Authors: Paul Cameron and Kirk Cameron

Summary: Evelyn Hooker’s research comparing the mental health of 30 male homosexuals to 30 male heterosexuals may be the most influential study in the history of social science. The American Psychological Association (APA) claims her work was the major reason it began advocating for acceptance of homosexuality. It led the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to eliminate homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And it impacted the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2003 legalization of sodomy in Lawrence v Texas.

Hooker reportedly believed experts would be unable to distinguish homosexuals from heterosexuals on psychological tests. Re-examination of her work indicates that Hooker’s study was neither rigorous nor reliable. Among other problems, homosexual subjects were easily identified on test protocols; her reports of how she obtained her samples were incomplete and contradictory; and her study generated results supportive of obsession/ compulsivity in homosexuals.

Thus Hooker’s study was seriously flawed. Moreover, because it was marketed by the APA as central in transforming homosexual activity from an illness=crime into acceptable behavior — yet Hooker did not correct those who mischaracterized her work — APA misrepresentations of Hooker over the past 40 years appear to be more in line with ideology than science.

Keywords: American Psychological Association, Evelyn Hooker, homosexuality, mental health, misrepresentation

Reference: Cameron P & Cameron K (2012) Re-examining Evelyn Hooker: Setting the record straight with comments on Schumm’s (2012) reanalysis. Marriage and Family Review, 48: 491-523.

Authors: Paul Cameron and Kirk Cameron

Summary: On January 31, 1986, the American Psychological Association (APA) file an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court favoring constitutional protection for consensual sodomy. The APA claimed that: (1) the Bell, Weinberg, and Hammersmith survey found that “62% of heterosexual men reported that their first sexual experience was with another male; 39% of homosexual men reported such experience,” (2) “data do not support” a linkage between childhood homosexual activity and sexual orientation, and (3) “there are no empirical data to support the popular myth that homosexual orientation or behavior results from ‘contagion’ by other homosexuals.” It is judged that, in violation of standards for scientific reporting, the Bell, et al. finding was pulled out of context so that if favored the APA position, and the studies the APA cited in this section of the brief were either contrary to, nonsupportive of, or did not bear upon the APA’s contentions. Professional scientific organizations have a special obligation to (a) be accurate in representations to the U.S. Supreme Court and (b) adhere to accepted standards of scholarship in their use of citations.

Reference: Cameron P & Cameron K (1988) Did the American Psychological Association misrepresent scientific material to the U.S. Supreme Court? Psychological Reports, 63: 255-270.

PRESS RELEASE — September 4, 2012

American psychiatry says it categorizes mental disorders based on scientific facts – not political pressure. Those who promote homosexuality as normal cite the fact that professional associations no longer consider homosexuals disordered.

A new examination of the study that ‘changed psychiatric minds’ about homosexuality reveals such sloppiness that the scientific method had to have been ignored in favor of political correctness. Psychiatry’s junior partner — the American Psychological Association [APA] — sold psychiatrists a bill of goods when it claimed the Hooker study was ‘definitive’ proof that homosexuals were normal. Though Hooker’s study of 30 gays aimed to show homosexuals could not be detected by standard psychological tests, her subjects were unable to stop talking about homosexuality during the testing— a clear indication of obsessive compulsion!

Thanks in substantial part to efforts by the APA, the Hooker study attained near-sacred status in textbooks and court proceedings. A newly published editorial in the peer-reviewed journal Marriage & Family Review details how the APA colluded with Hooker to grossly misrepresent her findings.

“This may be the first fraud committed by a scientific organization. As the Hooker study is so central to the ‘homosexuals are normal’ argument, its exposure reopens the question of whether homosexuals are mentally disturbed,” said Dr. Paul Cameron, one of the study’s authors. “The American Psychiatric Association defines a mental disorder as ‘associated with… a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, [or] disability….’ Given that homosexuals are at significantly greater risk of suffering mental and physical diseases — and this apparently leads to their shortened average lifespan — homosexuality would appear to qualify as a mental disorder.”

APA: The Bernie Madoff of Science?

