominent UCLA psychiatrist Judd Marmor, Evelyn Hooker, an experimental psychologist (her expertise was with mice, not people) at UCLA, published a scientifically bogus paper that supposedly showed no differences in the psychopathology of homosexual and heterosexual males. In the late '60s she chaired a task force that excluded anyone who believed that there was anything in the least problematic with homosexuality - meaning she excluded the entire body of clinicians who until then had devoted their careers to the subject. She similarly ensured that all its mental-health members were collaborators of Alfred Kinsey.
Under the guise of its being a "mental-health" panel, and using the false cover of the Kinsey Report (which claimed to be scientific, but which even then had been long condemned by the American Statistical Association as invalid), Hooker's Task Force issued a set of "policy" recommendations based on the claim that homosexuality had been shown to be normal, a degree of bisexuality was the universal norm, and whatever unusual distress homosexuals might display was due to social prejudice. The elimination of all forms of social prejudice against homosexuality was a "mental-health" prerogative for the nation.
By the early '70s, Judd Marmor was on his way to the vice presidency of the American Psychiatric Association. He and a number of allies in the APA arranged to have outside gay activists disrupt APA meetings to protest the persistence of homosexuality as a diagnostic category within the APA's list of disorders. Eventually, these protests led to a series of meetings with the APA's "nomenclature committee" at which "research" was presented purportedly demonstrating no connection between homosexuality and psychopathology. These presentations were tendentious, the "research" consisting largely of Hooker's bogus work and Kinsey's data. With that, along with political pressure and the "civil-rights" argument, homosexuality was removed from the diagnostic manual.
Anyone who actually reads the studies examining the association between homosexuality and psychological disturbance will find a very strong association. What has never been clear until, perhaps, recently, is why. Perhaps the same problems that cause increased psychological distress also cause homosexuality. Perhaps homosexuality is an intrinsic psychopathology. Perhaps the social stigma experienced by being homosexual causes the psychological distress. Perhaps some unknown proportion of each. Perhaps some unknown proportion of each and a complex, nonlinear interaction among them over time. None of the early studies addressed these very obvious questions. They merely presumed the ideologically correct responses..."
"Evelyn Hooker and the Normalization of Homosexuality" by Dr. Thomas Landess
Evelyn Hooker has been among the most influential figures in the highly successful movement to convince the American people that homosexuality is a "normal variant" of human sexual behavior. Her 1957 study, "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual" (Journal of Projective Techniques, 1957, 21, 18-31) is the most frequently cited scientific source for the argument that homosexuality is not a pathology, that homosexuals are as free from mental disorder as heterosexuals.
Such assertions have not only found their way into standard psychology textbooks but have also provided a scientific basis for decisions in major court cases involving the legality of state sodomy laws and prohibitions against homosexual employment in certain state and local agencies (e.g., schools, police departments). Indeed, when the American Psychiatric Association debated the issue of homosexuality in 1973, Evelyn Hooker's work was Exhibit A for those who wanted to remove homosexuality from the group's list of mental disorders.
For many commentators and activists, the Hooker study effectively ended the debate over whether or not homosexuals were in any way abnormal in their relationships with each other and with the community at large. Today many Americans have accepted the idea that homosexuality is "normal" and "healthy" without realizing that such an opinion is derived in large measure from a single study -- one conducted by a UCLA professor whose previous laboratory subjects had been rats.
In all this extravagant homage to Hooker and her study, several points have escaped her admirers, to say nothing of the federal courts:
1. In her 1957 report, Evelyn Hooker did not use a random sample to test the stability of homosexuals, but allowed gay rights activists to recruit those homosexuals most likely to illustrate her thesis that homosexuality is not a pathology. Individuals who proved unstable were deleted from the final sample.
2. Hooker's published account of how she recruited heterosexual subjects is not consistent with a more detailed later account.
3. Six subjects in her study, three from each group, had engaged in both homosexual and heterosexual behavior beyond adolescence.
4. Hooker made several errors in her mathematical calculations that raise doubts about her care and competence as a researcher.
5. Hooker did not attempt to prove that homosexuals were normal in every way, nor does her study support the idea that homosexuals as a group are just as stable as heterosexuals.
6. Hooker was relatively inexperienced in administering the Rorschach test, and this inexperience may have led to mistakes in the administration and evaluation of the Rorschach.
