Are Dr. Judith Reisman's claims about homosexuals and pedophilia phony?

Springfield(MO) News-Leader ^ | 08/25/02 - 08/30/02 | Haven Howard - Lisa Tinker

[reborn22]

I am totally impressed by the extent of your research into homosexuality and pedophilia. This subject is of special interest to me and I wonder whether you can direct me to a website with links to more material such as you quote?

Do you have an academic background in the subject, or does your professional life involve working with pedophiles or victims of pedophiles? You have obviously devoted much of your life to research into homosexuality and pedophilia, so this is for sure a sphere that concerns you closely. I'd be interested to learn about your own practical experience of these issues as well as the research you've quoted.

Btw, I always thought that the reason Kinsey overestimated the percentage of American homosexuals was because he was homosexual himself and he was trying to show homosexuality to be normal.

I would also like to know what advice you would give to Christians who want to help give homosexuals the strength to reject their desires and obey God's will. Do you think Christians should be compassionate towards homosexuals?

Thank you.

[UbIwerks]

But to answer your question: A May 19 Washington Times article described CFV's recent conference in Colorado Springs as two days of top-secret meetings.

Btw... that was not a link to the Washington Times article, but, rather, what appears to be a letter from Indiana State University (I think).

That letter says that Paul Cameron was kicked out of the APA when the link I gave showed he had resigned.

Actually, the whole content of the letter seems hypocritical. I wonder what goes on in pro homosexual affirming seminars?

The liberal media is staffed by homosexuals and those sympathetic to the pervert agenda. The pro family types in Free Republic or elsewhere will have to learn to deal with unbelievable hostility and outright smears if any of you guys become prominent speakers.

[Bryan]

I think I'm through with you now.

Not so fast. I'm not through with you. You will notice that wherever Dr. Cameron is rabidly attacked on those websites that you're undoubtedly using for your talking points, only his original research -- surveys etc. done by Dr. Cameron himself, such as his mortality study -- are criticized for their methodology.

Dr. Cameron's summaries of research done by others have never been discredited. That's why I use them. And I have been entirely intellectually honest about it, as you pointed out by citing my Post #16.

Just look at all the individuals and groups that are citing [Dr. Reisman's] work. They all at the FAR end of the political spectrum. This fact alone should suggest to you that there's something questionable about her work.

Mark Steyn wrote a very interesting column a few weeks ago, describing this strategy. Evidently it appears on Page Eight of the Official Left-Wing Playbook: "Don't let people realize you're way out on the lunatic left-wing fringe. You must define your own position as reasonable and moderate, and the conservative mainstream position as the militant, radical, far-right position."

Here's an excerpt from Steyn's column. He describes your strategy perfectly:

[T]he aim of a large swathe of the left is not to win the debate but to get it cancelled before it starts. You can do that in any number of ways -- busting up campus appearances by conservatives, "hate crimes" laws, Canada's ghastly human-rights commissions, the more "enlightened" court judgments, the EU's recent decision to criminalize "xenophobia," or merely, as the [New York] Times does, by declaring your side of every issue to be the "moderate" and "nonideological" position.

As Elizabeth Nickson pointed out in her magnificent column on Friday, if you're a Minister of the Crown in Ottawa the preferred tactic for dealing with the mildest criticism is to denounce your opponents as Klansmen and Holocaust deniers. This is somewhat cruder, as befits Da Liddle Guy's style of government, but is in line with the general trend -- different tactics but the same aim: to rule certain issues beyond debate, and thus render the conservative position if not illegal than at any rate unmentionable.

... That's all I ask, really. That the left stop pretending all these things have been settled, and anyone who disagrees is a racist sexist homophobe hater. ... The majority of Americans are opposed to racial preferences. They're about evenly divided on abortion in general, but 86% oppose third-trimester abortion, and 82% favour letting the parents know before allowing a minor to have an abortion.

Yet if you're a Bush judicial nominee who's ruled in favour of parental notification you'll be denounced by Planned Parenthood as an "anti-choice extremist." It's you and the rest of your 82% who are extremist and ideological and hopelessly out of step with the moderate, nonideological, pragmatic 18%. Amazingly, this line -- attacking the messenger, not the message -- works very well for the left north and south of the border and across most of western Europe. ...

Meanwhile, the left has an hilarious bumper sticker: "Celebrate Diversity." In the newsrooms of America, they celebrate diversity of race, diversity of gender, diversity of orientation, diversity of everything except the only diversity that matters: diversity of thought.

