Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Christian Post Provides Platform for Anti-Gay Charlatan Paul Cameron

There are many anti-gay organizations that work over time to depict LGBT individuals as mentally ill if not outright disease ridden.  Organizations like - some rightly registered as hate groups - Family Research Council, American Family Association, Mission America, and Focus on the Family drip with malice in the vileness of their false and fabricated propaganda.  Organizations like these knowingly  and deliberately use and/or repackage the long discredited and fraudulent "research" of Paul Cameron (pictured at left), a true charlatan in my opinion.  Thus, one would have thought that a arguably legitimate outlet like the Christian Post would avoid giving a false legitimacy to Cameron and his bogus works.  Here's the headline carried by the Christian Post: "Research Group Claims Gays Have Mental, Physical Problems."   Worse yet, here is a sampling of the batshitery contained in the article:
  
The Family Research Institute (FRI), an organization driving research into questions relating to the traditional family unit, has challenged a widely approved and circulated study accepted in many psychological circles that claims to prove that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.

"The main motivation is that if you look across the data sets you see that homosexuals have a host of mental problems, disproportionate physical problems, they don't live as long, and they are disproportionately involved in drug abuse and criminality," Dr. Paul Cameron of FRI, who led the analysis, told The Christian Post on Tuesday. "That would seem to indicate that that is a lifestyle that may reasonably be considered mentally disturbed – [a] disorder. Yet, it isn't."

FRI's investigation concerns a 1957 study of 30 male homosexuals conducted by Dr. Evelyn Hooker that used a number of psychiatry tests to determine whether homosexuality can be considered a mental problem. Hooker's research was claimed to show that it cannot, eventually prompting the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973.

FRI's close research, however, led the organization to believe in a different outcome.  .  .  .  .  "It is surprising that such a wildly defective study, and one that actually proved the exact opposite of what it claimed to have proved has survived so long," he concluded.

What the Christian Post fails to note is that Cameron has been expelled from every legitimate association that he ever belonged to for either unethical conduct or falsifying research.  In fact, in more lawsuit where Cameron was used by anti-gay forces, the court's opinion notes that both Cameron and his testimony was fraudulent.   Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin has a great take down of Cameron and ultimately the Christian Post for providing a total charlatan the cloak of legitimacy.  Here are excerpts:

They should know better. They really should know better.  By this point, everyone in media from Mother Jones to the National Review, from the Catholic Register to the American Atheist Magazine, everyone should know that quoting Dr. Paul Cameron will bring embarrassment and make you the subject of public ridicule.

After Cameron was booted from the Nebraska Psychological Association and the American Psychological Association for distorting the research of others, it should have been obvious. After Bill Bennett stupidly relied on Cameron (and had to publicly apologize), it should have been obvious. After the Lincoln police called his bluff about a “four-year-old boy who has had his genitals almost severed from his body at Gateway [mall] in a restroom with a homosexual act”, it should have been obvious. After making a complete fool of himself in Sacha Baron Cohen’s mockumentary film BrĂ¼no, it should have been obvious.

I guess it isn’t obvious. Or not to the Christian Post. They think that Cameron has discovered that gay folks are mentally ill.

A three minute Google of Hooker would illustrate just how distorted that statement is from reality. Another three minute Google of Cameron would illustrate just how dishonest (and perhaps deranged) that Cameron’s claims have been over the years.  They really should know better.

Kincaid is right - everyone should know that Cameron is a liar and fraud.  Yet time and time again, the "godly Christian" folk feign ignorance.  Once I even had Robert Knight and Peter LaBarbera make this type of  ridiculous claim.  I sent them detail information and documentation on Cameron and what did they do?  They went on deliberately lying and disseminating utterly fraudulent anti-gay propaganda.

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