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Gay parents find themselves at home in Texas

Full story: Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

Despite Texas' conservative reputation, gay couples living here are more likely to have children than in almost any other place in the country, according to a study published in "The Gay and Lesbian Atlas." The ...

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BigCatDaddy

Wichita Falls, TX

C'mon now, we are waaay too redneck for this story to be true.

Openly Okie

Cathedral City, CA

Sensitivity Trainer wrote:

Study finds disproportionate abuse by 'gays'
34% of sexual molestations of foster children were same-sex
A six-year study of sexual abuse committed by foster parents in Illinois found a highly disproportionate percentage of the cases were homosexual in nature.
About one-third were same-sex while estimates are that no more than 3 percent of people in the general population say they engage in homosexual acts.
An article in the March issue of the peer-reviewed publication Psychological Reports presented data analyzed by Dr. Paul Cameron, chairman of the Colorado-based Family Research Institute.

Ah, that Paul Cameron. He's the guy who got kicked out of the APA so he started that publication, "Psychological Reports" so he could publish his own "research". His "peers" are those doctors of theology who make 100K salaries working for Focus on the Family.

If you want reliable data on child sexual abuse, you have to understand that 98% of these "homosexual" predators are the fathers, grandfathers or uncles of the kids who are being abused.

Let's take it to the extreme. Take a city like, say, Palm Springs, where the gay population makes up fully 25 percent of the total population. Under Cameron's "formula" the rate of child sexual abuse would be so clearly off the roof, there would be a extrordinarily, outrageously high number of children being abused.

Yet, there aren't. Right now in the newspaper there's a story of a policeman who was raping his 8 year old daughter and before that the story of another guy who had impregnated 3 of his daughters, and before that the guy who had been sexually abusing all EIGHT of his sons and daughters. But there have been ZERO case of abuse involving gay perpetrators in, let's see, something like 16 years.

That pretty much tells you the story on Cameron. He calls it "gay" when fathers sexually abuse their sons. Gimme a break! The Finklehor survey of 1,200 day cares didn't even register 1%. "Statistically Insignficant" was what his finding were. The Connecticut study of felons incarcerated for sexually abusing children found ZERO gay people. The Children's Hospital of Denver found ONE case in 377 cases over a full year. Cameron lies and that's why he can't get membership to the APA. Now he's soaking the religious right of their money because the WANT to believe him. He's probably got a big foundation he's heading and vacation homes in Miami that the religious nuts have paid for. He's a quack and everybody knows it.

East Texas Dad

Tyler, TX

Personally I am pretty up on the news. I have never heard of this study and will be looking into it's validity. I have a loving home with my children that is a safe haven from where they came. Through teachings of CPS, we were told of the HUGE amount of sexual abuse in the heterosexual world. We even took a class (age appropriate to have this discussion with the child) but set "house rules" up front and one of them being is YOU WILL NOT BE EXPECTED TO HAVE SEX with anyone in this household.

All we have ever wanted was to bring positive things into our childrens lives and hopefully make a difference. Every person is an individual, but I can tell you one thing. ALL EVIDENCE of any previous study has shown that homosexual parenting has not resulted in ANY sexual abuse.

We have a grand group of friends who have adopted or simply fostered. Some of our friends and aquitances have done fostering for 20+ years. Some of the children they have taken in were 10-12 years old. They consider that household to be there parents and still go there for Holidays.

I sure wish people in general would look as people as indivduals or couples not just as their sexual orientation. Aren't you a lot more than Straight or gay? I would sure hope so.

TampaBob

Tampa, FL

Sensitivity Trainer wrote:

Study finds disproportionate abuse by 'gays'
34% of sexual molestations of foster children were same-sex
A six-year study of sexual abuse committed by foster parents in Illinois found a highly disproportionate percentage of the cases were homosexual in nature.
About one-third were same-sex while estimates are that no more than 3 percent of people in the general population say they engage in homosexual acts.
An article in the March issue of the peer-reviewed publication Psychological Reports presented data analyzed by Dr. Paul Cameron, chairman of the Colorado-based Family Research Institute.
Cameron believes it's likely the Illinois figures reflect the situation among the nation's estimated half-million foster children.
"What's shocking, is that 34 percent of the molestations were homosexual," Cameron told the Illinois Leader.
According to a DCFS spokeswoman, the agency does not track the sexual orientation of prospective foster or adoptive parents.
"We track our foster and adoptive parents on the basis of their being single or married. That's it," Marjorie Newman told the paper last year.
The agency would not say whether the information would lead to a change in policy.
The study showed 1 percent of Illinois foster and subsidized-adoption children are molested and 3 percent are abused physically every year.
"Professional societies are so taken with gay rights they are ignoring the evidence," said Cameron. "Just last year, the American Psychological Association [APA] declared opposition to 'discrimination against lesbian or gay parents adoption, child custody and visitation, foster care and reproductive health services.'"
Cameron added, "How does the APA answer this new evidence?"
Last year, Newman said the DCFS does not "discriminate based on gender, race, sexual orientation, sexual preference. There is no law that says that a gay or lesbian person cannot adopt."
The Leader acquired information from DCFS through the Freedom of Information Act indicating most sexual abuse of children was by foster fathers, but that foster mothers were responsible for over three-fourths of physical abuse.
The study found 966 foster parents violated their charges. Of those who engaged in both physical and sexual abuse, eight of the 15 abused children of their own sex.
Cameron said Illinois, which has about 60,000 children in 4,300 foster or adoption-subsidized homes, was the first state to disclose details about abuse.

