Bigots in Idaho

How long do they have? One generation, possibly two? As the influence of the Boise Valley extends through the rest of Idaho, slowly but surely we see progressive causes being championed and religious fundamentalism rejected.

An excellent example of that was mentioned below by untamedshrew to an opinion piece by the Village Idiot. The gems that are missing from that, however, can be found in the comment section where Clayton "I overdo it on the homophobia" Cramer makes an appearance. It's really amazing because I didn't think he could fit his ego through the door:

Submitted by claytoncramer on Wed, 02/20/2008 - 6:36pm.

Hmmm. I have a master's degree in history, six published books (and no, none of them are "subsidy publishers"), and a number of scholarly journal articles published. I recently assisted in the writing of amicus briefs for an upcoming Supreme Court case. And you?

Actually, I have empathy, which vastly surpasses your caustic homophobia. I can feel good about myself for feeling that I have peers that are homosexual, that love their families, that treat others with the respect that they have earned. Clayton, on the other hand, hasn't earned a bit, even with his degrees and bargain basement books.

Clayton's newest angle to attack homosexuals is to attempt to equate a same-sex pedophile with a homosexual:

I'm quite sure that you can't defend your claim, mostly because pedophilia, while not the norm among homosexuals, is disproportionately a homosexual behavior (about 8x what you would expect). Since people that claim to be Christians are about 70% of the U.S. population, they would have to commit pedophilia at a rate so high that it isn't even possible.

Ignoring the implication that no Christians are homosexual, there is a lot of research and psychologists that would easily disagree with how Clayton defines "homosexual behavior":

Another problem related to terminology arises because sexual abuse of male children by adult men2 is often referred to as "homosexual molestation." The adjective "homosexual" (or "heterosexual" when a man abuses a female child) refers to the victim's gender in relation to that of the perpetrator. Unfortunately, people sometimes mistakenly interpret it as referring to the perpetrator's sexual orientation.

To avoid this confusion, it is preferable to refer to men's sexual abuse of boys with the more accurate label of male-male molestation. Similarly, it is preferable to refer to men's abuse of girls as male-female molestation. These labels are more accurate because they describe the sex of the individuals involved but don't implicitly convey unwarranted assumptions about the perpetrator's sexual orientation.

So just because Clayton can't understand that the historical term of homosexual molestation has little to nothing to do with actual homosexuality doesn't mean that he should be allowed to spew his little falsehoods.

Are homosexual adults in general sexually attracted to children and are preadolescent children at greater risk of molestation from homosexual adults than from heterosexual adults? There is no reason to believe so. The research to date all points to there being no significant relationship between a homosexual lifestyle and child molestation. There appears to be practically no reportage of sexual molestation of girls by lesbian adults, and the adult male who sexually molests young boys is not likely to be homosexual (Groth & Gary, 1982, p. 147).

Or how about:

In a more recent literature review, Dr. Nathaniel McConaghy (1998) similarly cautioned against confusing homosexuality with pedophilia. He noted, "The man who offends against prepubertal or immediately postpubertal boys is typically not sexually interested in older men or in women" (p. 259).

Then there is always:

This well known lack of a linkage between homosexuality and child molestation accounts for why relatively little research has directly addressed the issue. Proving something we already know simply isn't a priority. Indeed, a commentary that accompanied publication of the 1994 study by Jenny et al. in Pediatrics noted that debates about gay people as molesters "have little to do with everyday child abuse" and lamented that they distract lawmakers and the public from dealing with the real problem of children's sexual mistreatment (Krugman, 1994).

So what can we expect from Clayton? Well, more ignorance:

Hmmm. More than one-quarter of gay men reported that they had been sexually abused? That's almost three times the rates of sexual abuse among men in the general population. Isn't anyone noticing what might be an obvious connection here?

And there are lots of other articles out there, again ignoring the elephant in the bathtub--the high rates of childhood sexual abuse among adult gay men.

In fact, many studies have been done and are in progress at this time. No one is ignoring the elephant, people are trying to understand sexual orientation from an unbiased perspective, which is a perspective that isn't available to Clayton.

At this point there no longer remains anything to debate with Clayton. The only decision is what names to call him, because anything else might begin to show him respect that he will never earn back.