2008 Woodie Awards
"Risk that more children will become homosexual through learned behavior"
Aubrey Donaldson ; Indiana Daily Student (Indiana U.)
Issue date: 4/27/05 Section: Opinion
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(U-WIRE) BLOOMINGTON, Ind. - With the staggering surplus of loving homes available to foster children right now, we'd better start weeding some out, eh?
According to Reuters News Service, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill this week banning gays from becoming foster parents. Says State Representative Robert Talton (R): "There's a risk that more of the children will go into homosexuality because it's a cultivated and learned behavior."
Yeah, just like I learned to be attracted to men by watching my mom pluck my dad's back hair.
Talton's statement was supported by Cathie Adams, the president of a conservative group called the Texas Eagle Forum. She claimed, without bothering to cite any sort of research, that gay foster parents are more likely to molest their foster kids.
I beg to differ.
During the research for 2001's "The Stop Child Molestation Book," Nora Harlow and Dr. Gene G. Abel interviewed 1,038 men who had molested boys. An overwhelming 70 percent of these men said they were "predominantly heterosexual" in their adult sex lives. Included in this figure are the 51 percent who were "exclusively heterosexual."
Cold hard facts aren't as readily available to dispute Talton's "learned behavior" statement, but there are quite a few findings out there that point to genetics. For example, the online psychology resource http://allpsych.com posted the results of a study of gay men with identical twin brothers. In fifty-two percent of these pairs showed both twins to be gay, whereas only five percent of the adopted gay men studied had adopted brothers who were gay.
But even barring these statistics, simple common sense renders Talton's statement ludicrous. Most of the gays I know, including my own brother, come from a traditional family with married, heterosexual parents. And interviews with gays almost invariably result in the revelation that they've known of their same-sex preferences from early childhood, even as their straight parents were raising them as heterosexuals. Most of them tried for years to "force" themselves to be straight to no avail.
According to Reuters News Service, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill this week banning gays from becoming foster parents. Says State Representative Robert Talton (R): "There's a risk that more of the children will go into homosexuality because it's a cultivated and learned behavior."
Yeah, just like I learned to be attracted to men by watching my mom pluck my dad's back hair.
Talton's statement was supported by Cathie Adams, the president of a conservative group called the Texas Eagle Forum. She claimed, without bothering to cite any sort of research, that gay foster parents are more likely to molest their foster kids.
I beg to differ.
During the research for 2001's "The Stop Child Molestation Book," Nora Harlow and Dr. Gene G. Abel interviewed 1,038 men who had molested boys. An overwhelming 70 percent of these men said they were "predominantly heterosexual" in their adult sex lives. Included in this figure are the 51 percent who were "exclusively heterosexual."
Cold hard facts aren't as readily available to dispute Talton's "learned behavior" statement, but there are quite a few findings out there that point to genetics. For example, the online psychology resource http://allpsych.com posted the results of a study of gay men with identical twin brothers. In fifty-two percent of these pairs showed both twins to be gay, whereas only five percent of the adopted gay men studied had adopted brothers who were gay.
But even barring these statistics, simple common sense renders Talton's statement ludicrous. Most of the gays I know, including my own brother, come from a traditional family with married, heterosexual parents. And interviews with gays almost invariably result in the revelation that they've known of their same-sex preferences from early childhood, even as their straight parents were raising them as heterosexuals. Most of them tried for years to "force" themselves to be straight to no avail.