Protect the Children (and mean it)

I had a long email exchange about hate crime statistics with a "heteroseparatist," and I
told him 4% of the population is openly gay. Out of the blue, he turned that into a blog
post about gays abusing kids. And he called it "The Tisinai Formula", using my unusual
last name. I thought that was pretty vile, attaching my name to this disgusting crime.

But I shouldn't have been surprised. That's where a lot of our opponents go. So we
need to be armed with the facts, especially gay men, who are the main targets of these
sick lies and accusations.

And then I realized this blogger had done me a favor. His post serves up their twisted
reasoning in a way that highlights every mistake and false assumption they make

He claims 33% of girls are molested, along with 14% of boys. Then, using the 96 to 4
straight to gay ratio he asks, "If a village of 960 men molests 33 girls, and a village of 40
men molests 14 boys, which village is more dangerous to children?"

He's trying to make the point that the gay village is more dangerous, but actually he's
repeating the mistake at the heart of so much anti-gay propaganda -- the assumption
that girls are molested by straight men, while boys are molested by gays. The real
picture, though, looks more like this. Men who abuse boys rarely come from this 4%
group. They come from here. Our opponents don't want to admit that, the general
public doesn't seem to know it, but the facts don't lie.

Dr. Carole Jenny and her colleagues at Denver's Children's Hospital looked at 50 boys
who were molested by adults.

 37 were molested by man in a heterosexual relationship with one of the boys'

relatives.
 3 were molested by their mother or grandmother.
 5 by both parents.
 3 were molested by male family friends with no history of sex with men.
 1 by an uncle, also with no history of sex with men.
 Finally, 1 boy was abused by a man who was possibly but not clearly identified
as gay.

All of these cases are tragic. But there's no reason to single out openly gay men as a
special threat.

So who are these non-gay men abusing boys? Some of them aren't straight or gay,
aren't sexually attracted to adults at all, but are attracted simply to children. These are
pedophiles. They're fixated on kids. Others have a history of being straight, but under
the wrong circumstances, regress back to kids.
But why would a straight man -- attracted to women but not to men -- be attracted to
boys? Well, first ask why they're attracted to kids at all. Part of the answer seems to be
that these disturbed people need to lash out at someone, and kids are easy prey. The
abusers get off on a power rush they just can't experience with another adult. And as
for why boys, well, researchers asked the straight offenders and got the answer that,
"the young boys did not have any body hair and that their bodies were soft and smooth."
In other words, not manly. And of course, straight men often have easier access to
boys than to girls.

The vast majority of men who abuse boys either aren't attracted to adults of either
gender, or are straight men with an emotional disturbance that sends them regressing
back to kids. In study after study, only the tiniest fraction of these abusers show interest
in adult men, a percentage well below the fraction of openly gay men in society. That's
why the American Psychological Association testified to the US Senate: "There is no
evidence that homosexuals are more likely than heterosexuals to molest children."

Some of our opponents don't care about this distinction. Peter LaBarbera says, ""Who
cares if a guy is married? If he's into molesting boys, that's homosexual behavior."

Who cares? Really? First off, when we're talking about marriage equality, gay
adoption, Don't Ask Don't Tell, we're talking about openly gay men. So it doesn't make
any sense fight us with stats about abusers who are married to women.

But here's the big point. When our opponents demonize openly gay men and
dishonestly put the spotlight on us, they're letting the real abusers to hide in the
darkness. And continue their abuse. This shows their real agenda. They feel a greater
need to demonize gays than to protect kids from the real danger. They're literally
sacrificing children to their own homophobia.

Remember the heteroseparatist from the beginning of the video? He ended our
correspondence by asking me to read the Bible with an open mind. But when he
attached my name to this disgusting crime he was ignoring Matthew 7:12 and Luke
6:31: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Of course he doesn't see
that. His homophobia is more important than his own moral code.

Let's wrap this up by going to back to the corrected version of his diagram, and let's ask
his own question again: "Which village is more dangerous to children?" Not the openly
gay one. And anyone who says different -- out of ignorance, hatred, or fear -- is simply
helping the abusers.

Rob Tisinai
January 24, 2010