7. On the Thematic Apperception Test and the Make-A-Picture-Story test -- which require subjects to make up fictional narratives about depicted scenes -- the homosexuals could not refrain from including homosexual fantasies in their imaginary accounts. For that reason, Hooker altered the nature of the study by no longer asking the judges to use the TAT and MAPS in an attempt to determine the sexual orientation of each of the 60 subjects, since the differences were apparent from the narratives.
In order to understand fully the nature of the controversy over Hooker's study, it is helpful to review its history.
THE HISTORY OF THE HOOKER STUDY
Evelyn Hooker did not begin her research on homosexuals as a logical development in her career as a psychologist or even out of a dispassionate scientific curiosity. From all indications, she undertook the study to prove that homosexuals could function as normal human beings. As she herself said, "How could my hypothesis have been anything else? I'd seen these men and saw nothing psychopathological in their behavior."[1]
"These men" were the many friends she'd made in the Los Angeles homosexual community -- one of whom, Sam From, persuaded her to undertake the investigation. "Now we have let you see us as we are," he said to the UCLA professor. "It is your scientific duty to do a study of people like us."[2] Despite the fact that she was a "rat runner" -- with no clinical experience in the area of human behavior, she undertook her study, which would become, along with the Kinsey report, a prime weapon in the hands of the gay rights movement.
It is important to examine carefully the manner in which Hooker planned and executed her research, which was funded by the federal government's National Institute of Mental Health. A number of commentators have failed to read Hooker's own report carefully or else have deliberately distorted her methods and findings for their own purposes. Here is just how she proceeded and what she found.
SELECTION OF SUBJECTS
First, to find her homosexual subjects, she enlisted the early gay rights group Mattachine Society, which, as she put it in her published report, "has as its stated purpose the development of a homosexual ethic...."[3] Members of the Mattachine Society volunteered for the study and also recruited their friends. Hooker, herself, created a "control group" of heterosexuals for the experiment, despite the fact that on the standardized tests she intended to use, norms had already been established.
In her 1957 report, Hooker offers this somewhat cryptic explanation of heterosexual recruitment:
Because the heterosexuals were, for the most part, obtained from community organizations which must remain anonymous, I cannot describe further the way in which they were obtained.[4]
Years later, a Los Angeles Times reporter elicited from Hooker a somewhat different explanation, one that is fairly explicit in detail:
She canvassed the education secretaries of labor unions, thinking that they would have liberal attitudes. "I was wrong," she says; as soon as she explained the nature of the study, no one wanted to participate...So Hooker took to collaring candidates wherever she could find them, including a fireman who showed up to inspect her home. "No man is safe on Saltair Street," joked her husband.[5]
She did not insist on a random sampling. In fact, she deliberately sought out only those subjects who seemed stable and "normal" -- at least in their ability to adjust to their social environment. She defined the criteria for membership in the groups as follows:
In both groups subjects were eliminated who were in therapy at the time. If, in the preliminary screening, evidence of considerable disturbance appeared, the individual was eliminated (5 heterosexuals; 5 homosexuals).[6]
As for the sexual proclivities of the participants, Hooker says the following in her report:
I attempted to secure homosexuals who would be pure for homosexuality; that is, without heterosexual experience. With three exceptions this is so. These three subjects had not had more than three heterosexual experiences, and they identified themselves as homosexual in their patterns of desire and behavior. The heterosexual group is exclusively heterosexual beyond the adolescent period, with three exceptions; these three had had a single homosexual experience each.[7]
Originally, she chose 40 homosexual subjects and matched them as closely as possible by age, IQ, and education with 40 heterosexual subjects. At some point, as noted parenthetically above, she found five from each group too unbalanced to include in her study, so apparently she dropped these ten and their matches in the opposite groups -- for a total of 20 eliminated. This winnowing process reduced the size of the total pool from 80 to 60.
It is instructive to read her summary of these matchings and then compare that summary to the chart containing the same information.
The homosexuals, and thus the heterosexuals, ranged in age from 25 to 50, with an average age of 34.5 for the homosexual group and 36.6 for the heterosexual group. The IQ range, as measured by the Otis Self-Administering Tests of Mental Ability, was from 90 to 135, with an average for the homosexual group of 115.4 and for the heterosexual group of 116.2. In education the range was from completion of grammar school to the equivalent of a master's degree, with an average for the homosexual group of 13.9 years and for the heterosexual group of 14.3.[8]
Turning to the table upon which she lists the age, IQ scores, and education of all 60 subjects, a careful reader finds that the figures neatly arranged in columns contradict her summary. While she says the age range for all subjects is 25-50, the chart indicates that the youngest subject is 26 and the oldest 57. The figures on the table indicate an average age of 35 for the homosexuals and 37 for the heterosexuals -- different averages than the ones Hooker gives.
