California Sees the Light

Social and cultural conservatives, spearheaded by the religious right, are frightened, furious and disgusted by the May 15 decision of the California Supreme Court, in which decision this court held that the California state constitution prohibits the denial of marriage licenses to gay couples (in re Marriage Cases, S147999). Gay and lesbian Americans, on the other hand, met this long-anticipated decision with delight, jubilation, and glee, leading one conservative to compare their reaction to “Visigoths dancing in the ruins of Rome” – a patently offensive comparison in the eyes of most gay people and many heterosexuals, not all of whom oppose gay marriage.

Organizations such as the “American Family Association” (AFA), “Focus on the Family,” (FOTF), and the “Family Research Council” (FRC) applaud efforts to amend the California state constitution to codify the ban on gay marriage at the state constitutional level; a measure to do this may appear on the ballot in November, and polls initially indicated that the outcome could result in this victory for marriage equality being short-lived. However, the analysis undergirding this decision cannot be annulled by such an amendment; such a measure may invalidate the court’s holding, but cannot invalidate the court’s reasoning. This is important, because (as will be discussed) the California Supreme Court became perhaps the second state high court in the nation to conclude that gay Americans constitute a “suspect class” for the purposes of state equal protection analysis. Days later, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit became the first federal appeals court in the nation to conclude that gay Americans may constitute a “suspect class” for the purpose of US Constitutional equal protection analysis; a three-judge panel of this Court decided, unanimously, that the military’s categorical ban on gay men and lesbians serving in the Armed Forces cannot be sustained in the light of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) (in which decision the Court struck down all state “sodomy” statutes as applied to gay sex acts performed in private between consenting adults for non-commercial purposes, holding that these statutes violated the Constitution’s guarantees of substantive fairness under the Due Process Clause). The latter development may well be far more significant than the California gay marriage development, for reasons that will be discussed in a later essay. Sufficeth to state that this panel of the Ninth Circuit meticulously analyzed what the US Supreme Court actually did in Lawrence as opposed to what the Court said, to arrive at the conclusion that the US Supreme Court employed a form of heightened scrutiny in Lawrence (see Witt v. Dept. of the Air Force, No. 06-35644 (May 21,2008)).

(See http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/laborprof_blog/files/witt_v_air_force_0635644.pdf for the actual panel decision).

Some conservatives have expressed (groundless) fears that churches will be forced to recognize gay marriages against their religious tenets. At the outset, it should be noted that no church could ever be required to perform gay marriages. The specter of churches being forced to perform gay marriages against their religious tenets as an argument against the recognition of gay marriage is a classic example of the “straw man” argument. Just as no church in the nation is required to perform marriages of previously divorced people, or of people who are not members of that church, so too will no church ever be forced to perform gay marriages. Conservatives should rest assured that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment ensures that churches are (and will remain) free to determine who they may and may not marry. I know of no gay rights activist (or of any gay person) who wishes to force churches to recognize gay marriage. In fact, one of the principle “talking points” advanced by gay rights activists during the debate about gay marriage stresses the fact that heterosexual marriages may be performed with or without the religious ceremony that so many people love; many couples choose to get married by the appropriate official at City Hall rather than in church, and this will apply to gay marriages too. Anti-discrimination statutes that include sexual orientation as a characteristic that may not be taken into consideration in housing, employment, and access to places of public accommodation almost always include an exception for religious institutions; indeed, such an exception is required in order for these statutes to pass constitutional muster.

What is noteworthy about the majority opinion in the California case (in re Marriage Cases, S147999 (May 2008)) is the degree of research and scholarship that was reflected in this decision. The majority made numerous references to California case law, and clearly researched this issue at considerable length. This was reflected in the opening words of the dissent authored by Justice Baxter, who wrote that “The majority opinion reflects considerable research, thought, and effort on a significant and sensitive case.” Sadly, however, three Justices remained wedded (no pun intended) to the tautological and conclusory reasoning adopted by the state (as well as by the majority in the New York gay marriage case (Hernandez v. Robles, 855 N.E.2d 1 (N.Y. 2006). 7 N.Y.3d 338), in which the state prevailed and the gay plaintiffs lost).

