Jon Rowe deals with Dishonest Data about Gays

Jon Rowe deals with the dishonest way that too many anti-gay writers distort facts and figures as a way to stir up unwarrented hatred against gays in his post Cramer Knows Better.

I posted this comment there:

Jon,

Your posts on this subject are getting better over time. This one was especially good. From the American Psychological Association pageAnswers to Your Questions About Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality:

Sexual Orientation is an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual or affectional attraction to another person. It is distinguished from other components of sexuality including biological sex, gender identity (the psychological sense of being male or female) and the social gender role (adherence to cultural norms for feminine and masculine behavior)...

Bisexual persons can experience sexual, emotional and affectional attraction to both their own sex and the opposite sex. Persons with a homosexual orientation are sometimes referred to as gay (both men and women) or as lesbian (women only).

Sexual orientation is different from sexual behavior because it refers to feelings and self-concept. Persons may or may not express their sexual orientation in their behaviors.

Another myth about homosexuality is the mistaken belief that gay men have more of a tendency than heterosexual men to sexually molest children. There is no evidence to suggest that homosexuals are more likely than heterosexuals to molest children.

Please see my post The APA on Sexual Orientation for comments I made on these and other of their Questions and Answers.

This sexual arousal occurs in the hypothalamus, a part of the limbic system which deals with emotions in general. This autonomic nervous system response to gender specific cues is not under conscious control and has many of the same hormonal and other physiological characteristics of the "fight or flight" reaction, except instead of a feeling of fear, the release of oxytocin produces a feeling of euphoria and a desire to be closer.

My post Gay Limbic Reaction to Pheromones refers to a study which shows that sexual arousal in the hypothalamus is similar between heterosexual women and gay men and both are different than that in heterosexual men. More practically, in my post An Objective Criteria for Sexual Orientation I describe a test that determines sexual orientation for clinical studies.

Yet polls and surveys are limited to estimating orientation through self reporting and questions regarding behavior. Sexual orientation as clinically defined and sexual behavior which is entirely under voluntary control are certainly related, but they are NOT the same thing. Your description of situational homosexual acts, young teenage boys playing with each other, prisoners using others for sexual release, and so on, indicate no sexual feelings for the partner other than the friction they provide for their own sexual gratification. Pedophilia, necrophilia, and other disorders also fall into this sex purely for gratification category.

Those whose orientation is gay are capable of forming deep bonds of love and affection with another gay person, just like heterosexual couples do, since these are based on the same sets of genes in both cases as I describe in Genetic Basis for Sexual Orientation.

When dishonest people like the one you discuss here, try to cloud the issue by conflating all kinds of deviant sexual behavior that happens to involve two persons of the same sex, with sexual orientation which has nothing to do with these behaviors, then this willful deceit must be brought to light and soundly condemned.

Thanks for your efforts in this area. Bill Ware