In her summary, she says the range of IQ scores is 90-135, but the lowest IQ score on her chart is 91. Despite this error, however, her averages for both homosexuals and heterosexuals are consistent with the chart.
On average years of education, she gives as a range the completion of grammar school to the equivalent of a masters degree. Here her summary is at best imprecise, since the least amount of education is 9 years -- past the junior high level and three years beyond elementary school. The highest educational level indicated on the chart is 18 years, which is a year beyond the course requirement for most master's programs. Also, her average education for homosexuals, based on the chart, should be 14.0 rather than 13.9.
These mathematical discrepancies are minor but disturbing. If all the averages had been incorrect, a generous reader might have concluded that somehow she had printed the wrong chart -- a single careless error. But given the accuracy of some of her calculations, it seems more likely she made several careless errors. A footnote on the first page of the Hooker report suggests that the materials were rushed into print -- that, though she hesitated to publish her paper, "[i]n view of the importance of her findings it seemed desirable to the editors that they be made public...."[9] (In other words, she was saying something that well-placed members of the profession wanted to hear.)
To be sure, these figures are largely irrelevant to the final conclusions of her study. The averages of ages, IQ scores, and amount of education lend only marginal credibility to the selection process. Yet the inaccuracies tell us something important about Hooker's reliability as a researcher, the degree to which we can trust her methodology. As noted below, Hooker scored the Rorschach test herself, despite the fact that she had had little previous experience in this area. Add to this inexperience a lack of mathematical precision, and the study begins to pose genuine problems.
At this point, two observations are in order concerning Hooker's overall method of selecting her subjects. First, in choosing a small sample that is anything but random, Hooker has declined to test the proposition that homosexuals and heterosexuals in society are equally likely to be normal, well-adjusted human beings. As she, herself, says in the report, she is only interested in "whether homosexuality is necessarily [emphasis added] a symptom of pathology." To answer that question, she maintains, "All we need is a single case in which the answer is negative."[10] In other words, in this study she is concerned with finding at least one homosexual who, after testing, doesn't fall into the category of "pathological." This is why she has focused on the healthiest possible cohort.
But the limited scope of her study cuts two ways. Knowing the nature of the sample, no one could reasonably conclude from her findings that homosexuals as a group are no more likely to be mentally disturbed than heterosexuals. Yet this is precisely what many have concluded. If one accepts the study as valid and definitive, one can only conclude that some homosexuals are not pathological in their dealings with the world at large. As Hooker herself observes, there is no evidence to conclude that homosexuals are not pathological in their sexual activities.
A second point to note about Hooker's selection process is her ease in recruiting homosexual subjects and her difficulty in recruiting heterosexual subjects. Indeed, her account in the study report is evasive; and her later recollections suggest that she may have shaded the truth initially in order to cover up problems she encountered in recruiting the control group.
This question becomes more pressing when one reads that in her group of 30 heterosexual men, she still must include three who have had homosexual experiences in their adult lives -- by no means a "pure" sample -- and we don't know how many more had had homosexual experiences in adolescence. No one -- not even Kinsey -- would call this an unambiguously heterosexual group.
From Hooker's own report -- and from a follow-up interview in later years -- we see that homosexuals were not only eager to participate, but indeed were the instigators of the study. They hoped that it would prove they were "normal" human beings; so they scoured their own community to find just the right volunteers to prove her limited hypothesis. When analyzing the results of the Hooker study, it's very important to remember who instigated the project and the fact that the subjects were well aware of its ultimate goal. (In light of this fact, the performance of homosexuals on two of the three tests, as discussed below, may well indicate that homosexuality generates social behavior that is obsessive, indeed all but uncontrollable -- certainly one indication of pathology.)
THE TESTING OF THE SUBJECTS
To prove her thesis, Hooker administered three standardized tests to her 60 subjects -- the Rorschach Test, the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), and the Make-A-Picture-Story test (MAPS). The Rorschach test, as most people know, consists of a series of ink blots that subjects are asked to interpret. The Thematic Apperception Test requires subjects to describe and make up stories about pictures of people in various settings. The MAPS test requires subjects to arrange cut-out pictures and then make up a story about their arrangement.