Of course, there are many MORE facts available upon which to make a judgement... all of them leading to the same conclusion: Reisman is NOT a repoutable researcher.

You keep making references to these "many more facts" but you continue to decline to produce them. I'm forced to conclude that they are either figments of your imagination, or built more out of left-wing distortion than fact.

But to answer your question: A May 19 Washington Times article described CFV's recent conference in Colorado Springs as two days of top-secret meetings.

I clicked on your link and, exactly as I expected, it's a left-wing gay rights website providing truckloads of ammunition for little gay-rights cyber-warriors such as madg to venture onto conservative websites and try to make some sort of courageous stand.

http://www.qrd.org/qrd/religion/anti/CFV/top_secret_conference.txt

Here's their homepage:

http://www.qrd.org/qrd/

"The Queer Resources Directory contains 25488 files about everything queer; the QRD is at http://www.qrd.org/, with mirrors all over the world. You can start with the subject tree, or with these headings ..."

One brief look at your source website reveals it to be precisely the militant, left-wing, "everybody who doesn't agree with us is a right-wing fascist homophobe" distortion factory I expected to find behind your posts.

"Virtually?" In other words, there's some interpretation involved... my point.

This is another one of your deliberate distortions. The wording can be changed without changing the meaning -- it's called "paraphrasing" -- and that is precisely what was done. In this case, statistical tables from Appendix D of Bell & Weinberg's study were translated into grammatically correct sentences.

If I start searching through FRI's website, how much MORE of the "information" from your posts will I find there?

Quite a bit of it, actually, as I revealed in Post #16 on this thread. But as I said, Dr. Cameron's summaries of the work of others have never been discredited. Bell & Weinberg, senior research fellows at the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research and openly supportive of your militant gay rights agenda, are the ones who provide the greatest amount of original source material that I've used here.

It is YOU, sir, that is NOT being intellectually honest with us. You've been engaged in non-stop deflection, attempting to diguise the fact that you've been quoting disgraced researcher Paul Cameron throughout this entire thread.

There's no disguising or intellectually dishonesty going on from my end of this discussion. As you observed, my Post #16 openly acknowledged that much of the material I posted came from two of Dr. Cameron's online pamphlets.

In the city where I live, I have at my disposal a large public library (where I found Bell & Weinberg's study and many others), the library of one of the finest medical schools in the nation (where I found all the psychiatric and medical journals, as well as some other books by these researchers), and a university library (where I found the homosexuals' publications, such as the Advocate and the Washington Blade).

For example, Dr. Cameron reported that according to the Bell & Weinberg study, 565 white male homosexuals were interviewed and 25% admitted having sexual relations with persons aged 16 or younger, while they themselves were age 21 or older. (By the way, I again point out that in almost all of the 50 states that's a felony, whether the relationship is gay or straight.)

Two years ago, I set out to verify as many of Dr. Cameron's summaries as I could. I went down to our public library and pulled their copy of Homosexualities: A Study in Diversity Among Men and Women off the shelf. I used the index and the table of contents, turned to Appendix D and, lo and behold! The statistical tables showed exactly what Dr. Cameron reported.

The information is there, waiting for you, gathering dust on the shelves of libraries all around you. It would involve you getting up out of your chair and actually going to these libraries, pulling the books and bound volumes of back issues of scientific journals off the shelf, using the indexes and the tables of contents, and turning the pages with your own two hands.

It's a bit more difficult than pointing and clicking with your mouse on the "Queer Resources Directory" website, but somehow, I'm sure you can manage if you're interested. I've provided all the information necessary for you to find it and confirm that everything I've said is true: names of the authors, publishers of the books, dates and volumes and issues of the journals and, in many cases, even the page numbers.

[Kozak]

Next is her statement that “innocent boys, not girls” have been molested by clergy. It is disconcerting that lack of personal research and continued media sensationalism have led her to believe this.

90+% of the cases involving Catholic clergy sexual abuse has been adolescent/teenage boys. THAT is homosexual abuse of kids NOT your run of the mill pedophilia. Any one notice that the Boy Scouts have had almost NO problem, despite a situation ( off camping in the woods ) where you would have plenty of opportunity.

[reborn22]

I really do appreciate all the information you've given us, but some of don't have the time to go through all those library shelves as assiduously as you have done. You have done some real hard work, and most of us are grateful. However, I would appreciate a reply to the questions I asked you in my post 121. Thank you.

