News, analysis and fact-checking of anti-gay rhetoric
Posts 
Posts via daily email:
The FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics aren’t as complete as they ought to be, and their report for 2004 was no exception. In fact, their most recent report has quite a few glaring holes. Holes big enough for Daniel Fetty to fall through.Porno Pete Earns His Nickname
Jim Burroway
July 23rd, 2008
“Porno Pete” LaBarbera is at it again. He wrote a post in which he uses Catholic priestly celibacy as an argument against gays in the military. And you’d think that drawing a connection between the two would be the oddest thing you ever heard of, right?
Wrong. Here’s the graphic Porno Pete used to illustrate his post:
Jeremy Hooper decided to investigate:
So where does one even find this ad elsewhere on the Internet? Well after digging for about half an hour, the only place we could track it down is on a site called “Gay Pervs,” which is a links list to all kinds of porn sites…
And we weren’t able to pull it up through a Google Image search or something like that. You have to actually go to the link and “investigate” in order to bring up the banner.
That’s right. Porno Pete couldn’t just call it up on a search engine. He actually had to know about this web site ahead of time.
I have a feeling Porno Pete’s browser bookmarks are very, very interesting.
Military Service Issue - Sixty Years Ago This Month
Timothy Kincaid
July 23rd, 2008
Today’s debates over “forced cohabitation” are not without historical comparisons.
On 26 July 1948, President Harry S Truman signed Executive Order 9981, establishing the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. It was accompanied by Executive Order 9980, which created a Fair Employment Board to eliminate racial discrimination in federal employment.
The comparison was not lost on one witness today (CNN)
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Vance Coleman, a black man who joined the Army when it was segregated, testified that the current treatment of gays and lesbians is similar to how African-Americans were treated before President Truman integrated the military in 1948.
“I know what it is like to be thought of as a second-class citizen, and I know what it is like to have your hard work dismissed because of what you are or what you look like,” Coleman said.
Earlier this year the House of Representatives honored the order ending segregation
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress to honorably and respectfully recognize the historic significance and to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of President Truman’s Executive Order 9981 signed on July 26, 1948 that declared it to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion or national origin thereby beginning the process of ending segregation in the United States Armed Forces.
Today former Secretary of State Colin Powell, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and others celebrated the 60th anniversary of the integration of U.S. Armed Forces in the Capitol Rotunda.
Donnelly Repeats Bogus Statistics to Congress
Timothy Kincaid
July 23rd, 2008
Today in Congressional Hearings on whether the Don’t Ask - Don’t Tell policy is effective or counter-productive, anti-gay activist Elaine Donnelly claimed that polls support her contention that military personnel don’t wish to serve with openly gay servicemen. The Army Times reports
Donnelly, head of the Center for Military Readiness, an independent public policy group that focuses on military personnel issues and a longtime opponent of gays in the military, said the annual Military Times poll of service members consistently shows that between 57 percent and 59 percent of service members oppose allowing gays to serve openly in uniform.
But the poll that Donnelly quotes is not a representative poll of service members. We analyzed Donnelly’s claims in February, and found the following:
Using the 2000 statistics of the Heath Status of the United States Army (and assuming that there is not a strong variance between services) we can compare the Military Times poll to the Army’s report of those who actually serve.
- Army average age – 28; MT poll participant average age – 37
- 44% of service members between 17 and 24; 7% of MT poll participants fell in this category
- 8% of army personnel are 40 or older; 41% of MT poll participants are 40 or older
- 51% of army personnel are married; 82% of MT poll participants are married
As the Military Times put it, “The annual poll has come to be viewed by some as a barometer of the professional career military.”
In other words, this is NOT a poll of active service persons who are on the front lines eating, sleeping, and showering with their mates. In fact, only 2% of those polled lived in barracks. Unlike the Zogby poll, the Military Times poll is of those who have made the military their career.
Perhaps Donnelly isn’t edequately skilled to determine for herself that the Military Times poll is non-representative. Or perhaps she deliberately uses deception as a tool to advance her anti-gay agenda.
But in either case she should not be testifying before Congress.