Despite her lack of clinical experience in what is called "projective techniques," according to Hooker, she administered and scored the Rorschach test herself. After scoring the test and constructing profiles, she placed the results in random order and passed them along to two experts in Rorschach analysis. Thus we have Hooker's scored results analyzed by Drs. Klopfer and Meyer, with two tasks in mind: first, to rate the subjects on "overall adjustment" and second, to see if they could determine which were the homosexuals and which were the heterosexuals.
On the task of determining overall adjustment (i.e., social stability), the judges differed sharply in some respects but agreed in others. For example, Judge "A" rated 15 of the 60 as "top" in stability, while Judge "B" rated only 4 as "top." The other ratings revealed greater agreement. However, more homosexuals than heterosexuals ranked in the two "top" groupings and more heterosexuals than homosexuals ranked in the two "bottom" groupings.
When assigned the task of choosing between the homosexual and heterosexual subjects, Judge "A" correctly identified 17 of the 30 pairs and Judge "B" 18 of the 30. An ideal random selection would have identified 15 out of 30, though Hooker is technically correct in saying that, in such a small sample, the results indicate that "neither judge was able to do better than chance."[11]
Critics of Hooker's Rorschach results make at least two points. First, they question her ability to administer and score the test. As an animal researcher until the time she undertook this project, she obviously had logged comparatively little experience in administering Rorschachs, a delicate and highly complicated task in which the clinician gently and obliquely elicits spontaneous responses. Some authorities in the field maintain that, under ideal circumstances, a more qualified expert would have explored many avenues Hooker failed to note and would have found out many things Hooker missed -- including indications of the pathology of the homosexuals.
A second criticism of her methodology is the lack of "blindness" in the administration of the Rorschach. Ideally, given the nature of the results sought, the test should have been administered under circumstances in which both interviewer and subject were unaware of the purpose of the test. In the case of the Hooker study, both she and her subjects knew what she was striving to prove -- and both she and the homosexuals had a vested interest in proving the hypothesis that homosexuals were not necessarily pathological.
Can Rorschach subjects tailor their answers to desired ends? Absolutely, say some Rorschach experts. One example of such a phenomenon in "projective techniques" is called the "Rosenthal Effect," in which a subject generates the results he or she believes the researcher wants. In this particular case, both the researcher (Hooker) and her homosexual subjects had a compelling reason to produce these results.
Perhaps the most significant implications of Hooker's study came from the MAPS and TAT results, which were analyzed by a single judge. Here is Hooker's own account:
The problem of identifying the homosexual protocol from this material was essentially a much easier one than that encountered with the Rorschach, since few homosexuals failed to give open [sic] homosexual stories on at least one picture. The second task given the Rorschach judges, of distinguishing the homosexual from the heterosexual records when they were presented in matched pairs, was therefore omitted.[12]
Note that the identity of the homosexuals was so obvious in these tests that Hooker did not even ask the judge to distinguish between homosexual and heterosexual. Simply put, the homosexuals gave themselves away on tests less dependent than the Rorschach on the training and experience of the examiner. Despite the fact that they knew the purpose of this test was to prove their own stability, normalcy, and lack of differentiation from heterosexuals, they still did not refrain from indulging themselves in homosexual fantasies, thereby exposing their sexual appetites. It is difficult not to conclude that in verbalizing such fantasies, they were exhibiting the obsessive nature of homosexuality, the difficulty of homosexuals to control their desire, even when their reputation in the psychiatric community was at stake.
As one research analyst puts it:
So Hooker's study suggests that sexual fantasies among homosexuals are irrepressible, so much so that such people cannot always see ordinary situations and relations as devoid of sexual content, but must, on occasion, interject sexual significance where it does not exist or, at the very least, need not exist. Following the logical conclusions of this experiment, we are compelled to conclude that there is something substantively different about the way homosexuals and heterosexuals look at the world.[13]
In evaluating the MAPS and TAT results for stability, the single judge assigned "top" scores to no one; 9 homosexuals and 7 heterosexuals were rated "next to top"; 15 homosexuals and 19 heterosexuals were ranked "average"; 6 homosexuals and 3 heterosexuals were rated "next to bottom"; and no homosexuals and 1 heterosexual were ranked at the "bottom." (Again, critics say that the absence of "blindness" raises the possibility that the Rosenthal Effect was again operative in the evaluation process, since the judge knew what Hooker was seeking.)
SUMMARY OF RESULTS
The remainder of her study is a highly selective summary of comments by judges, all of which support her thesis that the two groups are, in effect, indistinguishable in terms of "overall adjustment." In her own evaluation of the results, Hooker -- aware of the degree to which she is challenging leading authorities in the field -- offers a set of "admissions" about the limitations of her study. In this section she concedes the possibility that homosexuals are indeed pathological, a point overlooked by most of her admirers.
