Bob Pickle has asked me to comment on an article written by Ed Vitagliano in the American Family Association Journal. O.K. I will bite and make a few comments on the article.
1) The article seems to be more a Literature Review written in the style of the popular media rather than that of a peer-reviewed journal. As such it can have some value. I am simply pointing out that it does not pretend to be original scientific research.
2) Bob asks me to comment on research by Freund & Watson (1992) and Cameron. I cannot make an intelligent comment on this without reading the original article. However, the citation appears to come from a credible journal. But, I do not know the sample size, the limiting characteristics of the sample and a number of other pieces of information that would be needed to comment.
3) I believe that Cameron has made some valid points, if cited accurately, in his criticism of certain published research.
4) I strongly agree with the following statement:
Furthermore, research also shows a strong link between the sexual abuse of a child and that child’s later pedophilia as an adult. At the Connecticut Correctional Institution, for example, clinical psychologist A. Nicholas Groth, director of the sex offender program, said 85% of the pedophiles were themselves sexually assaulted as youths.
Whatever the number (I do not know if 85% is correct.) it should be noted that it is not 100% IOW it must be understood that some people molested by a pedophile do not go on in life to molest other children.
5) I have issues with the following statement:
This casts certain parts of the homosexual agenda in a more sinister light – such as the drive to lower the legal age of sexual consent and to expunge sodomy laws from the books. It might also cause parents to wonder why homosexual activists are tireless in their efforts to use the courts as a crowbar to pry open the doors of the Boy Scouts to homosexual troop leaders.
First: While that is the agenda of the NAMBLA, their agenda should not be associated with homosexuals.
Secondly: Sodomy laws, as commonly written, can be applied against heterosexuals who practice marital sex. As such, many heterosexuals wish to expunge sodomy laws from the books.
5) Vitagliano states: ". . . most homosexuals do not abuse children." I agree.
6) He also states: ". . . there are some elements of the homosexual movement which openly endorse pedophilia." Probably true. Do we tar every person with the brush of the few? Just as there are some homosexuals who are pedophiliac so also there are heterosexuals who are pedophilic.
7) He also says: ". . . children can be recruited into the homosexual lifestyle, . . ." My comments: He fails to differentiate between recruited and forced into. What one may be forced into as a child does not dictate what one does as an adult. There are many who would say that a child who has been abused (and forced into, so to speak, a homosexual life style) does not make that person a homosexual.
Just a few short comments--pro, con and in between.