One only has to look at the first sentence in this article to see how TAINTED the author is - he can't even do MATH correclty. Let's do the math shall we?

The headline in this article is:
Study finds disproportionate abuse by 'gays'

And yet the first sentence says:
34% of sexual molestations of foster children were same-sex.

Ok, let me see here, 100-34=66.

So, shouldnt the headline read: STUDY FINDS HETEROSEXUAL'S FOSTER PARENT MORE PREDISPOSED TO SEXUAL MOLEST.

ANd the first sentence should read: "66% of molestations of foster children were heterosexual."

DOn't you love how they twist facts to suit their own "anti-gay" agenda?

Openly Okie

Cathedral City, CA

East Texas Dad wrote:

Personally I am pretty up on the news. I have never heard of this study and will be looking into it's validity. I have a loving home with my children that is a safe haven from where they came. Through teachings of CPS, we were told of the HUGE amount of sexual abuse in the heterosexual world. We even took a class (age appropriate to have this discussion with the child) but set "house rules" up front and one of them being is YOU WILL NOT BE EXPECTED TO HAVE SEX with anyone in this household.
All we have ever wanted was to bring positive things into our childrens lives and hopefully make a difference. Every person is an individual, but I can tell you one thing. ALL EVIDENCE of any previous study has shown that homosexual parenting has not resulted in ANY sexual abuse.
We have a grand group of friends who have adopted or simply fostered. Some of our friends and aquitances have done fostering for 20+ years. Some of the children they have taken in were 10-12 years old. They consider that household to be there parents and still go there for Holidays.
I sure wish people in general would look as people as indivduals or couples not just as their sexual orientation. Aren't you a lot more than Straight or gay? I would sure hope so.

East Texas Dad, you should know that Paul Cameron has a looooong track record of jumbling figures and data on virtually every aspect of homosexuality. For example, he's the one who came up with this figure that the average life-span of gay men is 39 years old. When the APA looked has his "research" they found he had made that determination but gleaning the obituaries of a gay newspaper in San Francisco at the height of the AIDS crisis. Sheesh! Talk about enriching the stats.

Here in the Coachella Valley of California is the largest community of retired gay people in the entire world. There are thousands of gay men here between the ages of 50 and 90. My own companion is 83 and we have dozens of friends in their 70s and 80s. Cameron is a baffone and he's soaking the religious right to pay his mortgage, and probably laughing all the way to the bank.

If you want reliable data, Goggle "Childrens Hospital of Denver" and find the ACTUAL peer-reviewed study the did in which they specifically asked the question, "Are children more susceptable to being the victims of sexual abuse by homosexuals." The title is something like that and it was done in 1994 or 1996. It is only ONE of several major studies undertaken to determine the answer to this question. Alfred Kinsey is actually the first person to recognize that gays were probably less likely to molest children. Then the Finklehor study, a HUGE survey of day cares, really didn't report ANY incidents involving gays. Then the Connecticut Penal Institution's big study of their incarcerated felons found NO gays involved in child sexual abuse.

Cameron has always panned those finding because, unlike every other professional who studies sexual abuse issues, he takes a view that if the perpetrator is abusing a child of the same sex, the perperator is homosexual. But professions in the field say that approach defies logic, especially when upwards to 85 percent of the perpetrators are the parents of the abused children. It's long been recognized that sexual abuse is about a "power relationship" and has little or nothing to do with sexual orientation. That's why sexual abuse of children by family members is the most common form of abuse

Openly Okie

Cathedral City, CA

http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/fa...

Here's an excellent link on this issue. What you notice about Cameron's "research" is that no one cites it. Colleges and universities regularly cite the Denver study but Cameron is nowhere to be found with the exception of religious web sites. That's the pattern in the religious right for a whole lot of scientific issues, be it global warming, stem cell research, abortion, evolution, sexual orientation, stuff like Terry Shiavo's tragedy when the right side of the aisle in congress arose to intervene in her husband's decision to allow her to die with dignity and where 80 percent of the American public had to tell them to butt out. It's a pattern in science and it affects all of us in many different ways.