- She speculates that the psychological defect of homosexuals may lie "in a weakness of ego-function and control and that this cannot be adequately diagnosed from projective test protocols. As one psychiatrist puts it, the material produced in the Rorschach is like that produced on the analytic couch. Two men may produce very similar material on the couch, but the difference between them is that one -- the normal -- gets up at the end of the hour and resumes his normal functioning, while the other does not."[14]
- She also admits that the pathology of homosexuality may only occur "in an erotic situation and that the homosexual can function well in non-erotic situations such as the Rorschach, TAT, and MAPS. Thus, one could defend the hypothesis that homosexuality is symptomatic of pathology, but that the pathology is confined to one sector of behavior, namely, the sexual."[15] (She seems to have disproved this proposition by her own study, since the homosexuals were unable to control their sexual fantasies, even in a "non-erotic situation" such as taking the MAPS and TAT.)
- During Hooker's research, she took the life histories of her subjects; and though she didn't include an analysis of these materials in her study, she did indicate that when she eventually published her results, "the life history data from the two groups will differ: namely, in the love relationships. Comparisons between the number and duration of love relationships, cruising patterns, and degree of satisfaction with sexual pattern and the love partner will certainly show clear-cut differences."[16]
Hooker never published the summary of these histories, though in a fairly recent interview with writer-researcher Edward Eichel, she said she still hoped to do so after 35 years. However, she undoubtedly found in these personal histories what most other researchers have found: a substantially greater number of sexual partners among homosexuals than heterosexuals and a significantly shorter duration in relationships. These findings, if published, could well have cast further doubts on the stability and normalcy of homosexuals.
It is significant to note that Hooker's stated reservations seldom, if ever, find their way into the summaries of her work -- summaries that are now de rigeur in legal and scholarly discussions of homosexuality. Her 1957 report has, like a folk tale, become simpler and purer in the constant retelling. Instead of a complicated account filled with the predictable complexity of life, we now have only Beauty and the Beast.
CITATIONS AND USES OF THE HOOKER STUDY
Perhaps as important as the Hooker 1957 research itself is the use that others have made of her findings. Not only has this single study with only 60 subjects been cited repeatedly by prominent psychiatrists, social critics, and gay activists; but such summaries have also been accepted as part of the expert testimony in high-profile court cases nationwide.
Curiously, many of those who cite the study not only incorrectly summarize its content but do so in remarkably similar fashion. It's as if one commentator misread Hooker and all the rest derived their knowledge from that single erroneous commentary. Here are several examples:
- In the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, Dr. Judd Marmor, a driving force in the American Psychiatric Association's decision to drop homosexuality from its manual of disorders, has written this summary of Hooker's research: "Hooker (1957) conducted a cooperative study of 30 male homosexuals and 30 male heterosexuals who were matched for age, I.Q., and education. The homosexuals were all rated 6 and the heterosexuals 0 on the Kinsey scale. None of the subjects was in therapy. Two judges independently, without prior knowledge of which subjects were which, reviewed the Rorschach protocols, Thematic Apperception Tests, and Make-a-Picture-Story responses, and tried to distinguish the homosexuals from the heterosexuals, but they were unable to do so."[17]
- Marmor repeated this very passage when he submitted an affidavit in Morales v. Texas, a case heard before a state court in Texas.
- Dr. Gregory Herek supported Marmor's testimony in Morales v. Texas, saying under oath: "The classic study in this case was conducted by Hooker (1957). She administered the Rorschach, Thematic Apperception Test, and Make-A-Picture-Story Test...When asked to assess which protocols were obtained from homosexuals, the experts were unable to distinguish respondents' sexual orientation at a level better than chance."[18]
- In a 1990 article on Hooker, Los Angeles Times reporter Bruce Shenitz described the experiment in precisely the same way: "On all three tests, two-thirds of the heterosexuals and homosexuals were assigned a rating of 3 (average) or better. Next, the judges were presented with pairs of tests and asked to distinguish between heterosexuals and homosexual. They were able to do so no more accurately than if they were flipping a coin."[19]
This striking agreement among scientific experts and the working press is remarkable, especially when one realizes that all of these accounts are untrue. Marmor's version is particularly faulty. Indeed, the brief passage quoted above contains five demonstrable errors of fact.
