Do Gay Pedophiles Threaten Families?

The Family Research Council (FRC) argues on its web page that homosexuals are more likely to be pedophiles than heterosexuals. They use this as an argument that we need an amendment to the Constitution that allows only marriage between a man and a woman in order to "protect children." The FRC sounds like a noble organization, doesn't it? What could be more wholesome and American than family? What could be more reliable and trustworthy than research? It sounds so modern and scientific. One only has to look at the history of the organization to find out how deceptive the name is, and just how dangerous for some children the organization can be.

After serving on a White House Conference on Families under the Reagan Administration, religious broadcaster and anti-gay leader, Dr. James Dobson founded the FRC in 1983. The mission of the FRC is not to do research, it is not scientific. The organization's mission is to promote religious ideas in society. It is a political activist wing of James Dobson's Focus on the Family and other religious right entities. For all its pretense of being objective, and all its apparent reasonable arguments, the FRC promotes bigotry and a very narrow view of family and American life. The Director of the organization is a politician not a researcher or psychologist.

The organization has always been anti-gay, but its current activities are blatantly political in that the vast majority of their resources are devoted to bringing about an amendment to the Constitution to prevent marriage rights being given to couples of the same sex. One of the arguments that they make to prevent same-sex marriage is that they need to protect the children from gay pedophiles. The problem is that nearly every scientific research study completed has concluded that pedophiles are overwhelmingly heterosexual not homosexual.

The logic of the FRC is warped and dangerous if people believe it. It is warped because they reason that if a victim was male and the perpetrator male, then the perpetrator was a homosexual. This is nonsense. According to the American Psychiatric Association, pedophilia exists when a person:

Pedophiles do not limit their fantasies to one gender or another. The same pedophile will abuse both girls and boys. It is easy then to see how the FRC's so-called research is illogical. They are using a reverse logic that doesn't hold true under scrutiny. Are there pedophiles that are also homosexual? Probably. Is the majority of pedophiles homosexual? Absolutely not.

Consider Don for example. Don reports that his first memory is his father sticking his penis into his mouth. Once his mother walked into the room and Don's father beat her and put his cigarettes out on her stomach while Don watched. At night Don's dad would sneak into his bedroom and molest him. If he didn't perform as he was told, his dad threatened to kill him, his mother, or the whole family. Naturally he told Don that it would be his fault if the whole family died. Under pretense of teaching him how to wash himself, Don's dad would take him to the shower with him naked and require sexual service. This continued until Don entered puberty, then stopped. Don always wondered if his dad then moved on to his younger brother. He never asked. Don's dad was never considered a homosexual. He had sex with his wife and made queer jokes with the best of them.

Don's family met all the criteria of a good family that the FRC wants to promote. This was a man and woman raising children. Trust me, Dr Dobson, George Bush, and all those who would call for the so-called sacred union of a man and a woman; it’s not the homosexual unions you need to worry about to protect children. The problems of this society go far deeper and your amendment will only mean fewer safe families, not more. Gays are not the pedophiles for the most part. So-called "straights" definitely are.

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Robert Buchanan is a minister of the Ecumenical Catholic Church and a psychotherapist who lives with his partner of many years in Durham North Carolina.  He is the author of  Love, Honor & Respect: How to Confront Homosexual Bias in Christian Culture and serves as director of the Institute for Inclusive Christianity. a training program for ministers and clergy who do not discriminate against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, or because of financial, familial or social status.  Additional resources for inclusive Christians can be found at our Resources page.

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Last modified: 07/09/05