Rob in AZ

Chandler, AZ

I know many gay parents.

I haven't lived in Austin, TX long enough though to know many there. I am not surprised thought that Texas may have a larger portion of the settling type ;-).

I was trying to help out a lesbian couple there many year ago who wanted to have a child. I would hope they have been succcesful by now.

I also know a gay father and concert organizer who lived in Austin, TX. After Bush won the last election using gay bashing and homophobia as bait he left the U.S and moved with his little son to Italy though.

Stromquist

New York, NY

Rob in AZ wrote:

I know many gay parents.
I haven't lived in Austin, TX long enough though to know many there. I am not surprised thought that Texas may have a larger portion of the settling type ;-).
I was trying to help out a lesbian couple there many year ago who wanted to have a child. I would hope they have been succcesful by now.
I also know a gay father and concert organizer who lived in Austin, TX. After Bush won the last election using gay bashing and homophobia as bait he left the U.S and moved with his little son to Italy though.

Wait a minute, I thought he won the last election by stealing votes and crushing our civil rights.

Rob in AZ

Chandler, AZ

Stromquist wrote:

<quoted text>
Wait a minute, I thought he won the last election by stealing votes and crushing our civil rights.

That too ... I am just saying that he was especially keen on crushing those of gay citizens ;-).

Openly Okie

Cathedral City, CA

Sensitivity Trainer wrote:

<quoted text>It would not be politically correct to do so. Therefore, it validates the accuracy.

I think the very basis notion of science is to *remove* politically correct notion from the argument. Scientists have reputations to maintain also, as we've seen recently when a Nobel Prize winning scientist was stripped of his prize for falsifying research. Science strives to take "I think" and "I believe" and "my people think" out of the equation and a very quick way to lose your tenure, status and paycheck at a university is it falsify findings or produce work that is filled with logical holes.

No so with the data we see coming out of the Family Research Council. I saw a recent "research paper" there that sought to scientifically prove that straight relationship endure longer than gay relationship. The major flaw of it was that the writer compared married people with unmarried gay couples. It begs the question, "How do you compare married people who have economic penalties to face if they split up and divorce to those people do don't face economic penalties when they split up?" It's whole lot easier to let go of a relationship when you don't have to pay alimony or give up half of your personal property. Some laws matter a great deal to the duration of a relationship. However, the writer used that comparison to conclude that heterosexual marriage is somehow inherently superior to a gay relationship. Gays are prohibited from marrying. We'll never know if gay marriage can endure like straight marriages to until gays are permitted to marry. That's what makes the FRC study bogus. It's apple and oranges and at the very lest, the comparison should at least be with straight unmarried couples who at least have the option to marry.

Openly Okie

Cathedral City, CA

This subject is so distressing when it gets tainted by that Cameron baloney. My partern and I raised a daughter from infancy and she's now married and we have a 4 year old grandson. We met a few other gay couples who where raising children, but mostly we met gay guys who had children from a previous marriage but didn't raise them. Then Cameron comes along like some latter-day Anita Bryant, scaring all the church goes with his hysterical fabrications and that's one of the reasons gay end up sitting and arguing with people on forums.

I've always thought that if the people who lie about the lives of gay people could be like a fly on the wall and see what our real lives were like, it would take the steam out of their arguments. Among gay people, this accusation of a high incidence of child sexual abuse is confounding, because virtually none of us ever met one of the people who perpetrate such crimes. Some of us have been molested, including my own companion, when he was five years old, but finding a child molester among gay people is like trying to find a Hindu in a Baptist church.

joline

Bridgeport, TX

Right winged Republicans think that gay marriage is corrupting the union between man and woman and because of that they think it's ok to put a ban on it. But if they really want to save the "sanctity" of marriage then ban divorce. Thats the true cause of marriages ending. I know more couples that are gay that are happier and have less problems then straight couples. So come on people lets try not to push our beliefs on others because of what they do in their personal lives. It's not anyones place to judge.

joline

Bridgeport, TX

Just for the record that was just to make a point. I completely believe in divorce.

Rob in AZ

Chandler, AZ

Sensitivity Trainer wrote:

<quoted text> Gays aren't 'prohibited' from marrying. They simply need to find a member of the opposite sex and take the vow.

Unlike straights, gays are prohibited from marrying the person they love.

They have the right to try and live in denial and make a person of the opposite sex as well as themselves unhappy ... great right that is.

Openly Okie

Cathedral City, CA

Sensitivity Trainer wrote:

<quoted text> Gays aren't 'prohibited' from marrying. They simply need to find a member of the opposite sex and take the vow.

But enduring of relationships was the subject of the study and gay couple were cited as the comparison group. You can't compare a gay couple to straight married couple if the gay guys get married to females. You then don't have a comparison group to cite and the research is meaningless.

