“I wouldn’t want one of them around my kids!” - A POPULAR MISCONCEPTION
george spelvin
“Jews are different. Communists are different. Therefore, Jews are Communists.”
Most people see the above syllogism as fallacious. So one might expect most people to see this. one as fallacious: “Homosexuals are different. Molesters are different. Therefore, homosexuals are molesters.” Yet in 1974, 75% of the respondents in the Levitt&Klassen poll said that “homosexuals are dangerous as teachers or youth leaders because they try to get sexually involved with children.”
In caveman days, when there was less heterogeneity within tribes than there is now, anyone different posed a threat. When an enemy tribe invaded, there was no time to ponder over how people who differed from oneself differed from each other. Civilization has changed since then, but our inner brains haven’t, so we all must make a deliberate effort to see individuals as individuals.
In fairness, not all people who equate homosexuals with molesters arrive at this conclusion through the above syllogism.
Paul Cameron of the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality has an altogether different argument: although there are more girl-lovers than boy-lovers, the boy-lover:girl-lover ratio is greater than the man-lover:woman-lover ratio. After a session of mathematicking, he concludes that “teachers who practice homosexual acts are between 90 to 100 times more apt to involve themselves sexually with pupils than teachers who confine themselves to heterosexual acts.”
Cameron somehow missed reading the research findings that preference for boys and preference for men are two distinct preferences. In fact, both boy-lovers and girl-lovers prefer women over men. This has been clearly indicated in a study in 1978 by Groth&Birnbaum and in another study in 1983 by Wilson&Cox.
If you have a girl and are worried about her being placed in the care of the wrong adult, you should probably prefer a man who likes men even over a man who likes women. Several studies by the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Toronto, Ontario have shown manlovers like girls less than do woman-lovers. In fact, man-lovers like boys less than woman-lovers like girls.
Research findings do not mean that there is no overlap at all between boy-lovers and man-lovers. In a Doctoral study at the University of Wisconsin, Charles H. McCaghy found a few subjects who liked both.
At this point, some readers might say, “You can’t make any blanket statements about woman-lovers, man-lovers, girl-lovers, or boy-lovers. People are people.”
I can’t argue with that.