1. "The homosexuals were all rated 6 and the heterosexuals 0 on the Kinsey scale." In the first place, in her report Hooker makes no reference whatsoever to the Kinsey scale. In the second place, she gives evidence in her narrative to contradict Marmor's generalization. Three heterosexuals reported homosexual contact after adolescence and three homosexuals reported heterosexual behavior. Kinsey described his "0" rating as "[e]xclusively heterosexual with no homosexual" and his "6" rating as "[e]xclusively homosexual."
2. There were three judges involved rather than two, as Marmor reports.
3. Dr. Marmor reports that the judges reviewed all three tests when, in fact, two judges reviewed the Rorschach and one judge reviewed the MAPS and TAT.
4. Dr. Marmor states that the judges reviewed the MAPS and the TAT, as well as the Rorschach, in an attempt to distinguish between heterosexual and homosexual subjects when, in fact, no judge was asked to make this distinction for the MAPS and TAT because Hooker knew the homosexuals had "outed" themselves.
5. Contrary to what Marmor states, the MAPS and TAT did indeed reveal the sexual orientation of the homosexuals.
Both Herek and Shenitz make some of the same errors Marmor makes.
1. They suggest that more than one judge reviewed all test results.
2. They also state that after looking at the results of all three tests, the "experts" or "judges" were unable to distinguish between homosexual and heterosexual subjects.
Shenitz is no more than a newspaper reporter, but in Morales v. Texas, Marmor and Herek were testifying as expert scientific witnesses before a judge -- Marmor as former president of the American Psychiatric Association. It is ironic that while the Morales judge accepted the testimony of Marmor and Herek without question, he ignored the research of Paul Cameron, who gives a careful and precise summary of the Hooker study in his volume The Gay Nineties: What the Empirical Evidence Reveals About Homosexuality.
CONCLUSION
This unquestioning acceptance of "authorities" on the basis of professional reputation or political correctness threatens the integrity of our legal system. Judges must take greater responsibility for assessing the soundness and accuracy of testimony by so-called experts; yet, paradoxically, such a task is manifestly beyond the competence of the court. This dilemma is the consequence of the politicizing of the scientific community over the past several decades, particularly in questions of sexuality. The recent exposure of Kinsey's errors indicates just how long researchers have been careless or deliberately misleading in approaching sexual questions. And the widespread acclamation of recent, flawed studies "proving" that homosexuality is inherited genetically is evidence that the problem has only worsened over the years.
*** Dr. Thomas Landess, former Academic Dean at the University of Dallas and former Policy Analyst at the U.S. Department of Education, has authored numerous books and articles.
ENDNOTES
- Bruce Shenitz, "The Grande Dame of Gay Liberation," Los Angeles Times Magazine, June 10, 1990, pp.20-34 at 22.
- Ibid, p. 22.
- Evelyn Hooker, "The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual," Journal of Projective Techniques, 21, 1957, pp. 18-31 at 19.
- Ibid.
- Shenitz, p. 22.
- Ibid, p. 20.
- Ibid, p. 20.
- Ibid, pp. 19,20.
- Ibid, p. 18. The Editorial Note explains that, "If some of Dr. Hooker's comments, as cautiously presented as they are, seem premature or incompletely documented, the blame must fall on the editors who exercised considerable pressure on her to publish now."
- Ibid, p. 30.
- Ibid, p.23.
- Ibid, p. 25.
- Paul Cameron, The Gay Nineties: What the Empirical Evidence Reveals About Homosexuality, Adroit Press, (Franklin, TN: 1993), p. 37.
- Hooker, p. 30.
- Ibid, p. 30.
- Ibid, p. 30.
- Judd Marmor, Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry (Baltimore: 1975), Vol. 2, pp. 15-16.
- Cameron, pp. 35-36.
- Shenitz, p. 25.
An excerpt from "Sexual Orientation and Psychoanalysis: Sexual Science and Clinical Practice"
"Hooker, Spitzer, Schidlo and Schroeder: Convenience Samples Differentially Treated
Without being critical of the Hooker research , Friedman and Downey describe the non-representative, convenience samples used in her studies of homosexual men: "Through word of mouth, Hooker recruited highly functional, socially well-integrated homosexual men." (P. 235).
In spite of the non-representative nature of the samples, the authors uncritically accept Hooker's research as being scientifically valid.
Yet they are very critical of Spitzer's similar use of "convenience samples." And they completely ignore the use of convenience samples by Schidlo and Schroeder. For example, Schidlo and Schroeder's solicitation of those who were "harmed by reparative therapy" was a blatant example of bias. (P. 270-271).