Rob in AZ

Chandler, AZ

Sensitivity Trainer wrote:

How can you ban something that does not exist?

You'd be surprised how many gay parents and long lasting families are out there ;-)

We do exist.

truthhurts

San Antonio, TX

Sensitivity Trainer wrote:

Study finds disproportionate abuse by 'gays'
34% of sexual molestations of foster children were same-sex
A six-year study of sexual abuse committed by foster parents in Illinois found a highly disproportionate percentage of the cases were homosexual in nature.
About one-third were same-sex while estimates are that no more than 3 percent of people in the general population say they engage in homosexual acts.
An article in the March issue of the peer-reviewed publication Psychological Reports presented data analyzed by Dr. Paul Cameron, chairman of the Colorado-based Family Research Institute.
Cameron believes it's likely the Illinois figures reflect the situation among the nation's estimated half-million foster children.
"What's shocking, is that 34 percent of the molestations were homosexual," Cameron told the Illinois Leader.
According to a DCFS spokeswoman, the agency does not track the sexual orientation of prospective foster or adoptive parents.
"We track our foster and adoptive parents on the basis of their being single or married. That's it," Marjorie Newman told the paper last year.
The agency would not say whether the information would lead to a change in policy.
The study showed 1 percent of Illinois foster and subsidized-adoption children are molested and 3 percent are abused physically every year.
"Professional societies are so taken with gay rights they are ignoring the evidence," said Cameron. "Just last year, the American Psychological Association [APA] declared opposition to 'discrimination against lesbian or gay parents adoption, child custody and visitation, foster care and reproductive health services.'"
Cameron added, "How does the APA answer this new evidence?"
Last year, Newman said the DCFS does not "discriminate based on gender, race, sexual orientation, sexual preference. There is no law that says that a gay or lesbian person cannot adopt."
The Leader acquired information from DCFS through the Freedom of Information Act indicating most sexual abuse of children was by foster fathers, but that foster mothers were responsible for over three-fourths of physical abuse.
The study found 966 foster parents violated their charges. Of those who engaged in both physical and sexual abuse, eight of the 15 abused children of their own sex.
Cameron said Illinois, which has about 60,000 children in 4,300 foster or adoption-subsidized homes, was the first state to disclose details about abuse.

I believe this to be true. Homosexuals have hijacked the APA. They have turn it into their own personal voice box. Any research that does not promote homo-sexuality is instantly squelched. The truth is if you are attractive to a member of the same sex you have serious pshyc. issues. Thes issues were spelled out in the DSM III. After the sodomites took over the APA they did away with classification of homosexuality as a pathology. Any man who is attracted no any other mans hairry anus has issues.

truthhurts

San Antonio, TX

joline wrote:

Right winged Republicans think that gay marriage is corrupting the union between man and woman and because of that they think it's ok to put a ban on it. But if they really want to save the "sanctity" of marriage then ban divorce. Thats the true cause of marriages ending. I know more couples that are gay that are happier and have less problems then straight couples. So come on people lets try not to push our beliefs on others because of what they do in their personal lives. It's not anyones place to judge.

Right wing conservatives does not place a band of gays having children. NATURE DOES, it is so obvious that nature vomits the notion that homosexuality is okay. Homosexulity = no children. Bioloically impossible? why? because it's deviant behavior.

Openly Okie

Cathedral City, CA

Jim wrote:

The federal appeals court that has twice upheld Florida's full ban on homosexual adoption cited numerous studies confirming that children do best when living with both a father and mother. They also cited the absense of any real amount of data to offer comfort with placing children in the home of a homosexual "couple."
The fact is that there are very few long term exclusive relationships between marriage, and that few of them actually choose to adopt, even where judges allow it.
Homosexual adoption, by definition, denies a child a mother or a father.

Well cite one of them then. I remember when the US Supreme Court was hearing Romer vs. Evans there was a line of expert witnesses citing gay parenting and adoption studies and what the court concluded was that, while they couldn't deny that having a two-parent, man/woman household was good for children, they also couldn't deny that raising children in a gay family was detrimental. We all know that Florida is the single holdout on gay adoption and we all know the decision is strongly influenced by politics. So they can cite all the studies they want to. There only good evidence that gay people make qualified parents and if they weren't taking the job, a whole lot of these kids would be without parents at all.

Openly Okie

Cathedral City, CA

truthhurts wrote:

<quoted text>
Right wing conservatives does not place a band of gays having children. NATURE DOES, it is so obvious that nature vomits the notion that homosexuality is okay. Homosexulity = no children. Bioloically impossible? why? because it's deviant behavior.

Having children is nothing that can't be overcome with artificial insemenation or adoption. And, yes, even in nature animals adopt the offspring of other animals. So there goes you "nature ban" argument.

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