How did homosexuals get to be mentally ‘normal?’ Until the 1960s, they were considered ‘mentally disturbed,’ not just by ordinary folk but also by psychologists and psychiatrists. So what happened?

Even in the 1950s, there was political pressure by some psychiatrists and gay activists to remove the designation of homosexuals as ‘mentally disturbed.’ But professionals want something ‘scientific’ on which to hang their hat; they do not want to appear ‘political.’ The landmark study by Evelyn Hooker of UCLA was that scientific thing. In fact, her study got promoted as ‘definitive’ by the American Psychological Association (APA).

‘Hooker proved that gays are normal’ said the APA. And the professional organization convinced psychiatrists that the Hooker study did just that. No wonder Hooker’s work is considered by many to be the most influential social science study ever published!

But there is a problem.

The APA lied — and it was a BIG LIE. Hooker’s study proved no such thing. Indeed, it was shoddy — filled with holes and weirdness. For instance, Hooker started out studying 74 male homosexuals but ended up with 30. Hooker would not let colleagues look at her data — and later destroyed it. And, in what might be the biggest example, on the key issue — whether homosexuals could be reliably identified on projective tests — every homosexual almost certainly revealed himself on at least one of the three tests.

To this last bit, Hooker and the APA said ‘forget about that, the 30 homosexual males were not predictably flagged on the ink blot test, so we should just ignore the rest of the findings from the other two tests.’ And, amazingly, the psychiatrists and just about everybody else did forget! So court decisions, textbooks, scientific articles — all of them misreported Hooker’s study.

But FRI has now gotten the facts out — in a major scientific journal, Marriage and Family Review. The sparks are already flying. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) — a far-left group with tons of money — wants our heads, and the article somehow unpublished. Homosexual activists are screaming that FRI is unfair. BUT, no one is denying our facts! And they are devastating.

This may be the first fraud committed by a scientific organization rather than a sole investigator. As the Hooker study is so central to the ‘homosexuals are normal’ argument, its exposure reopens the question of whether homosexuals are mentally disturbed. After all, for the American Psychiatric Association, something ‘associated with… a significantly increased risk of suffering death, pain, [or] disability….’ is a mental disorder. Things like alcoholism or drug addiction, for instance.

But, given that homosexual practitioners are at significantly greater risk of suffering mental and physical diseases — and this apparently leads to their shortened average lifespan — homosexuality would also appear to qualify. What is the rationale for considering homosexuality ‘the exception to the rule?’ Now that the Hooker study has been debunked and just about every study since reports that homosexuals are more apt to smoke, get drunk, use illegal drugs, and test mentally disturbed, what indeed?

Our paper demonstrates that the APA is the Bernie Madoff of science — at least when it comes to homosexuality. Who knows what else? If an organization will lie about one thing, about what can it be trusted?

Why Must a Murderer be Mutilated at Taxpayer Expense?

A federal judge has ruled that a Massachusetts man who murdered his wife but who now wants to ‘be’ a female must get taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery. Why? Because it is the only way to treat his “serious medical need” given his constitutional “right to adequate medical care.”

So a murderer who wants lots of attention — he has been at this since the 1990s — is getting it. He wants a new career and some psychiatrists have declared he “needs” this procedure. Psychiatry got fooled by the APA and Evelyn Hooker and it is being fooled now. If a murderer ‘feels’ he should ‘be’ Hitler, does medical necessity require he be given a uniform, mustache, and get saluted? If this convicted murderer feels he MUST BE a ‘woman’ or he will commit suicide — so what? Good riddance. What is so ‘special’ about being a transgender nut that you must be served by society?

Recently, the first long-term study (10 year follow-up) was published of a large group (n = 324) of the sexually mutilated matched against a sample of more than 3,000 non-mutilated individuals.¹ The long and the short of it was that “after sex reassignment, [the mutilated] have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population.”