Consider the following advertisement for participants in the Schidlo study:
"Help Us Document the Damage of Homophobic Therapies: In association with the National Lesbian and Gay Health Association, we are conducting research on the outcome of treatments that claim to 'cure' homosexuality.
"Our purpose is to document the damage that we believe occurs when a lesbian, gay or bisexual client receives psychological help from a provider who promises to change a person's sexual orientation. We are looking for individuals who have experienced such a program and who are willing to talk about it confidentially by telephone, email or by filling out a written survey."
It is interesting that Schidlo and Schroeder changed the title of their study from "Homophobic Therapies: Documenting the Damage" to "Changing Sexual Orientation: Does Counseling Work?" because some of their study participants actually reported that there were benefits--and, in some instances, change in sexual orientation..."
An excerpt from "When Wish Replaces Thought: Why so Much of What You Believe Is False" by Professor Steven Goldberg, Chairman of the Sociology Department at City College of New York, Prometheus Books, January 1992:
"...Virtually every homosexual spokesman who has argued that homosexuals demonstrate no greater pathology has rested his case on an article by Evelyn Hooker without noting that Professor Hooker selected for individuals who did not manifest any of a number of signs of pathology...to invoke this study as demonstrating that homosexuals demonstrate no greater pathology than heterosexuals is like selecting a sample of 30 six-foot-tall women and six-foot-tall men and concluding that women are as tall as men..."
"The APA's decision was the result of a three-year process that began when the Gay Activists Alliance, energized by the 1969 Stonewall riots, disrupted an APA meeting in San Francisco in 1970 to protest APA seminars on treating and curing homosexuality. In 1971 the APA allowed a gay activist to address the APA meeting directly. In 1972, gay psychiatrist John Freyer spoke to the APA about the ramifications of being a closeted gay psychiatrist at that time. Freyer, who died Feb. 21, was so fearful about ruining his career by outing himself that he appeared onstage in a wig and a mask and electronically altered his voice. Meanwhile, Hartmann and a group of psychiatrists worked successfully behind the scenes to install more liberal leadership in the APA. In 1973, the APA agreed to re-examine the scientific literature on homosexuality in preparation for revising the DSM and concluded that homosexuality did not fit the criteria of a mental disturbance.
The conclusion was based in part on the groundbreaking 1957 study by Dr. Evelyn Hooker, which found that homosexuality was not inherently associated with psychopathology. The famous Kinsey Report, which revealed that homosexual behavior among men and women was much more common than previously believed, was also instrumental. The APA also looked at the 1951 Ford and Beach study, a cross cultural review of scientific studies and archival data that concluded that homosexual behavior was widespread in other animal species and accepted in other human societies.
"So those kinds of studies pretty much showed that many of the things that people believed to be true about homosexuality were not borne out by research," says Dr. Jack Drescher, current chair of the APA's committee for gay, lesbian and bisexual concerns..."
Pro-Homosexual Study Authored by Lesbian
(AgapePress) - Raising questions about a conflict of interests, a pro-family leader claims that the co-author of a 2002 study of the children of homosexual couples is not a researcher but a propagandist.
Joe Glover, president of the Family Policy Network in Virginia, said that he was puzzled by the work of University of Virginia professor Charlotte J. Patterson, who co-authored a study which claimed that the children of lesbian couples are as happy and well-adjusted as children living in traditional homes. In addition, the study recommended -- as steps toward "breaking down legal barriers to maintenance of parent-child relationships in families headed by gay and lesbian parents" -- repeal of all sodomy laws, legalization of same-sex "marriage" throughout the U.S., and legalization of adoption by same-sex couples as well as "second-parent adoptions" (adoption of the children of the other same-sex partner).
Such reforms, stated the report, "would extend to gay and lesbian parents and their children the legal protections that are now generally taken for granted by other families." In that report, titled "Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents: Research, Law and Policy," Patterson cited her own research extensively.
However, Glover did some research of his own, and discovered that Patterson is a lesbian in a relationship with a female partner, and the couple has three children between them. The pro-family advocate said Patterson has an obvious agenda and is using her title as a psychologist to put forth one-sided propaganda.
"She actually writes books on how lesbians can manipulate the law in order to have double adoption processes so they can create these lesbian so-called 'families,'" he said. Patterson, he added, is a radical homosexual activist "who has a clear agenda to redefine what a family is or should be."
In addition, according to an article in The Daily Progress (Charlottesville, Virginia), Patterson admitted that the study did not deal one of the most controversial issues -- whether or not kids raised in same-sex households were more likely to become homosexual themselves.
