About a third of all child sex abuse cases involve men molesting boys–and in one study, 86% of such men identified themselves as homosexual or bisexual. Try as they might, gays and lesbians can’t shrug off the link. This is a homosexual problem
You are totally wrong.
According to Dr. Fred Berlin, a Johns Hopkins University professor who founded the National Institute for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma in Baltimore, Md., pedophilia is a distinct sexual orientation marked by persistent, sometimes exclusive, attraction to prepubescent children.
The simplest understanding of this, and a very correct understanding is to see that sexual abuse isn’t about sexual orientation or sexual attraction. Unattractive people are often victims of sexual abuse and sexual violence. Sexual violence and abuse is about power, domination, and control. It’s not about sexual attraction.
Fischer cites a study that says 86% of men who molest boys identify themselves as gay or bisexual with no breakdown of gay or bisexual perpetrators. The study Fischer references is strongly criticized by the consensus of experts in this field. The paper he’s referencing is Erickson et al. (1988). Behavior patterns of child molesters. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 17, 77-86. The paper does claim in passing that 86% of molesters of boys identified as gay or bisexual, but the paper does not describe how this data was gathered, and how it ascertained the sexual orientation of these men.
“But wait!” You might begin. “If men molest boys aren’t they necessarily gay?” The answer is no. Because , for one, sexual orientation isn’t about behavior alone. For example, when Governor Jim McGreevy feigned heterosexuality most of his life and formed a heterosexual family, and presumably engaged in heterosexual behavior was he a heterosexual all of that time? Or was he simply a closeted gay man? Behavior isn’t always consistent with sexual orientation and attraction.
Pedophiles are attracted, primarily, to children. The sex of those children matter less than that they are children. The sex of victim has more to do with access than sexual orientation.
The US Catholic Bishops commissioned a study on priestly child sex abuse from John Jay College. John Jay researcher Margaret Smith reported back to the Bishops on early findings from their study. From the USA Today:
We do not find a connection between homosexual identity and the increased likelihood of subsequent abuse from the data that we have right now … It’s important to separate the sexual identity and the behavior. Someone can commit sexual acts that might be of a homosexual nature but not have a homosexual identity.
From the same article:
In the book Mental Disorders of the New Millennium (2006), author and psychology professor Thomas Plante writes:
Although the majority of clergy abuse victims are males, homosexuality cannot be blamed. First, many of the pedophile priests report that they are not homosexual. This is also true of many non-clergy sex offenders who victimize boys. Many report that they target boys for a variety of reasons that include easier access to boys … pregnancy fears with female victims … homosexuals in general have not been found to be more likely to commit sexual crimes against minors compared to heterosexuals. Sexual orientation is not predictive of sex crimes
Even Pope Benedict XVI, not exactly a liberal gay rights activist, has said the same thing:
Perhaps this is why Pope Benedict XVI himself, en route to the United States for his visit in 2008, responded this way to a question about the abuse crisis: “I do not wish to talk about homosexuality, but about pedophilia, which is a different thing.”
This point has been established by mainstream social scientists for over 30 years:
Typologies of offenders have often included a distinction between those with an enduring primary preference for children as sexual partners and those who have established age-appropriate relationships but become sexually involved with children under unusual circumstances of extreme stress. Perpetrators in the first category – those with a more or less exclusive interest in children – have been labeled fixated. Fixation means “a temporary or permanent arrestment of psychological maturation resulting from unresolved formative issues which persist and underlie the organization of subsequent phases of development” (Groth & Birnbaum, 1978, p. 176). Many clinicians view fixated offenders as being “stuck” at an early stage of psychological development.
By contrast, other molesters are described as regressed. Regression is “a temporary or permanent appearance of primitive behavior after more mature forms of expression had been attained, regardless of whether the immature behavior was actually manifested earlier in the individual’s development” (Groth & Birnbaum, 1978, p. 177). Regressed offenders have developed an adult sexual orientation but under certain conditions (such as extreme stress) they return to an earlier, less mature psychological state and engage in sexual contact with children.
Using the fixated-regressed distinction, Groth and Birnbaum (1978) studied 175 adult males who were convicted in Massachusetts of sexual assault against a child. None of the men had an exclusively homosexual adult sexual orientation. 83 (47%) were classified as “fixated;” 70 others (40%) were classified as regressed adult heterosexuals; the remaining 22 (13%) were classified as regressed adult bisexuals. Of the last group, Groth and Birnbaum observed that “in their adult relationships they engaged in sex on occasion with men as well as with women. However, in no case did this attraction to men exceed their preference for women…There were no men who were primarily sexually attracted to other adult males…”
