From: cramer@optilink.UUCP (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,ca.politics,ba.politics
Subject: Re: Why "Child Abuse Causes Homosexuality" Really Doesn't Fly
Date: 14 Oct 92 17:22:26 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <98566@bu.edu>, kane@buast7.bu.edu (Hot Young Star) writes:
> Let's make use of an interesting child molestation stat. Actually it's an
> estimate of the yearly number of child molestation incidents in this
> country, taking into account the many incidences which go unreported.
> Many sources claim 500,000 molestations occur annually in the U.S.
> 
> 500,000!

Source?  I doubt it's that low.

> Let's start off with some pessimistic assumptions:
> 
> 1. All boy-molesters are either homosexuals or closet homosexuals. (One
> can find a lot of sources that say otherwise---among the ones that Clayton
> and I have mentioned are Abel and Harlow, Groth and Birnbaum, and Goldstein;
> each says adult sexual orientation is separate from pedophilic preference)

And the sources I have quoted indicate otherwise.

> 2. Boy molestation is severely underreported. Most surveys report that
> 20% of molestations are with boys, 80% girls. Let's go out on a pessimistic
> limb and say half of all molestations involve boys.
> 
> 3. Let's assume that only 1% of the general population are homosexual men.
> (Kinsey gave 4%)
> 
> 4. Boy-molesters have many more victims than girl molesters. The ratio is
> roughly 250 to 20.

Reported cases.  As a Everstine & Everstine point out, the real number
of boy victims is probably much higher.

> 5. Arthur Hu reports that as many as 25% of all gay men were victims of
> child abuse.
> 
> Where does this lead us?
> 
> Of the approximately 500,000 molestations annualy, 250,000 involve boys.
> 
> Of the 250,000,000 people in the U.S., then 2.5 million are homosexual men.

First error.  You assumed 1% of the general population are homosexual
men.  Of the 250,000,000 people in the U.S., about 25% are children
(under 18) themselves.  Less than half of the population is male,
especially among adults.  (Differential death rates for men and
women with age).  If we are talking about 1% of the adult men in the 
U.S., the number of homosexual men would then be more like 918,750.

> Of the 250,000 molestations involving boys, for an average victim count of
> 250 per molester, that gives 1,000 boy molesters. Assuming these men are
> all homosexuals (which is not in fact warranted), that means that 1,000
> out of 2,500,000, or 0.4% of homosexual men are child molesters.

No, that's .04%.  You arithmetic has failed you as well.

But let's use the right number, based on your assumptions.  1000
(doubtless too low a number)/918,750 = .1%.

> (1,000 per year seems reasonable---that's 20 per state on average, and if
> only half are reported and half of those make headlines, that only 5 per
> year per state, which is what I hear of here in Massachusetts)

I hear of that many per year just in the Bay Area here.  Those are the
ones that make headlines.  The number unreported, or that don't make
it in the paper, must be many times higher.

> Yet Hu claimed that 25% of homosexual men were victims of child abuse.
> 
> That should tell you that homosexuality isn't really part of the cycle
> in which victimization begets abuse.

How does that tell you that?  250,000 molestations/year, would mean
that over a 10 year cycle, there would be 2,500,000 male victims of
child molestation -- more than enough to create a sizeable homosexual
population.

> If it were, then you'd expect to see a lot more homosexual doing molesting,
> not a mere 0.4% compared to the 25% that Hu claimed were victims in childhood.

Why?

> After all, as Clayton rightly claims, the natural inclination of a male who
> suffers abuse is to later abuse a victim who represents the abuser. If this
> were the case, many many more homosexuals would abuse, not the (0.4%/25%)
> = 1.6% of the abuse victims according to Hu's stats. If homosexuality appears
> not to be a significant factor in 98.4% of cases of cyclic victim-abusers,
> than one can say that child abuse does not directly cause significant amounts
> of homosexuality.

As I pointed out in with one of the quotations, the circumstances 
that cause a molestation victim to become a pedophile are apparently
quite specific.  But because the pedophile has so many victims, if
even a fraction of his victims become homosexuals, it could explain
the current numbers of homosexuals.

> Comparing with the girl molesters, out of a population of 120,000,000 nominally
> heterosexual men, the 250,000 incidences involving girls, at an average
> rate of 20 per molester, give 12,500 molesters of girls, or 0.1% of the
> general male population.

Again, your numbers are broken.  The number of adult men in the U.S.
is about 91,875,000.  At a rate of 20 female victims per molester,
and using the 1% homosexual number you assumed above, that's .2%.
I doubt it's that low.

> (Abel and Harlow say only 21% of boy-molesters are gay. 21% of 0.4% is 0.08%)
> 
> (the Denver Hospital study I quoted in another article gave 1 out of
> 387 molesters as being gay, or 0.25%)

The study that distinguished homosexuals from family members, and
consequently received derisive laughter in soc.motss when it was
posted there?  A "study" done by a doctor specifically in response
to the Colorado initiative?

> (Groth and Birnbaum, which I mentioned before, say that none of a sample of
> 175 boy-molesters were gay.)

Yup.  Men who like to have sex with boys aren't homosexuals.  I 
understand.

> You can see, no matter which sample we pick, heterosexual men or homosexual men,
> the percentage that are child molesters is always roughly the same---0.1%.

I find that number far too low to be credible.  There's too many
victims, and far too many people being sent to prison for child
molestation to accept .1%.

> Besides that given that only 1.6% of gay men who were abused as children go on
> to later abuse children, homosexuality as part of a cyclic pattern does NOT 
> appear to be the answer.

Unless those 1.6% recruit a LOT of victims -- like 250 each.

> Later postings I shall address the issue of when sexuality develops, and
> compare this age to the average age of molestation. I shall show you that
> most psychologists and psychiatrists believe that sexuality become established
> well BEFORE the bulk of molestation incidents occur.
> 
> kane@{buast7,astro}.bu.edu (Hot Young Star) Astronomy Dept, Boston University,

Yet the sources I posted indicated otherwise.

Do you really not believe that sexual trauma on a child will affect
their sexuality?
-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
Lesson learned from Gov. Wilson's signing of AB 2601: if you don't get 
your way, have a riot.  Next time, Gov. Wilson will cower appropriately.
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