[VOA]

After all, the ratio of gay rapist/murderers to straight rapist/murderers wouldn't be one-to-one.

The comparable metric would be the percentage of gay rapists/murderers in the
total gay population
TO
the percentage of straight rapists/murderers in the total
straight population.

Of course, getting reliable numbers might be a bit of a challenge, given all
the vagaries of criminal statistics as well as "self-reporting" of orientation.

[VOA]

Open question to the forum:

I saw an interview with Reisman and she went on at some lenght about how much
study Kinsy (and Co.) did with orgasmic response in children.

My questions:
1. Did Kinsey (and Co.) actually perform such research?

2. Does the Kinsey Institute (or whatever the organization at Indiana U. is called)
keep records of Kinsey research behind locked doors as alleged by Reisman?

I'm keeping an open mind about these issues, but those are two questions that have bugged me.

[Bryan]

I am totally impressed by the extent of your research into homosexuality and pedophilia. This subject is of special interest to me and I wonder whether you can direct me to a website with links to more material such as you quote?

http://www.frc.org/get/is01b1.cfm

http://www.cprmd.org/Myths/MYTHS_PAGE.htm

Do you have an academic background in the subject, or does your professional life involve working with pedophiles or victims of pedophiles? You have obviously devoted much of your life to research into homosexuality and pedophilia, so this is for sure a sphere that concerns you closely. I'd be interested to learn about your own practical experience of these issues as well as the research you've quoted.

I am a paralegal and I've spent many years working for criminal defense attorneys. Fourteen years ago, when the ink was still wet on my diploma, I was hired to work on a criminal appeal for an innocent man who had been wrongfully convicted of sodomizing his own three-year-old son with a screwdriver.

The state's own star witness -- a medical examiner who had testified as an expert witness in over 300 murder trials -- testified that it was medically impossible for the crime to have been committed. This man spent 18 months in prison as a convicted child molester before we could get him out.

This was a landmark case and it is being used in law schools to instruct future attorneys on the meaning of the magic words, "reasonable doubt." Of course, we became well-known as the local experts on sex offenses against children and our reputation was that if we couldn't get an acquittal nobody could.

The inevitable result was that every other criminal defense attorney in town started referring clients to us if they had been accused of sex offenses against children. Our waiting room seemed to fill up with real, live, genuine child molesters. I was almost always present during the initial interviews with these clients, and the frequent answers to our questions were, "Yes, I did it, but you've got to get me out of trouble," and "Yes, I'm gay."

All too often, the only thing we could do for these guys was to make certain that their constitutional rights were protected on the way to prison. Because that's where they were inevitably going. But I was frequently called upon to research the possibility of using a diminished capacity defense, usually called the "insanity defense."

I always thought that the reason Kinsey overestimated the percentage of American homosexuals was because he was homosexual himself and he was trying to show homosexuality to be normal.

You're probably right. Kinsey's original training was as a zoologist. He spent the first half of his professional career in the tedious cataloguing of thousands of specimens of bees and other insects. When a research grant became available for sex research, he applied for it; and since no licensed mental health professional at Indiana University in the 1940s wanted to touch the subject, he was awarded the grant.

I would also like to know what advice you would give to Christians who want to help give homosexuals the strength to reject their desires and obey God's will. Do you think Christians should be compassionate towards homosexuals?

Of course, Christians should be compassionate toward homosexuals, and toward all other men and women who are struggling against sin. We are all either slaves to God, or slaves to sin. Homosexuals who are sexually active are in the grip of a type of sin that is extremely powerful and controlling, as madg has indicated. This is a very difficult cross for them to bear. The world teaches them that their impulses are completely normal and natural, and that it is incumbent upon the rest of us to accept them.

Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 teach us that homosexual conduct is a sin. Acts 15:29-30 releases Christians from almost all of the old Laws of Moses in Leviticus, but one of the four areas of those old laws that is still binding upon Christians is the laws against "sexual immorality."

I Corinthians 6:9-10, Romans 1:26-27 and I Timothy 1:9-11 confirm that the prohibition against homosexual conduct applies to Christians. The entire passage of Romans 1:18-32 is, in my opinion, addressed directly to the liberalization of Christian doctrine.

There are many cases of homosexuals who have left that lifestyle behind, married members of the opposite sex and now lead happy and satisfied lives free from sin. Even the homosexual proselytizers such as madg will eagerly point out that some heterosexuals have changed their sexual orientation and become homosexuals -- their rallying cry, if I may be so crude, is "Ditch the bitch and make the switch!" If they can "switch" to homosexuality, why can't homosexuals "switch" to heterosexuality?

