Some Guys Are Normal

Paul Cameron is Back

Meet Paul Cameron. Professional quack, liar, and gay hater. I said in the comments of another blog that every gay person and gay ally should get to know this guy. He goes out of his way to lie, distort facts and basically make up studies to prove how terrible gays are. And for those that may be wondering- I don't dislike him because he thinks being gay is immoral, I dislike him because he spreads lies about gay people to try to prove how immoral they really are.

Cameron's take on gays can be pretty much summed up in this press release where he says, "Their results cast serious doubt on the claim of the gay rights movement that, except for their sexual proclivities, homosexuals are the same as heterosexuals." Obviously Cameron thinks gays are some sort of social misfits not worthy of anything.

To take this a bit further though, let's look at his track record (I took this from the link above and from a couple of other cites to back it up):

-Licensed Psychologist, but license has been inactive in Nebraska since 1995.
-Dropped from membership from the American Pshychological Institute in late 1983. (Let's be clear that this is very hard to do. There are plenty of anti-gay psychologists in the APA. It took bad science and faulty research in numerous studies to get himself kicked out).
-In 1984 the Nebraska Pyschological Association wrote a formal resolution disassociating itself from Cameron or any of his work.
-In 1986 the American Sociological Association did just about the same thing. Their resolution said that Paul Cameron was not a sociologist.
-In 1985 he was reprimanded in open court for being the only witness in the trial that was completely unbelievable.

-Lastly- he is chairman of the Family Research Institute, a so called Christian organization. To me it seems pretty hard to be a Christian organization and be led by a guy who has been denounced by so many different groups- the largest psychological and sociological groups in the nation. It's not that his views are unpopular, it is that he lies about his findings.

Again, let me be clear that Cameron was not dropped for his beliefs. These guys went out of their way to distance themselves from Cameron not because of what he was saying, but because his conclusions were not backed by evidence or fact, and were often made with complete disregard for the facts.

Cameron likes to post his "studies" in a magazine called Psychological Reports. He and his group claim that this is a scientific journal, but it really isn't. First, the magazine will publish almost anything for a fee (almost all professional journals do not charge a fee). And second, no peer review is required of any of the studies published here. There isn't any peer review of Cameron's studies because they are so faulty.

Ok, so now that that is all said and done, I'd like to go into why I am writing this. Yeah, Paul Cameron is a bad guy, but who cares? In his book, Anything But Straight, Wayne Besen says Paul Cameron is so far out of the mainstream (and so discredited) that no ex-gay or anti-gay groups will use his stuff anymore (they're too smart for that). But, it turns out that recently Cameron's completely discredited studies have come up recently from some pretty mainstream sources.

According to Pink Dome, the Christian Wire Service printed a Paul Cameron press release recently and then points out that more and more Christians are looking to Christian media for news over traditional media. Funny how if they print Cameron material, the Christian media might be less honest...

The Pink Dome also reported that along side my Governor, Rick Perry, a Christian Pastor spouted various discredited Cameron statistics (un-cited though) right before Perry signed two Texas bills.

Ex-Gay Watch has done a decent job of keeping up with Paul Cameron, and recently they have cited his works coming up here (by the conservative group The Christian Coalition--non-cited again) and here.

Even the Exodus blog cites an article regurgitating Cameron chicanery here. I know the blog says Exodus doesn't endorse any of the articles it links, but shouldn't the individuals picking these articles do at least SOME research before linking to material that has been published by a completely defrocked researcher? Isn't knowingly rehashing lies, lying?

I also recall seeing Cameron numbers come up in the State Senate debates over gay marriage from a handfull of ill-informed (or maybe just immoral) state senators, but I don't have those on hand now.

This is possibly the longest post I have made here.

I'm writing it, though, not specifically about Cameron (although I wanted to show how manipulative and dishonest he is), but about the Christian organizations and just regular old people that have no idea who he is. I'm going to give most of them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they don't know the story behind Cameron and his debunked studies. I'll certainly fault any religious leaders and public officials for publicly citing Cameron without doing their own research, but I will assume that it was a mistake and not intentional lying. But, I know in my heart that even if some of these people knew about Cameron, they still wouldn't care. They'd point out this stuff anyway, just to show (like Cameron) how terrible gay people are. To hell with the truth, I guess.

Hopefully at least a few gays, gay supporters, and even non-gay supporters will read this, learn about Cameron and at least know this vile isn't true. I hope the leaders out there will stop their misinformation campaign sometime too. But, sometimes the end seems to justify the means, no matter how immoral or wrong the means is or how many people get hurt in the process. Disagree with being gay all you want, but why lie about it? In the end I think misinforming millions of people intentionally is probably not going to sit too well with God. Probably less well than a gay person that was wrong about being gay, but tried to do the right thing in his/her life.

posted by Brady @ 6:40 AM