COMMENT (1) | LINK
Palm Center: Elaine Donnelly Not Qualified To Testify
Jim Burroway
July 23rd, 2008
The Palm Center has announced that the Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy is set to publish a review of Elaine Donnelly’s 2007 article in the review. Donnelly, who is president of the Center for Military Readiness, opposes the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and was one of two witnesses testifying against repealing the military’s ban on gay servicemembers. According to Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, Donnelly’s testimony was drawn largely from her 2007 article which is “riddled with mistakes”:
“It’s unclear why Elaine Donnelly has a platform at all on this issue,” Belkin said. “She and her organization do no research.” Belkin noted, for example, that to bolster her point that the British military has been undermined by allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly, her article cites a single footnote which refers to five newspaper and radio stories, none of which have anything to do with gays in the military.
…
Donnelly’s article is riddled with other errors, including misidentifying the Palm Center as a Berkeley organization, misreading the evidence on gay service during wartime and misunderstanding the statistical methodology of demographic data on the prevalence of gays in the U.S. military, as well as the research methods used in assessing polling data and the financial costs of the ban on open gays.
Here is an example of Donnelly’s performance in Washington today:
[Hat tip: Alvin McEwen]
No One Wants “Don’t Ask - Don’t Tell”
This article is the opinion of the author and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of other authors at Box Turtle Bulletin
Timothy Kincaid
July 23rd, 2008
The “Don’t Ask - Don’t Tell” policy was a 1993 compromise between those who favored an all-out ban on gay service persons and those who favored a fully inclusive Military. It wasn’t much liked by either side at the time and is still not popular with either gays or anti-gays.
The anti-gay most visible on this issue is Elaine Donnelly, one of the two anti-gays scheduled to speak today in Congressional Hearings on the issue. Donnelly has long been opposed to the Don’t Ask - Don’t Tell compromise and claims that it is actually contrary to the wording of the law passed in 1993. Donnelly’s position is that there are no provisions for “not asking” and that therefore the Military should have a restrictive ban including witch-hunt efforts.
To reinforce that idea, anti-gays were passing out buttons today that said “Keep the LAW, not the DADT policy.”
What then are the likely outcomes of the hearings?
Return to a full ban on all gay servicepersons.
The arguments of Elaine Donnelly are a bit limited. They cannot rely on studies, comparison to other nations, or any other tangible evidence.
Donnelly has to rely on two arguments: that gays are icky, and that heterosexuals don’t want to be around gay people. Because of this, she claims, the Military would be harmed by allowing gay persons to serve openly.
Because gays are icky, other service persons would be distracted from their job. And because heterosexuals don’t want to be around gay people, they won’t sign up for service.
While these claims do speak to the issue of open v. closeted service, neither of these arguments is particularly germane to a return to a ban. And because a return to a full ban would likely be seen by the public as homophobic and hateful, there is not likely to be much of a push in this direction.
Retain Don’t Ask - Don’t Tell
This is the Military’s position, as expressed to the chairman of the hearings. However, the Military did not send anyone to the hearings to articulate that position. Further, they told the chairman that they would abide by congressional orders.
Since the termination of Joint Chairman Peter Pace, the opinions coming from the Pentegon about DADT have been tepid at most. The impression, to me at least, is that while the Military dislikes change in general, no one is fired up to keep DADT in place.
Retaining DADT is also the default position of John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for President. However, McCain’s support is couched in language that suggests a less-than-solid support for this position. Rather than state this position as his own, he defers to “senior military leaders”.
However, although there are few voices articulating support for the status quo, a position difficult to champion in either idealogical terms, this is by far the safest position for conservative or moderate legislators or either party.
Yes, the citizenry has come to the position where they want open service. And very few Senators or Congressmen openly state that gay servicepersons are incapable of serving their country well. But anti-gay sentiment is more more deeply felt than tolerance and while Americans don’t favor the policy, they aren’t rising up to demand its repeal.
As long as this issue is not brought up for a vote, no one needs to go on record as either opposing the Military, the populace, gay activists, or rightwing activists. Which probably explains why there has been no movement on this issue for 16 years in either Republican or Democratic controlled Congresses.
However, non-action may not be an option for much longer. Supporter in both parties are more vocal in their efforts to overturn this example of institutionalized discrimination. And the Congressional Hearings may indicate a willingness by Democratic Party leadership to allow Congress to readdress the issue.
As public opinion has shifted so far in favor of fully repealing the ban, and as more and more persons of expertise and experience have come to question is effectivity, legislators may find that they will need to take a stand and sooner rather than later.