The California decision held that the prohibition of gay marriage violated both the due process and the equal protection guarantees of the state constitution. The case rested entirely on state constitutional law, thereby ensuring that the judgment cannot be appealed to the US Supreme Court (a decision resting entirely on state constitutional analysis may not be reviewed by the US Supreme Court; indeed, a state supreme court decision may only be reviewed by the US Supreme Court to the extent that the state court decision involves US constitutional or statutory adjudication).

The majority opinion made short work of the tired argument that same-sex marriage should not be permitted because same-sex marriage has never been permitted. The majority pointed out that this is not analysis – this is merely a restatement of the issue presented by the plaintiffs. The majority framed the issue not as being whether the state constitution grants a right to “same-sex marriage,” but instead in terms of whether the state constitution granted gay people the right to marry. These are entirely different issues. The majority did not frame marriage in predefined terms as the union of only a man and a woman; it identified marriage as the union of two people who love each other and who wish to enter into the legal and social commitments associated with the institution of marriage, and then asked whether there was any reason that gay couples should not be permitted to enter into this union in the same manner as is currently done by heterosexual couples.

The identification of fundamental rights frequently lies at the heart of due process analysis. In federal constitutional jurisprudence, fundamental rights are often identified as those rights “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” (see Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319 (1937)); they involve principles of justice “rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people” (see Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97 (1934)); they are rights which are such that “neither liberty nor justice would exist if they were sacrificed” (Palko, supra). The California Supreme Court embarked on a similar analysis of rights recognized as fundamental through interpretation of the California state constitution. However, the California Supreme Court also recognized that while fundamental rights are often rights that have been recognized for lengthy periods of time, historical recognition of such rights is not the only issue considered in their identification. This is somewhat akin to the US Supreme Court’s analysis in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) (this decision invalidated all state “sodomy” statutes as applied to sexual conduct between consenting adults in private settings for non-commercial purposes); in Lawrence, the US Supreme Court noted an “emerging awareness” that liberty grants adults a substantial degree of protection in deciding how to conduct their private lives in matters pertaining to sex.

The Lawrence Court made it clear that rights recognized under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment are not limited only to the rights described above, noting that "[H]istory and tradition are the starting point but not in all cases the ending point of the substantive due process inquiry" (cited from County of Sacramento v. Lewis, 523 U.S. 833, 857 (1998) (Kennedy, J., concurring)). The California Supreme Court cited from relevant California case law to arrive at the same conclusions as those arrived at by the US Supreme Court in its due process jurisprudence, reaching the same result with respect to the identification and recognition of fundamental rights. The California constitution also contains an explicit privacy clause, which has allowed the state courts to develop due process analysis in a manner analogous to that in which the US Supreme Court has developed due process analysis (a long line of case law rests on this development – see, e.g. Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390 (1923), Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535 (1942), Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967), and of course Lawrence (supra)). The California Supreme Court framed the issue as one of whether or not gay people should be able to exercise an already recognized fundamental right (the right to marry), rather than whether the court should recognize a new fundamental right to “same-sex marriage.”

In support of this paradigm, the California Supreme Court referred to Perez v. Sharp, 32 Cal.2d 711 (1948), in which decision this court invalidated the California “anti-miscegenation” statute, becoming the first state in the nation to invalidate such a statute (the US Supreme Court invalidated all such statutes 19 years later when it handed down Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)). Perez was handed down by a deeply divided court, as was the case with respect to in re Marriage Cases, supra (the case under discussion). Just as the right to marry should not depend on an individual’s race, the court argued that it should not depend on an individual’s sexual orientation. The state countered with the argument that “domestic partnerships” already provided gay couples who entered into these relationships all of the substantive rights of marriage – however, the court correctly noted that the reservation of “the historic designation of ‘marriage’” exclusively for opposite-sex couples posed a serious risk of denying to gay couples in substantively identical relationships equal dignity and equal respect.