Those in favor of legitimizing same-sex families frequently gloss over or completely ignore this area of debate. For example, in a panel discussion at Tufts University, Dr. Ellen Perrin, professor of pediatrics at the Tufts-New England Medical Center, said the matter was not even a valid question.
"One of those questions that always gets asked is, 'What are these kids [raised in same-sex families] going to be?' I'm bothered by that question," she said, adding that "it's a homophobic question, because it doesn't matter" if a child turns out to be homosexual.
Perrin was instrumental in getting the American Academy of Pediatrics to change its policy to favor same-sex families.
Honest, Abe? A dishonest book claims Lincoln as the first log cabin Republican.
The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln
A Republican hero, but was Abe Lincoln gay
"In an interview with the Spanish magazine Alba, Bishop Juan Antonio Reig Pla of Segorbe-Castellón, Spain, explained the origin of gender ideology and laid out seven concepts Catholics should keep in mind in understanding the “gay phenomenon” in Spain and the rest of the world.
The bishop explained that gender ideology began with the “fraudulent Kinsey Report at the end of the 1940s,” which “was an invitation to all kinds of sexual experimentations” and disrupted the proper order of human relationships: “marriage-love-sexuality (man and woman)-procreation.”
Later, Bishop Reig Pla indicated step by step the stages that led to the emergence of gender ideology. “First, sexuality without marriage: so-called free love. Then, sexuality without openness to children: contraception and abortion. Later, sexuality without love: having sex, pornography, etc. Later, having children without sex: assisted reproduction. Lastly, sexuality was separated from the person: there is no longer male and female; sex is an anatomic feature with no anthropological relevance. One can choose to sexually configure oneself according to one’s wishes: heterosexual man, homosexual man, heterosexual woman, transsexuals. Gender ideology was born.”
The bishop denounced the existence of a gay lobby made up of associations that coordinate in apply pressure in society, in the media and in politics. He also pointed to the existence of “political homosexuality as a fundamental tool of pressure used by the gay lobby.” This strategy aims to convince politicians of the political benefits of making legislative concessions to the homosexual lobby.
Likewise, Bishop Reig Pla warned that the “gay culture” is “the ultimate end of the gay lobby. It’s a gay civilization in which homosexuality, or at least bisexuality, is ‘natural’ and universally accepted and practiced”
Lastly, he denounced the emergence of a “gay theology” which is an extension of the gay lobby and has infiltrated all Christian denominations and the Catholic Church. Its representatives have systematically elaborated an absolutely heretical body of doctrine. This theology seeks to seduce some, divide Catholics and disparage pastors by spreading these ideas through the media.”
"This story is the homosexual lobby's worst nightmare. When it agitates for marriage, adoption and other extraordinary rights, it finds homosexuals who have been in committed relationships for long periods to speak to legislators, judges or journalists. But as extensive sociological research has shown, the New York City case is more typical of the promiscuous lifestyle of homosexuals...
As much as homosexual agitators contend HIV threatens everyone, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 82 percent of America's 920,000 AIDS cases in 2003 began with homosexual sex, the sharing of drug needles or both. Heterosexual contact accounted for less than 15 percent, but the rate among monogamous couples and abstinent singles was 0 percent. These numbers illustrate best why the life expectancy of homosexuals is at least 30 years shorter than that of the average heterosexual.
At a time when the cost of health insurance is soaring and millions have lost or are at risk of losing their health coverage, why should taxpayers through Medicaid and insurers through higher premiums have to pay so that more than 200 million people may undergo unnecessary testing when the people most responsible for transmitting HIV won't submit to tests or take precautions to prevent the spread of the disease?
....EdReform this quote is from one of the URLs you posted.
What a shame more parents are not aware this is also happening here in some of our schools under the name of tolerance.
S.D. man could have aggressive HIV strain
"An unidentified San Diego resident may be infected with the same rare, aggressive and highly drug-resistant strain of HIV found last week in a New York City man who has rapidly become ill with AIDS, health officials said yesterday.
"(The local person's) HIV has a similar molecular makeup as the patient in New York City," said Dr. Nancy Bowen, the San Diego County public health officer who held a press conference about the finding yesterday afternoon in San Diego.
It's important to notify the public about a new and possibly supervigorous strain of HIV so people can take extra precautions, Bowen said. But "I don't think it will do anybody any good to get panicked about this," she said, emphasizing that many details are still being sorted out..."
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