Repealing the ban
This is the position favored by the citizens, a position that seems to cut across demographics.
It is also the position that seems to be enhanced with each new study, review, commentary, and observation. Over the past few years, a great many individuals and institutions that had been in opposition to full and open service have come to either reverse their thinking or to allow for reconsideration.
Most Democrats in Congress would find it difficult to vote to retain DADT. Even conservative pro-Military ex-servicemen Blue Dog Democrats like Congessman Patrick Murphy are skeptical about claims that servicemen are incapable of serving with their openly gay fellows.
Additionally, many Republican Congressmen will be hesitant to be seen to be too far out of the mainstream on this issue. As a majority of Republican voters favor lifting the ban, only the idealogues, or those who fear conservative activists, will feel pressured to take an anti-gay stance that is not popular with their constituents. Further, some Republicans may see this as a way to counterbalance their anti-marriage stance and appear reasonable and mainstream to the all-important Independent voters.
Although it may be a bit optimistic, I predict that a vote would result in nearly all Democrats favoring a reversal of the policy joined by a respectable number of Republicans.
Becoming Law
The question is whether new legislation allowing for open service would be signed by the President into law.
Were such a bill to pass under the current administration, I think it likely that President Bush would use his veto. Although this has been a President hesitant to veto legislation, he seems to make exceptions for law that would put gay citizens on an equal footing.
I think it also extremely likely that a President Obama would not hesitate to sign. He has been open in his support for gay servicepersons.
The question, at least to me, would be what a President McCain would do. Although he has spoken against changing policy, he has done so in a passive way, deferring to the expertise of others and avoiding taking a personal idealogical position. With enough Republican support, McCain might announce that “senior military advisors” don’t see the change in policy to be detrimental to Military effectiveness or unit cohesion and sign the bill. Alternately, he might feel endebted to the rightwing and might veto. At this point, I don’t think I can predict his action.
From 1993 to 2008: DADT and the House Armed Services Committee
Gregory Herek
July 23rd, 2008
Today the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee holds hearings on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
I’d like to be able to discuss the social science research relevant to the policy. However, there isn’t much to say that is new.
To be sure, new studies have been released that consider issues related to privacy, unit cohesion, and the experiences of other countries that have integrated sexual minorities into their militaries. But the conclusions of the newer research don’t differ much from those of past studies.
Thus, it seems appropriate to revisit a previous set of hearings in which the House Armed Services Committee heard about social science research relevant to military personnel policy. In my latest post at Beyond Homophobia, I reprint an excerpt of my own 1993 testimony before that Committee, and discuss the consistency in research findings during the past quarter century.
As in 1993, the real question today is not whether sexual minorities can be successfully integrated into the military. Rather, the issue is whether the United States is willing to repudiate its current practice of antigay discrimination and address the challenges associated with a new policy.
PFOX Misrepresents LGBT Suicide Research
Jim Burroway
July 22nd, 2008
It’s very difficult to imagine a more disgusting, callous and cynical act than exploiting the very real problem of LGBT youth suicides for political gain. But that is exactly what PFOX has done. And they did it by deliberately misrepresenting some of the important research studying the very real problem.
PFOX recently responded to a Washington Post article on Gay-Straight Alliances in schools last week:
The Washington Post recently ran a sympathetic article about a 15-year-old boy named Saro who described his homosexual feelings and how Gay Straight Alliance student clubs help such gay teens to deal with discrimination and bullying in high school and middle school.
“What the article failed to describe,” said PFOX Executive Director Regina Griggs, “is the danger of young sexually confused teens self-identifying as gays at an early age. Research has shown that the risk of suicide decreases by 20% each year that a person delays homosexual or bisexual self-labeling. Early self-identification is dangerous to kids.”
What Griggs failed to describe was exactly what the article she referenced actually said. That article was “Risk Factors for Attempted Suicide in Gay and Bisexual Youth” by Dr. Gary Remafedi and colleagues (Pediatrics 87 (June 1991): 869-875). This study only looked at a non-representative sample of 137 boys, which means that it is not the kind of study one can draw such specific conclusions. Among the many caveats of this study was that “The circumstances, prevalence, and severity of suicide attempts in this cohort may not reflect the general population of homosexually oriented boys.”
