Interim Staff | September 2002
A new study by Dr. Timothy J. Dailey and
the Washington D.C.-based Family Research Council recently confirmed what police
and psychiatrists have known for decades: a definitive link exists between male
homosexuality and pedophilia.
The report entitled Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse, shows that
while homosexual men make up less than three per cent of the adult male
population, they commit a disproportionate number (one third or more) of child
sexual molestations. Dailey's report is being sent to parents, youth groups,
school administrators, Catholic bishops, and religious organizations.
Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse presents a number of
controversial findings. The first is that a significant percentage of child
sexual abuse victims are boys. The second finding of Dailey's report contradicts
the "inaccurate but widely accepted claims of sex researcher Alfred Kinsey" that
homosexuals comprise at least 10 per cent of the population. Based upon a study
of three large data sets, the General Social Survey, the National Health and
Social Life Survey, and the U.S. Census, "a recent study in demography estimates
the number of exclusive male homosexuals in the general population at 2.5 per
cent, and the number of exclusive lesbians at 1.4 per cent," writes Dailey.
The FRC study also demonstrates, with a wealth of anecdotal evidence, that
pedophile themes can be found throughout "mainstream" gay literature, including
fiction anthologies such as: The Penguin Book on International Gay Writing, The
Gay Canon: What Every Gay Man Should Read, and A History of Gay Literature: The
Male Tradition. Interestingly, the late gay Beat poet Allen Ginsberg was a
pedophile, and wrote articles for publications associated with the North
American Man-Boy Love Association. "I reread Collected Poems and Ginsberg's two
subsequent collections, surprised by the pattern of reference to anal
intercourse and to pederasty that emerged," writes Dailey.
According to Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse, pedophiles have
long existed as a subculture within the gay rights movement. Dailey quotes David
Thorstad, a homosexual activist and founding member of NAMBLA, to demonstrate
that by 1985, pedophilia had gained acceptance within the homosexual movement,
as it was in that year that NAMBLA was admitted as a member in New York's
council of Lesbian and Gay Organizations and the International Gay Association.
In the words of Jim Kepner, at one time the curator of the International Gay and
Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles: “A point I've been trying to make is that if we
reject the boylovers in our midst today, we'd better stop waving the banner of
the ancient Greeks, of Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Oscar Wilde, Walt
Whitman, Horatio Alger, and Shakespeare. We'd better stop claiming them as part
of our history unless we are broadening our concept of what it means to be gay.”
The link between homosexuality and pedophilia is rejected by many mainstream
research groups, which have even begun to view pedophilia in value-neutral
terms. The American Psychiatric Association removed pedophilia from its list of
sexual perversions in 1994, while in 1999 the American Psychological Association
published a report, "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child
Sexual Abuse Using College Samples," which "claimed child sexual abuse could be
harmless and beneficial," according to a 1999 WorldNetDaily column by noted
researcher Dr. Judith Reisman.
"None of this is news in the sense that this information (the link between
pedophilia and homosexuality) was fundamentally proven a long time ago," Canada
Family Action head Brian Rushfeldt told The Interim, "but I'm glad to see the
FRC reiterating it, especially at a time when the Catholic church is struggling
with the pedophile priest issue."
Rushfeldt stresses that pedophiles come in both homosexual and heterosexual
forms, but there are differences between the two that need to be understood. “Do
you treat the cocaine addict the same way you treat the alcoholic? If a priest
abuses young boys, that's a homosexual act, and we have to recognize it as such
if we want to help him.”
Asked why the link exists in the first place, Rushfeldt, a former addiction
counselor, says part of the answer lies in the availability of sex. “Sex addicts
generally need instant gratification. They have a very low threshold for
delaying gratification, and it's much easier to manipulate a young boy into
having sex than it is to manipulate another man.” He adds that homosexual
pedophilia is influenced by other factors as well.
“There's a distinct quality about male homosexuality that gay men tend to be
attracted to young, good-looking guys. Another part of pedophilia's appeal is
the power the pedophile feels in manipulating the boy. It's a combination of
things.”