The court then turned to the assertion that the existing marriage statute was invalid under a state equal protection analysis. Whereas the US Supreme Court recognizes three levels of judicial review in cases implicating infringements of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the California state courts recognize only two levels of judicial review in cases implicating infringements of the California constitution’s equal protection clause.

Most California statutes challenged under the equal protection guarantee are reviewed under the rational basis standard, which is recognized by both state and federal courts; under this deferential standard of review, the burden falls on the plaintiff to establish that the challenged statute furthers the promotion of absolutely no legitimate state interest, or that there is no rational relationship between the putative state interest and the classification drawn by the challenged statute (most, but not all, statutes will survive scrutiny under this standard of review – notable exceptions include Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996); City of Cleburne, Texas v. Cleburne Living Ctr., Inc., 473 U.S. 432 (1985); and United States Dept. of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528 (1973)).

Statutes that draw classifications on the basis of characteristics such as race or sex are reviewed under “strict scrutiny” by the California state courts; statutes that draw classifications on the basis of race are reviewed under “strict scrutiny” by the US Supreme Court (and other federal courts), whereas statutes that draw classifications on the basis of sex are reviewed under “quasi-strict scrutiny” by the US Supreme Court (and other federal courts) (see United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996); Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677 (1973)). “Strict scrutiny” is a much more demanding standard of review under both state and federal constitutional jurisprudence; in federal equal protection jurisprudence, a statute will only survive “strict scrutiny” if it is shown to promote a “compelling” state interest, and if it is also shown that the differential treatment promotes that interest in the “least restrictive” manner possible with respect to the right infringed; the statute must sweep no more broadly than is absolutely necessary (this is referred to as “narrow tailoring.”) Federal case law on point includes Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 214 (1944), McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987), and Regents of Univ. of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978). Under California equal protection constitutional adjudication, a statute will only survive “strict scrutiny” if it is shown to promote a “compelling” state interest, and if it is also shown that the differential treatment is both reasonably related to and “necessary” to promote the interest in question. Strict scrutiny is only applicable, under both federal and state constitutional adjudication, if the statute in question adversely impacts members of a “suspect class” or if the statute in question adversely impacts the exercise of a “fundamental” right.

The California Supreme Court was faced with an issue of first impression under California law – whether gay men and lesbians constitute a “suspect class” for the purposes of state equal protection analysis.

Members of the group in question must satisfy several of a number of criteria in order to be identified as members of a “suspect class” under both federal and state constitutional analysis. These criteria include (but are not limited to) a history of past persecution; persecution based on the presence of an “immutable” characteristic possessed by members of that class; persecution based on a characteristic that does not relate to the ability of members of that group to contribute to society; relative political powerlessness; and small size of the group relative to larger society. Other language that has been noted includes membership in a “discrete and insular minority” (see United States v.Carolene Products Co., 304 U.S. 144 (1938) (Footnote 4). The state supreme court held that gay men and lesbians are a “suspect class” for the purposes of equal protection analysis, and that classifications on the basis of sexual orientation are thus “suspect,” requiring that any statutes that classify on this basis be subject to “strict scrutiny.”

It is important to note that not all of these criteria have to be satisfied in order for the group in question to be accorded “suspect class” status under both federal and state equal protection jurisprudence. The California Supreme Court noted that religion is certainly not an “immutable” characteristic, yet all religious groups are “suspect classes” under federal and state constitutional jurisprudence. The majority held that gay men and lesbians constitute a “suspect class” under state constitutional analysis. In arriving at this determination, the majority noted that sexual orientation is, at the very least, highly resistant to change; the court also noted that the characteristic in question is one so central to the identification of members of the class in question that they should not have to change this characteristic in order to receive the benefits of this standard of review.