Wayne Besen contacted Dr. Remafedi, who supplied this response:
My work has been cited by PFOX in response to a Washington Post article on gay-straight alliances (GSA),” wrote Dr. Remafedi. “PFOX misuses one of my studies on suicide attempts in gay youth to argue that people should not identify their sexual orientation at young ages. Our findings do not support the contention that young people choose their identity or the timing of events in identity formation. Nor is there any evidence that the availability of GSAs influences those developmental processes.
Certified Cameronite: Jack Chick
Jim Burroway
July 22nd, 2008
I know you’ve seen them. You’ll usually find them deliberately left behind in some innocuous location where some unsuspecting soul can come across them and start flipping through the pages. You’ll find these strange little tracts just about anywhere: in car dealerships, dentist offices — for some reason I used to find them public men’s rooms.
As a Catholic growing up, I managed to run across the ones which painted the Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon and the Pope as the anti-Christ. That was one favorite theme for Jack Chick’s miniature comic books. Another one is the absolute, unblemished perfection of the King James Version and (and only the King James Version) of the Bible. Another still was the guy who was on his deathbed, facing the horrors of hell.
And, of course, there was homosexuality, with titles like Doom Town, Sin City, Birds and the Bees, and The Gay Blade. These were especially entertaining, laden with all the worst 1970s-style stereotypes, and they all seem to contain the same story of Sodom and Gomorrah. That is, after all, where fire and brimstone came from. But at the end of all the tracts is an invitation, like this charming one from Sin City:
If you choose Jesus Christ, all of your sins will be forgiven and you will receive God’s FREE gift of eternal life. If you do nothing, you’ll remain a condemned child of Satan…and one heartbeat from hell.
And in case you don’t think there’s a hell or a devil, Chick often included them in his tracts as well. In some of his comics they’re literally everywhere, usually standing just behind the evil-doer in case the reader is confused about who the bad guys are supposed to be. And sometime he places angels near the good guys, just so you’ll know.
Come to think of it, I think Chick ought to consider suing Oklahoma County commissioner Brent Rinehart for copyright violations. But I digress.
Anyway, it’s that last Chick comic that I mentioned, The Gay Blade, which caught my attention, because this one contains this so-called “fact” from our favorite Nazi-loving “researcher,” Paul Cameron.
I found this after a reader tipped me to an article in Battle Cry, Chick’s own monthly newsletter. (I was disappointed to find it was just an ordinary newsletter rather than a full-length comic book.) This article, “Homosexuals Hiding an ‘Inconvenient Truth’,” contains a similar claim:
Research by The Family Research Institute (FRI) of Colorado has discovered that the average lifespan of the male homosexual is only 39 years. Where 80% of married men lived past 65, only 2% of the homosexuals lived that long, as shown in the accompanying chart.
FRI found that sodomites “…were 116 times more apt to be murdered; 24 times more apt to commit suicide; and had a traffic-accident death-rate 18 times the rate of comparably-aged white males. Heart attacks, cancer and liver failure were exceptionally common. Twenty percent of lesbians died of murder, suicide, or accident—a rate 487 times higher than that of white females aged 25-44.”
In their web site at http:// www.familyresearchinst.org/ Default.aspx?tabid=73, FRI details the disgusting and unsanitary sexual practices that contribute to this early death sentence. The “outing” of the homosexual lifestyle in our culture has unleashed over 50 sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). AIDS is just one of them.
That link goes to Paul Cameron’s “Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do”, a brochure that I thoroughly investigated a few years ago in a project that gave birth to this very web site. And of course, a key component of Cameron’s brochure was his so-called “obituary study.”
It’s fitting that we finally got around to honoring Jack Chick as a Certified Cameronite. Chick joins other recent inductees like Insure.com and their CEO, Robert Bland and Oklahoma state rep. Sally Kern. They all make for some pretty good company.
But I didn’t want to honor Chick with our ordinary run-of-the-mill award that we’ve given to so many other deserving honorees. So I asked my good friend Bruce Garrett, a pretty good cartoonist in his own right, to see if he could come up with something special for Jack Chick.
So here it is, our Jack Chick Limited Collector’s Edition of the Certified Cameronite Award.
