OK… have read the open letter to Diane Carney that COTH published, and have caught up on this thread.
The open letter was excellent. The writer did a great job, and COTH has done a great thing in terms of giving editorial space to an opposing viewpoint after publishing the interview with DC.
As for the discussion you all are having over when children become aware of their eventual sexual orientation… which has come up because of Duncan’s ill considered comment…
A few thoughts.
First off, it is a fact that adults who describe themselves as homosexual in orientation experience SIGNIFICANTLY increased rates of sexual abuse as minors vs. adults who describe themselves as heterosexual in orientation. I can’t remember the reported percentages… but it’s a well studied issue.
Second… do not interpret that comment to mean I am saying there are more homosexual victims or predators than heterosexual victims or predators. I’m not. The last statistics I saw in a college psychology class I took a few decades ago indicated that roughly 10% of the human population, across the globe and in different countries and societies, is homosexual. There are some slight variances in that figure for a number of reasons… but overall it was a pretty well established number the last time I studied this (a while ago). So what the earlier point I referred to means is that a higher percentage of that 10% of people experienced sexual abuse as children than the percentage of the 90% of heterosexual people did when they were children. In terms of a specific counts though (a different metric than percentages of sunsets of a population)… probably more heterosexual victims in a total count than homosexual victims.
Another thing… Homosexual people can and DO get abused by heterosexual predators when they are kids. Look no further than Jimmy Williams and his most well known victim, AK. Similarly, heterosexual people can and DO get abused by homosexual predators as children. Read about the Jerry Sandusky case, and his adopted son… Matt Sandusky… who came forward with his actual story after Jerry Sandusky was convicted. It’s a really tragic story, and Jerry Sandusky… to be accurate… never did identify as gay. HOWEVER… he abused teenaged boys. Many of whom grew up and said they were straight. Matt Sandusky was married and has a child. The experience these boys went through was bad enough and hard enough to cope with because that’s how abuse is. But the component of them being abused by a man, even though they identified as straight? It involved an extra element of shame that caused many to remain silent.
I also have a second cousin who was abused by a male family member as a little girl. She and I have spoken about it. She is now an adult, and in a longtime committed relationship with another woman. She says the sexual abuse she experienced by a male as a child was profoundly traumatic for her in part because that wasn’t her sexual orientation. She didn’t know that at the time… but she feels it was an additionally horrific component of the experience that personally added to her trauma.
Bottom line… children should have appropriate time and space as they approach puberty to sort through their own feelings and any issues they need to figure out about their own sexual preferences without adults intruding on it in a premature, abusive fashion. People who are homosexual OFTEN struggle with self-acceptance as they go through puberty and their teenaged years. Sexual abuse psychologically damages a child’s own sense of self, and most victims who experience it have low self esteem, and serious emotional harm as a result. A child who already is likely to struggle with self acceptance as they figure out their own orientation and how they want to step forward with their identity, and then also gets sexually exploited by an adult in the midst of this?
Its awful and so harmful. People like Duncan who insinuate that because a boy grows up to identify as a gay man, it’s ok that he has sexual intercourse at age 11 with an adult?!?! So ignorant and wrong.
So let’s not get hung up on when exactly individuals identify as homosexual. I’m sure that is a complex and individual sort of thing. Instead… let’s focus on the need to protect kids. And also, the need to speak up VERY CLEARLY about how vulnerable children who eventually grow up to decide they are most happy and well adjusted with a homosexual identity are… we need to speak up VERY CLEARLY that it is ABSOLUTELY WRONG AND EVIL AND HARMFUL for adults to sexually exploit and abuse these kids as minors as well.
No more with this “older gay man showing a young boy about the lifestyle” stuff. That is NAMBLA propaganda.