In holding that gay people constitute a “suspect class,” California became perhaps the second state high court to in the land to make this determination. The Hawaii Supreme Court made a similar determination in Baer v. Miike, 910 P.2d 112 (Hawaii 1996) – in this case, the Court upheld the denial of marriage licenses to gay couples after the voters amended the Hawaii constitution to codify marriage, at the state constitutional level, as being a union of one man and one woman only. It is important to note that gay people remain a “suspect class” in the eyes of the state courts of Hawaii, notwithstanding the state constitutional amendment that forced the trail court to deny marriage licenses to gay couples, and that forced the state supreme court to uphold the denial of marriage licenses to gay couples. This has important ramifications in that any state statute in Hawaii that classifies on the basis of sexual orientation, to the detriment of gay people, must be subjected to “strict scrutiny.”

The hard right is furious with the California Supreme Court for its decision in this landmark case, and is mounting a drive to amend the state constitution to prohibit the recognition of same-sex marriages in November of this year. It is by no means clear that this initiative will pass. Should the court refuse to stay its decision, gay couples will start marrying three weeks from now. It is one thing for voters to pass an anti-gay marriage amendment that has no direct impact on gay and lesbian citizens who have never been permitted to marry, but an entirely different matter to vote to dissolve existing marriages.

Most Californians know people who are gay; while the hard right will certainly do everything in its considerable power to pass such an amendment, it is not clear whether the citizens, confronted with gay couples who have married and who have been married for five months, will vote to dissolve those marriages. Clearly, the future of this decision lies in the hands of gay rights activists and ordinary gay people in California, who should fight to preserve this historic victory and to ensure that California remains the second state to recognize gay marriage in full.

Two down, with 48 to go.


PHILIP CHANDLER

Fear and Loathing in Florida......

Ponce de Leon is a small town in the Northwest Florida Panhandle in Holmes County, not far from the Alabama state line, with a population of roughly 2,200. This town is billed as an idyllic rural enclave located half way between Tallahassee on the east, and Pensacola on the west. This town’s Web site describes Ponce de Leon as retaining “a rustic charm of beauty and tranquility, all its own [sic].” Some people believe that the Spanish explorer, Juan Ponce de Leon, may have searched for the Fountain of Youth in this area. Whether or not this is true is a matter of historical conjecture; what is not a matter of conjecture, however, is the fact that the Holmes County School Board (which has jurisdiction over Ponce de Leon High School) has besmirched one of the core ideals to which Americans claim to aspire.

Heather Gillman is an eleventh grade student at Ponce de Leon High School. Heather identifies as heterosexual, but is a staunch supporter of her gay friends and acquaintances. She expresses her support for gay Americans by wearing T-shirts carrying slogans such as “Gay? Fine By Me,” “I Support My Gay Friends,” and “God Loves Me Just the Way I Am,” along with stickers bearing rainbows and pink triangles.

David Davis is the principal of Ponce de Leon High School. High school principals are generally considered to be pillars of the community, alongside sheriffs, bank managers, town clerks, teachers, firefighters, and mayors. Davis, however, appears to have transcended all of these figures by managing to travel backwards in time – quite an accomplishment for a mere high school principle – to the 1950s.

With the backing of the Holmes County School Board, Davis prohibited all students from displaying such messages of support. Any student who so much as utters a single word supporting the rights of gay people is subject to suspension. Davis has already suspended several students for wearing gay-themed clothing (including a rainbow-colored belt). Furthermore, Davis interrogated a student (named “Jane Doe” for legal purposes) who told a teacher’s aide that she was a lesbian and that she was being taunted by other students. Davis summoned Doe into his office in September 2007 and instructed Doe “not to be gay” and not to tell anybody that she is gay. Davis also told Doe not to mix with or talk to any of the “middle school” girls, and Davis further opined that “gay pride” was a disgrace to the school; that being gay was “against the Bible;” and that Doe should not “go down that road.” Davis also declared that students who wear gay-supportive T-shirts or other symbols expressing support for the rights of gay people are members of a “secret society” and are members of an “illegal organization.” The school board defined an “illegal organization” as “any attempt to use the school day for activities that are not school related or school sponsored.”