[Hat tip: John Thorp]
Newsweek’s Hit Piece on Murder Victim Larry King
This article expresses the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the opinion of other authors at Box Turtle Bulletin
Timothy Kincaid
July 21st, 2008
There are certain words and phrases that give a reader a sense of the perspective of the writer. And when discussing issues relating to orientation, some words and phrases suggest either a harsh hostility to gay people or a callous ignorance of our lives.
So it was with dismay that I read Ramin Setoodeh’s piece in Newsweek about the circumstances surrounding murder of Lawrence King. Setoodeh, in an effort to tell a “multilayered and complex” story, saw fit to use such language as “inappropriate, sometimes harmful, behavior”, “flaunted his sexuality”, “flamboyance”, and “pushed his rights”. These are all catch phrases that are most often heard from anti-gay activists when seeking to justify bigotry and discrimination.
Setoodeh uses these phrases to present a picture of Larry King, and one that is not complimentary. Unlike his murderer, Brandon McInerney, who “was smart” but “had his share of troubles”, for King the author had little good to say.
To Setoodeh, Larry was the primary source of disturbance on campus. He wore makeup and “thought nothing of chasing the boys around the school in [high heels], teetering as he ran.” He was “a troubled child who flaunted his sexuality and wielded it like a weapon”. “He went to school accessorized to the max” and would “sidle up to the popular boys’ table and say in a high-pitched voice, “Mind if I sit here?””
If there were any residents of Oxnard that didn’t view Larry as a prancing mincing menace intent on wreaking havoc on all around him, Setoodeh didn’t seem to find them. He found instead an attorney with a “gay panic” defense, a litigious adoptive father who resents the gay community for caring about Larry’s murder, and several teachers who objected to his effeminate ways.
In short, there’s very little in the Newsweek article that would not seem more at home on World Net Daily or a press release from the American Family Association.
And other than the briefest of disclaimers there is little to suggest that King was not fully to blame for his own death,. After all, he “sexually harassed” McInerney. He “was pushing as hard as he could, because he liked the attention”.
In addition to Larry King, there’s one other villain in Setoodeh’s tale. No, not the boy who pulled the trigger; he was being “bullied”, you see. The other responsible party is Joy Epstein, “a lesbian vice principal with a political agenda.” In Setoodeh’s words, “Some teachers believe that she was encouraging Larry’s flamboyance, to help further an “agenda,” as some put it.”
It may be that Ramin Setoodeh was limited by the nature of the legal system. While the defense attorney has an interest in pushing a “blame the school, blame the administration, blame the victim, blame anyone but McInerney” spin, the prosecution was not willing to try the case in the papers. And with Larry King’s allegedly abusive adoptive father motivated by his lawsuit against the school, there is no one left to speak for Larry.
Setoodeh may have let inexperience and limited input sway his judgment into writing a hit piece on the victim. He is, after all, an odd choice for an in depth article about social interactions in an elementary school. His prior articles appear to consist primarily of celebrity interviews and entertainment commentary.
But though Setoodeh had not written substantive work for Newsweek before this, it is not the first time that he has shown awkwardness around the subject of homosexuality.
In December of 2005, he phrased a question to Jake Gyllenhaal that makes presumptions about Gyllenhaal’s expertise on gay issues and also wild assumptions about what “people” believe.
“Brokeback Mountain” is a breakthrough movie. Why do you think people oppose gay marriage?
Similarly, his odd questioning of Clay Aiken and whether the Kelly Ripa incident was homophobic cut short his interview with the former American Idol star. In fact, I was surprised at how frequently the term “awkward” appears when googling Mr. Setoodeh. And often when it didn’t, it should have.
I don’t know Ramin Setoodeh’s orientation or his personal tastes or biases. Nor do I know his reasons for writing an article that serves as little more than a press release for the defense on this murder case.
But whatever his motivations, it is clear to me that he was tragically under-qualified for the job and his lack of experience showed in his use of language and in his final product.
Cameronesque Award: Family “Research” Council’s “Slippery Slope” Brochure
Jim Burroway
July 21st, 2008
The Family “Research” Council is at it again, doing what they do best. Their brochure, “The Slippery Slope of Same-Sex ‘Marriage’,” which the FRC is touting in a recent action alert in their battle against same-sex marriage in California, is a prime example of the sort of “research” the FRC is all about.