But if that is impossible, then the only choice for a homosexual who seeks salvation is celibacy. There are many thousands of men and women who have found complete and fulfilled lives through celibacy. They are called priests and nuns.

Also, militant feminists claim that a woman can lead a complete and fulfilled life without a man: their rallying cry is, "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle." If a woman can have a complete and fulfilled life without a man, why can't a homosexual do the same?

[VOA]

I was hired to work on a criminal appeal for an innocent man who had been wrongfully convicted
of sodomizing his own three-year-old son with a screwdriver.

I'll never forget seeing an interview of a journalist (from Detroit) who recounted how
his estranged wife accussed him of sexually abusing their child.
The judge in the case eventually tossed all the allegations and reached the
conclusion the wife's accuassations were groundless...but gave her custody
(or the king's share of it, IIRC).

This was on CNN maybe 15 years ago and I remember having shudders.
Little did I suspect this was just the leading edge of the tidal wave of sex-abuse
accuasations being used in divorce cases for leverage...

[Bryan]

You've struck upon a subject that really deserves a thread of its own.

Actually, the leading edge of the tidal wave was about 30 years ago. Our office also handles family law and domestic battery cases. We have represented both men and women in family court, and both the victims and the alleged abusers in domestic violence cases.

There has been a lot of attention paid by the left-wing media to deadbeat ex-husbands; but for every deadbeat ex-husband, there is a shrewish ex-wife. She will use the children as ammunition in the war against her ex-husband. She will obstruct visitation in a multitude of different ways because it hurts her ex-husband -- never giving a thought to what it's doing to the kids.

She will lie under oath to get exclusive title to the car, the house, and any other marital assets, plus alimony and child support checks, for as many dollars and as many years as she can get. Frequently, her ex-husband is even forced to pay the fees for her attorney -- who is, often enough, a professional shrew on her own merits.

All of these concessions can be obtained under the threat of a false accusation of domestic violence or molesting the children. Because when such an accusation is made, the man is guilty until proven innocent.

Of course, none of what I've written in this post is intended to accuse any of the millions of women (and men) who act responsibly in family court, and have only the best interests of the children at heart. Nor is it intended to take anything away from the thousands of women (and men) who must deal with the very real dangers of domestic violence and the sexual abuse of their children.

But false accusations are a problem that is equally real, and extremely damaging. The man whose case I mentioned, who had been falsely accused of sodomizing his three-year-old son with a screwdriver, went through a terrible ordeal. His career was destroyed. He was a deacon in his church; they threw him out. He sold his home to pay his attorney fees.

And he was one of the lucky ones because the false charges didn't stick. Prosecutors point to his case and claim that the system works. Every year, innocent men's lives are ruined by such false charges. But the worst damage, in my opinion, is done to women and children who face very real abusers; because false accusations made by unscrupulous women erode their credibility.

[VOA]

The man whose case I mentioned...His career was destroyed. He was a deacon in
his church; they threw him out. He sold his home to pay his attorney fees.

That's a sad commentary...especially about his church.
Guess the elders at that church must have skipped that "judge not" passage.
Too bad the church couldn't find the generosity of spirit to at least "reserve judgement"
until the case had been processed.
But I suppose taking such a position just would be too radical for some member of the flock.

It's been interesting to watch the flip-side of the coin here in Southern California
where too many of the abusing priests seem to have the presumption of innocence
no matter how outrageous their conduct.

And he was one of the lucky ones because the false charges didn't stick. Prosecutors point
to his case and claim that the system works.

I would tell such prosecutors: if this man is at least paid back his attorney's
fees and lost wages and other reasonable damages...WITHOUT NEEDING TO SUE...
then maybe the system is working...barely.

[okie01]

Thanks for posting the material on the Washington Post coverage. It was, indeed, E.R. Shipp that I had such an entertaining and illuminating e-mail exchange with.

[VOA]

But the worst damage, in my opinion, is done to women and children who face very
real abusers; because false accusations made by unscrupulous women erode their credibility.

I'm not in the legal field, but it had been my guess that this would be
a likely outcome if millions of women hurl false accusations to gain
leverage during divorce proceedings.

AND are actually encouraged to do so because it seems they never suffer materially
when a judge even finds out their accusations are groundless.