This study looked at people who had sex mutilations (‘sex changes’) from 1973-2003. Because Sweden is a heavily regulated country, those who were studied were not asked survey questions about criminality or psychiatric problems as is common in American or British studies. Instead, their official records — and in Sweden those records are incredibly extensive — were examined for: (1) all-cause mortality, (2) suicide, (3) death by cardiovascular disease, and (4) death by cancer. Morbidity included (5) any psychiatric disorder, (6) alcohol/drug misuse, (7) suicide attempts, (8) accidents, and (9) convictions.

Before mutilation, transsexuals “had been hospitalized for psychiatric morbidity other than gender identity disorder… four times more often than controls” (17% vs. 4%). After mutilation they had higher rates of everything bad. Thus, the mutilated were about three times more apt to die, 19 times more apt to commit suicide, and about twice as apt to die of cancer or a heart condition. So, sex mutilation was not a cure.

But, were they happier in their new condition? One way to index happiness is whether they were hospitalized for psychiatric reasons (other than for ‘gender disorder’). By this measure, the mutilated were about four times more apt to be hospitalized — that is, they were not just unhappy, but so unhappy/disturbed they got put away. The authors suggested that “even though sex reassignment alleviates gender dysphoria, there is a need to identify and treat co-occurring psychiatric morbidity in transsexual persons not only before but also after sex reassignment.”

What? Mutilation is apparently just a down payment — the drain on society’s resources never stops. The mutilated were three times more apt to engage in substance abuse, eight times more apt to attempt suicide, twice as apt to have an accident (serious enough to have authorities involved), twice as apt to be convicted of a crime, and three times more apt to commit a violent crime.

These results are not dissimilar to reports by homosexuals regarding criminality, seeing a psychiatrist, etc. Past studies have shown the same relative results when comparing homosexuals to heterosexuals — homosexuals report more bad outcomes (and, when asked, at least 5% have said they might like a ‘sex change’). A key difference here is that the Swedish study did not look at subjective distress unless it led to a consultation, or crime unless it led to a conviction, etc., so this study reports only the ‘hard, actually caught’ data, and undoubtedly failed to document even more pathologies.

Again the authors: “Even though surgery and hormonal therapy alleviates gender dysphoria, it is apparently not sufficient to remedy the high rates of morbidity and mortality found among transsexual persons.” Indeed, these are deeply disturbed people, and they continue to be disturbed. Medical treatments that do not work are abandoned. So why continue sex mutilation? Why should society consider only the sexually-disturbed in need of ‘civil rights,’ and give them what they want no matter what the cost? Why are homosexuals encouraged not to change, and transsexuals allowed to flip their gender, despite the obvious negative social outcomes?

This study — by far the best of the lot — brings the whole idea of ‘mutilation therapy’ into question. Why are we mutilating disturbed people who continue to be disturbed? Do ‘feelings for the sexually-distressed’ trump science? Psychiatrists were fooled by the APA and Hooker into ‘freeing homosexuals’ to do their thing. Will they ever acknowledge they made a mistake in regarding mutilation as a treatment?

Protecting Homosexuality

As Rush Limbaugh has noted, Jerry Sandusky is a ‘gay guy.’ Who else would want to have sex with boys? Yet nary a word about homosexuality graced the pages of the recent Freeh report or almost any news story. Would Sandusky have been protected for all those years if Penn State had not been supportive of gay rights? This question is one of several not being asked: for instance, is Sandusky HIV+?; how many of his victims are currently HIV+?; and how many are engaging in homosexuality? The NCAA used the scandal to tax Pennsylvanians $60 million in fines and penalties, but did nothing to challenge the reigning academic mantra that homosexuality ought to be accepted and protected.

Did Coach Joe Paterno only worry about the football program, or was he also protecting poor ol’ Sandusky and the academic view of homosexuality? Since the victims’ lawyers are not fingering others, it does not seem likely that Sandusky was part of a ‘gay nest’ at Penn State, but the civil suits should settle that question. There is a disquieting report of (heterosexual) child molestation to the Pennsylvania child protective services that should have, but did not, trigger official concern and action back in 1986, action that might have later saved many more children. According to psychologist Jim Singer, “most of the same Pennsylvania government agencies that were outraged over the PSU scandal — Child Protective Services, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, and the Pennsylvania State Police — all ignored and buried his report of child molestation.”¹

Now the tide has apparently turned, but has it really? A Philadelphia monsignor was given a three-to-six year prison sentence for allowing a priest suspected of sexual misconduct with a minor to continue to have contact with children (7/24/12). Will Penn State officials — including its former President — get the same treatment?

