FRC Takes ‘Liberties’ by Distorting Science

by: Brian Rainey and Carlo Baca

With the Foley scandal fresh in the minds of Americans and ‘Liberty Sunday’ ready to make an appearance in
Boston on Sunday, October 15th, I think it’s important to take a moment to examine a the recent argument, put
forth by the FRC, that gay men are more likely to molest children than others.

Sexual abuse is one of the most profound injustices committed against children today. Even among prisoners, it
is considered the worst crime one can commit. Therefore, if someone is going to accuse another person—let
alone an entire group of people—of child molestation they better have some rock-solid, airtight evidence
that it is true. Rock-solid, airtight evidence would involve a thorough evaluation and engagement of all
scientific literature on the subject.

But the FRC is not concerned with solid, airtight evidence. They only wish to slander and malign gay men by
any means they can find.

On October 2, in the wake of the Foley scandal, Perkins posted a blog statement
(http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=WA06J01#WA06J01) claming a “link between homosexuality and child sexual
abuse” as well as a statistic that of men who abuse boys “86% of such men identified themselves as homosexual
or bisexual.” Where did he get this statistic? One of FRC’s own scientists (and we use that term loosely),
Timothy J. Dailey, pulled together a paper that supposedly supported Perkins’ link, called ‘Homosexuality and
Child Abuse.’

This paper is a muck of pseudo-scientific claims garnered from real scientific articles that were apparently never
actually read or understood by Dailey. To reach his conclusions, Dailey distorted studies, selectively extracted
off-handed comments about subjects that were not the focus of the studies cited, and completely ignored other
studies that wholly contradict his claims (e.g. Groth and Birnbaum 1978). According to Dr. Gregory Herek,
Professor of Psychology at the University of California at Davis, who teaches courses on prejudice, sexual
orientation, and survey-research methodology:

…the scientific sources cited by the FRC report don’t support their argument. Most of the studies they
cited did not even assess the sexual orientation of abusers. Two of the studies explicitly concluded that
sexual orientation and child molestation are unrelated. 1

He then goes on to say that the only paper that had an inkling of support for FRC’s claims was the study that
included the 86% statistic used by Perkins. But alas, had Dailey carefully examined that paper he would have
realized, as Herek was able to, that:

The paper asserts in passing that “Eighty-six percent of offenders against males described themselves as
homosexual or bisexual” (p. 83). However, no details are provided about how this information was
ascertained, making it difficult to interpret. Nor did the authors report the number of homosexual versus
bisexual offenders, a distinction that other research indicates is relevant... 2

For further information on the distortions of this paper, go to Herek’s blog, “Beyond Homophobia”, at
http://www.beyondhomophobia.com/blog/2006/10/07/child-abuse-research/#more-23 as well as his site
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/html/facts_molestation.html#Groth which shows that real scientists have
found no link between homosexuality and pedophilia.

1
Gregory Herek, “Child Abuse and Christian (Right) Science” Internet. 7 October, 2006. Beyond Homophobia.
URL: http://www.beyondhomophobia.com/blog/2006/10/07/child-abuse-research/#more-23.
2
The focus of this particular study was not the sexual orientation or adult sexual relationships of pedophiles, but rather specific sexual
acts committed against children during sexual abuse.