It’s a lengthy brochure and it would take days to research the whole thing, but its entire premise is build on three specific claims. The first two are:
Relationship duration: While a high percentage of married couples remain married for up to 20 years or longer, with many remaining wedded for life, the vast majority of homosexual relationships are short-lived and transitory. This has nothing to do with alleged “societal oppression.” A study in the Netherlands, a gay-tolerant nation that has legalized homosexual marriage, found the average duration of a homosexual relationship to be one and a half years.
Monogamy versus promiscuity: Studies indicate that while three-quarters or more of married couples remain faithful to each other, homosexual couples typically engage in a shocking degree of promiscuity. The same Dutch study found that “committed” homosexual couples have an average of eight sexual partners (outside of the relationship) per year.
Both of those claims come from the same so-called “Dutch study,” published in 2003 bt Maria Xiridou and her colleagues in the journal AIDS. We’ve already published a full analysis of that report, but here’s the Cliff Notes version:
- This study was not about gay relationships, as most people who misuse this study claims. Its purpose was to study how HIV is transmitted in the Dutch population. That’s why the study was based only on those with HIV/AIDS attending STD clinics. It is no more generalizable to the general LGBT population than heterosexuals with STD’s are representative of straight people overall.
- This study excluded everyone over thirty — the prime age in which people are more likely to settle down and marry.
- “Relationships” weren’t defined. Anything including a second date to a lifetime commitment could be counted. You simply cannot compare that to straight couples who are married as the FRC does.
- FRC cites the study as taking place in a country with “legalized homosexual marriage”, but the Netherlands didn’t have anything like it when the study ended in 1998. Registered partnerships for same-sex and opposite-sex couples didn’t begin until October 1, 1999. A limited form of same-sex marriage wasn’t available until 2001.
- And this is the most important point of all: Because the purpose of the study was to look at how AIDS is transmitted, all monogamous couples were specifically excluded from the study. Because monogamous couples aren’t transmitting HIV, they would have been completely irrelevant to the study’s goals.
And what happens when you exclude all monogamous people from the study? It turns out that when people say they’re not monogamous, they tend to sleep around. But it has absolutely nothing to do with those who are monogamous, or the broader population generally.
This misused study is one of the FRC’s favorites. At the end of our “Dutch Study” report, we maintain a list of those who misuse this study, and the FRC are repeat offenders — including in two amicus briefs that we know of before the Maryland Court of Appeals and the Superior Court of New Jersey. If the FRC has no fear of lying to the courts, then they certainly aren’t ashamed of lying to the public.
The third point the brochure is built on is this:
Intimate partner violence: homosexual and lesbian couples experience by far the highest levels of intimate partner violence compared with married couples as well as cohabiting heterosexual couples. Lesbians, for example, suffer a much higher level of violence than do married women
They base this claim on the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Violence Against Women Survey (PDF: 62 pages/1,475 KB) If you want to see how they construct this particular distortion, I encourage you to download the report yourself and we’ll go through it step by step. Believe me, it’s worth it because this is a classic example.
On page 29, you will find that when you only look at victims with a history of same-sex cohabitation and compare them with those with a history of opposite-sex cohabitation, then it’s true, gays and lesbians experience higher levels of intimate parter violence. But that’s not true for gay and lesbian couples.
To see this, go to the next page. Among women with a history of same-sex partnership:
- 30.4% were raped, assaulted or stalked by their husband/male partner
- 11.4% were raped, assaulted or stalked by their wife/female partner.
And among men with a history of same-sex partnership:
- 10.8% were raped, assaulted, or stalked by their wife/female partner.
- 15.4% were raped, assaulted, or stalked by their husband/male partner.
So here is what it all means. Many women with a history of same-sex partnership also have a history of opposite-sex partnership. Because of that, they are far more likely to report being raped, assaulted or stalked because it is the men in their lives who are doing the raping, assaulting or stalking, not the women. Same-sex cohabiting women were nearly three times more likely to report being victimized by a male partner than a female partner.
And here is where the statistic gets really interesting: 20.5% of women in opposite sex relationships were raped, assaulted or stalked by their husband or male partner. That compares to 15.4% of men who were raped, assaulted, or stalked by their male partners. In other words, gay men are safer around their same-sex partners than straight women are around their husbands or opposite-sex partner.
But if course the Family “Research” Council didn’t want you to know the full story. That’s what makes their “research” so Cameronesque, and it’s why they are such deserving recipients of our latest award.