I know that would be a chilling effect in guarding against child abuse...
but until some judges muster up the moral courage to take the heat from the NOW
and other advocacy groups and say
"Mrs. X, your allegations of sexual abuse against your husband were so groundless and
transparently manufactured in order to gain advantage during these divorce proceedings,
I find that it is in the best interest of your children to place them in total
custody of your husband for at least two years, at which time we shall
revisit the case and see if your conduct merits a modification of the custody
arrangement to shared physical custody."

OK, there's my non-legal feelings on the matter.

[Kevin Curry]

Interesting. Bryan broadbrushes various "shrew ex-wives" as liars and offers his opinion that a certain man was unjustly accused and convicted of sodomy of a child. Thus he essentially accuses the prosecutors of bearing false witness.

You chime in full agreement and also accuse church elders of sin in "judging" the man and removing him from his position as deacon.

But, what are your and Bryan's posts if they are not examples of the very kind of "judging" that you condemn? Why do you place yourselves above the rule you invoke to condemn others?

[reborn22]

Thank you for the links to two good conservative websites dedicated to preserving family values. However, I was slightly disappointed because they seemed to contain more statements of opinion than the sort of statistical analysis you have posted here. I guess I'll have to rely on your data, or find the time to do my own research! Thanks anyway.

Your job must be awfully hard to do, trying to decide which of these men are innocent. It does sound to me as though most of them are mentally unstable, and not just ordinary homosexuals living out their lifestyle. But surely you have had contact with pedophiles who regard themselves as "normal" "gay" men who just like doing it with young kids?

I am of course familiar with the Bible's teachings on homosexuality and there is no question that the Lord forbids homosexual activity. When I asked you to suggest ways of helping and guiding these people, when they are struggling against the temptation to sin, I did not mean guidance on God's will, which is perfectly clear on the matter.

What I would like to know, of you and other contributors here, is what kind of counseling is appropriate for Christians who are struggling against desire for persons of the same sex. It is not sufficient to read to them the probibitions written in the Bible.

I am not convinced that all homosexuals are able to "ditch" their sexual proclivities and marry a person of the opposite sex, and be as happy as the next man. I am thinking of all those who suffer alone, remain celibate, and are never sexually fulfilled.

[VOA]

But, what are your and Bryan's posts if they are not examples of the very kind
of "judging" that you condemn? Why do you place yourselves above the rule
you invoke to condemn others?


The only judging that really worries me is described in the passage below.
But not knowing any sort of religional orientation you have (or don't) this
may be meaningless to you. In which event we'll just have to agree to disagree.

From The Gospel of Matthew, Twenty-fifth chapter

31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him,
then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one
from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of
my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink:
I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me:
I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred,
and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you,
Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me,
ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:

And furthermore, don't try to lay a "soft on criminals" rap on me as I do keep
this in mind also:
James 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless
and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

And as for shrewish women. I may not agree with Bryan's estimation of the situation.
I've met both shrewish women AND men.

[VOA]

The large majority of such information, including all that was reported in Table 34,
was gathered by one individual, between 1917 and 1948, and documented by him.
He died before Kinsey.

Thanks for the link.
Even if Reisman's allegations are just "much sound and fury, signifying nothing"
I do find the sentence above very curious.

If the data was gathered by one person, who gathered it over a defined time period
AND the person died before Kinsey...why don't we know the name of this individual?

This sort of "interpersonal communication" in today's peer reviewed publications
(at least in the physical sciences) would raise lots of questions and demands for further
supporting documentation.

I'm not saying Reisman is on the right track...but something about this lack
of transparency, especially shielding the identity of a contributor of significant
data for publication years after the death of both the contributor and the writer
(Kinsey et al.) doesn't feel right.

If a block of important data such as this was similarly shielded in the physical
sciences, there would be a loud protest of "what are they hiding?".

I'm not saying the data may not have been valid, but if we never can have the identity
of the contributor (Kinsey probably took that with him to his grave)
or access to some of the source material...I can see how some skeptics might
just say "this could have been made up out of thin air".

[VOA]

You chime in full agreement and also accuse church elders of sin in "judging" the
man and removing him from his position as deacon.

Ah, timing may be at the root of this.
Once the fellow was accussed, I certainly can see a church body putting him on
inactive status; once convicted, removed from office.

Now I can see how a number of different churches might handle it differently, but that's
just my inexpert feeling about it.

And I think even if convicted, any member of the flock who wanted to visit him in
prison as he served his term shouldn't be condemned as long as it was for ministerial purposes.
(as in post 137)