Conservatives are up in arms (and rightly so) that the mayors of Chicago and Boston have threatened that Chick Fil-A will not get to open in their cities. For when is it wrong to publicly condemn a habit that drives homosexuals to have sex with each other and with boys? Are these politicians — Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno, and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino — so smart that they know more than either the wisdom of the Bible or the psychiatric community of the 1950s? Are their opinions so correct that they deserve to trump the constitutional right to do business in the U.S. regardless of one’s opinions or religion?

Unfortunately, the seeds of these liberal attitudes were sown a long time ago. Even Ronald Reagan — conservative hero that he was — was not immune to wrong-headed thinking when it came to homosexuality. In 1978, Reagan publicly opposed the Briggs ballot initiative in California that would have prevented schools from hiring homosexual teachers and would also have allowed schools to fire teachers that promoted homosexuality. Reagan wrote in an op-ed² that September:

“Whatever else it is, homosexuality is not a contagious disease like the measles. Prevailing scientific opinion is that an individual’s sexuality is determined at a very early age and that a child’s teachers do not really influence this.”

Contrary to Reagan’s assertion, we do have (limited) direct information about whether homosexual teachers influence students to give homosexuality a go. As part of FRI’s nationwide study in 1983-84, the 17% who reported having a homosexual teacher were asked if the teacher had any influence on their trying homosexuality. Among men:

• 96% of current heterosexuals and 85% of current homosexuals said that the teacher had no impact on their trying homosexuality;
• whereas 4% of heterosexuals and 15% of homosexuals said the teacher influenced them in this direction either ‘a little bit,’ ‘some,’ or ‘a lot.’
• Also, 12% of the sample said their homosexual teacher made sexual advances toward them.

Among women:

• 97% of current heterosexuals and 86% of current lesbians said there was no influence,
• but 3% of heterosexuals and 14% of lesbians said that they were influenced ‘a little bit,’ ‘some,’ or ‘a lot.’
• In addition, 4% said their homosexual teacher made sexual advances toward them.

Notice that those who were gay or lesbian reported more frequently than did heterosexuals that a homosexual teacher influenced them to try homosexuality. How many of these were tilted toward ‘giving it a go’ and then it stuck?

Of course, the vast majority of both groups said their teacher had no influence on their sexual orientation. Just because a teacher uses drugs and says so, will every student run out and give them a try? Of course not, any more than whatever a teacher teaches is necessarily and always ‘learned.’ Teachers, as parents, have influence. But that influence is far from determinative.

Nevertheless, the empirical evidence that exists lines right up with traditional concerns about homosexuality and especially the influence of school leaders (teachers, coaches, etc.) upon kids.

Politicians (and all civic leaders) should be aware of their special responsibility to act upon evidence rather than their ‘gut feelings’ or what is expedient. Instead, they seem to almost universally follow the modern, ‘godless religion’ of psychiatry. Its priesthood not only gets to determine what attitudes are sins (e.g., mental disturbances), gets paid to ‘treat’ such sins, but usually also tries to get greater society to endorse its worldview — which currently includes stamping out ‘homophobia.’ Neither Joe Paterno or Ronald Reagan was apparently immune to the song of the psychiatric sirens.

Best Study of Effects of Gay Parents: Slammed for Wrong Conclusions

The homosexual movement, many professional associations, and the media assert that whether a parent engages in homosexuality is irrelevant: as long as the child is loved, it’s all good. Tradition stresses the character of parents (and their concern for their children’s welfare), exhibited by raising a child within marriage, instead of alone or in an informal union. Tradition also holds that the aberrant attitudes, behaviors, and associates of those who engage in either homosexuality, illegal drug use, or criminality often have more influence on how a child turns out than expressions of love or affirmation by their parents.

