Hetty, what homo-sexual person with preferences for young children would submit to a study, let alone one that would not give them preferential treatment (like they can expect at UCDavis)?
Heck, what similarly-minded hetero- would?
The only fair and rational study is to look at those convicted, and the gender of their victim/s. When you look at those numbers, you get a far different picture. This way you avoid the premeditated tainting of a study.
Again, I have to ask: How can anyone look at a report of a male adult molesting a male child (or female/female) and not call it a homosexual act? And if that adult is committing a homosexual act, then how can you avoid labeling them as homosexual (or at least bi-sexual)?
Back to me: Obviously, part of what I posted from UC Davis was ignored in the rest of the verbiage. Here it is again:
Dr. Carole Jenny reviewed 352 medical charts, representing all of the sexually abused children seen in the emergency room or child abuse clinic of a Denver children's hospital during a one-year period (from July 1, 1991 to June 30, 1992). The molester was a gay or lesbian adult in only 2 of the 269 cases in which an adult molester could be identified – fewer than 1% (Jenny et al., 1994).
Now, if you are just going to get on your high horse and say that this study is "tainted," you can stop reading right now, but if not, please note that this doctor did this study by going through ALL of the charts on sexually abused children in one locale for one year. She did not separate them out some way, she just picked a locale and went through ALL of the charts there. Of the 352 charts she looked at, 269 had previously *identified* adult molesters. Of those who were *identified* in this way, a grand total of 2 of them were gay or lesbian adults. Meaning that they were adults who self-identified as gay or lesbian in their relationships with other adults.
So. We know that the good doctor did not go around asking the molesters if they were gay or straight; she just wrote down what had already been identified by other people as to who was gay and who was straight. Unless you are going to say that she outright lied, we have to say her data is okay. Now, as to whether that data was tainted by lies from the molesters, I suppose it's possible, but what reason would they have to lie about that? They might lie as to whether they had committed the molestation, as that would serve them by keeping them out of prison, but there is no reason I can see for them to lie about their sexual orientation.
As to your question about whether we must necessarily call abusers homosexual if they are committing same-sex sexual abuse, that is not an unreasonable question. However, according to what I have been reading the last few days, there are two basic kinds of "pedophiles." One kind just takes advantage of a specific situation, and might not have ever committed a sex crime before. An example of that would be a stepfather abusing his wife's daughter (a very common scenario, BTW, leading me to the conclusion that divorced mothers with underage daughters should never remarry until the girls are out of the nest). The other kind of pedophile, the kind that really deserves the name, is basically sexually fixated on kids and kids only (rather than adults), and this kind of pedophile often does not care what sex the child is. Boy or girl, it really doesn't matter to them as long as the child is available. It is the "childness" that gets them excited rather than the gender of the child.
As for whether we must necessarily identify a homosexual act as coming from a homosexual, that is not unreasonable ... except that if you look at the study numbers, only two of 269 self-identified as gay. (And you must admit that two guys trying to adopt a child would obviously self-identify as gay.) I wish I had the rest of the numbers from the study, but I'll bet you all the tea in China that a number of the children (though not the majority) were boys who were molested by men. Do you see the issue? If only two owned up to being gay, then the rest must be living heterosexual lifestyles the rest of the time (when they're not molesting children). So how on EARTH can you pre-identify them? You can't!
I do find it interesting and rather discouraging that most of the posts I see here on FR regarding child molestation are centered on the (admittedly heinous) possibility of homosexuals molesting children, rather than the far more common scenario of adult males molesting female children. We are failing to see the forest because we are staring at one little tree.
And BTW, I'd like to point out that if you read my original post, you will see that I am not at all in favor of children being adopted by gays. However, that is because I think it will just screw up their concept of male/female relationships and cause them problems with their relationships in future, not because I am worried about the children being molested in any greater numbers than if they were adopted by heterosexual parents.