A month ago Mark Regnerus published the best single study to date of the psychological and social status of adults with a homosexual parent. Based on a random sample of about 15,000, his study reported results consistent with common sense — those raised in a traditional man-woman intact marriage did best, while those with a homosexual parent(s) were the:

• most apt to say they were not exclusively heterosexual,
• most apt to be on welfare,
• least apt to be employed,
• most apt to have gotten a sexually transmitted infection,
• most apt to have recently thought of suicide,
• most apt to report being raped,
• most apt to test impulsive,
• most apt to smoke,
• most apt to report heavy TV viewing,
• most apt to have been arrested,
• most apt to have pled guilty to a crime,
• most apt to score high on depression,
• least apt to report being able to depend on others,
• least apt to report having felt secure and safe in their family, and
• most promiscuous.

Participants who had homosexual parents generally ranked more poorly on the other variables studied as well, even if they were not always ‘the worst.’

This study was ‘the best,’ because it used the largest sample of participants, those individuals were randomly chosen, and the survey instrument covered a lot of ground — asking about possible social as well as psychological effects of different home environments. It was not ‘perfect,’ but it was head and shoulders above any other study both in terms of numbers of adults with homosexual parents and methodological rigor. Most of the studies on homosexual parenting are shoddy in the extreme, using small, non-random samples of volunteer subjects, a few questions of interest, and usually finding ‘no statistically significant difference’ between homosexual and heterosexual parents due to a lack of statistical power (i.e., sensitivity).

So has Regnerus been lauded for such a well-done study? No, quite the opposite: he has been charged with all kinds of scientific malfeasance.

Homosexual activists upset with the study’s publication have demanded and gotten his employer (Univ of Texas at Austin) to formally investigate him and his study (even though the charges were launched by a homosexual journalist with no credible credentials and they did not specify anything that he might have done wrong). A post-publication review summarized in the Chronicle of Higher Education (July 26, 2012) highlights Darren Sherkat, a professor of sociology at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale who was assigned to do the review: “His assessment of the paper, in an interview, was concise: ‘It’s bull__t,’ he said.” [note: FRI edited Sherkat’s profanity, not so the esteemed Chronicle].

“Among the problems Sherkat identified is the paper’s definition of ‘lesbian mothers’ and ‘gay fathers’ — an aspect that has been the focus of much of the public criticism. A woman could be identified as a ‘lesbian mother’ in the study if she had had a relationship with another woman at any point after having a child, regardless of the brevity of that relationship and whether or not the two women raised the child as a couple. Sherkat said that fact alone in the paper should have ‘disqualified it immediately’ from being considered for publication.”

But since very few lesbian ‘mothers’ manage to stay together beyond 4 to 6 years, the instability found by Regnerus (as well as other researchers, including FRI) is part of the reason children of homosexuals do so poorly. Whether homosexual couples who are more stable make better parents is unknown — there are too few of them in any study to say. And it could be, as with lifespan, that the more ‘committed’ they are, the worse the outcomes for them and the children they raise.

Sally Ride: Dead at 61

Sally Ride, the first U.S. female astronaut, died this year at 61 of pancreatic cancer. Most women live until their 80s. Something strange afoot?

Ride was married to a fellow astronaut from 1982 to 1987. But it was just revealed she had a ‘long time lesbian relationship’ of 27 years. Do the math: her 27 year relationship with a professor of school psychology (and co-founder of Sally Ride’s company) means that she got into that relationship in 1985, smack in the middle of her marriage. It would appear that her childhood friend broke up her marriage.

And Sally may have paid with some of her lifespan. Our latest research into recent homosexual obituaries from San Francisco indicates that lesbians are dying on average around 60ish. Ride fits the pattern of lesbian deaths, but not that of married women’s deaths, which usually extend into the early-to-mid 80s.

Is this proof that homosexual activity leads to an early death? No, of course not. Had she stayed married, Sally Ride might have died at the same age and of the same malady. But, on average, her death fits a consistent pattern suggesting that homosexuality is associated with an early demise.