Heather Gillman defied both Davis and the school board, filing a lawsuit in Federal District Court against Davis and against the school board under 42 U.S.C. section 1983. The lawsuit contends that defendants Davis and the school board violated Gillman’s First Amendment rights to freedom of expression and association, as made binding upon the states by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The lawsuit contends that the defendants’ policy with respect to “illegal organizations” and membership in a “secret society” is unconstitutional, both as applied and on its face. More specifically, the complaint asserts that the policy is void for vagueness, overbroad, and unconstitutional.

Only in America – in the year 2008 – could such a ludicrous spectacle unfold in a court of law. As other Western nations become increasingly accepting of their gay citizens, and as barriers to equal treatment of gay people fall in nation after nation, the US stubbornly appears to move full tilt backwards with respect to this particular issue.

There is absolutely no question that both Davis and the school board will lose – big time. Both case law and common sense are firmly on the side of the students, who are being deprived of their right to political expression, as guaranteed them by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. This deprivation occurs under color of state law, thus permitting the plaintiffs to file suit under 42 U.S.C. section 1983 and granting the Federal District Court subject matter jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. section 1331 (federal question) and 28 U.S.C. section 1343(a)(3) (civil rights).

On June 26, 2003, the US Supreme Court handed down Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), declaring that all state statutes prohibiting people from having gay sex are unconstitutional as applied to private sexual activity between consenting adults for non-commercial purposes. The Court made it clear that gay people are fully entitled to respect for their private lives, and that the state cannot demean the dignity of gay Americans merely because of moral disapproval. In sweeping terms, the Court apologized for an earlier ruling (Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986)) in which the Court had reached the opposite conclusion, thereby permitting the states to criminalize gay people for having sex, even in the privacy of their own homes. The Lawrence Court made it clear that it had failed, utterly, to treat gay Americans with the respect that they deserved as members of a legitimate minority within the framework of a representative democracy, and the Court bluntly announced that “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled.”

The Lawrence Court could have overruled Bowers using an equal protection analysis, and many legal commentators were surprised by the Court’s decision to go further. Section I of the Fourteenth Amendment declares that no state may “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” and most legal scholars believed that the Court would limit its analysis, in Lawrence, to the equal protection argument advanced by the gay plaintiffs. However, the Court went much further, holding that laws criminalizing same-sex sexual activity violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

There are no “secret societies” in 21st century America. Furthermore, neither Heather Gillman nor her fellow students attempted to hide their political views from the school authorities; to the contrary, they made it extraordinarily clear that they believed in the right of the lesbian student (and gay students more generally) to receive an education without being subjected to harassment and abuse. There is nothing “illegal” about a group of students protesting such harassment, whether limited to the school context or expanded to embrace broader social goals. In Tinker v. Des Moines Independent. Community. School. District., 393 U.S. 503 (1969), the US Supreme Court upheld the right of students to wear black armbands as a gesture of protest against the war in Vietnam. Then, as is the case now, the students were not disruptive; in wearing armbands, they were “quiet and passive” and “did not impinge upon the rights of others.” Furthermore, the students in Tinker did not act in a manner that “materially and substantially interfere[d] with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school” (cited from Burnside v. Byard, 363 F.2d. 744,749 (1966)). The students at Ponce de Leon High School are not acting in a manner that in any way interferes with the administration of appropriate discipline at the school.

The US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which will hear any appeal from a decision handed down by the US District Court, has addressed a very similar issue, in the context of college education. In April 1997, this intermediate appellate court declared unconstitutional, in Gay Lesbian Bisexual Alliance v. Pryor (docket number 96-6143), an Alabama state statute that forbad colleges and universities from using public funds to “sanction, recognize, or support” the activities or existence of any group or organization that “fosters or promotes a lifestyle or actions prohibited by the sodomy and sexual misconduct laws of Sections 13A-6-63 to 13A-6-65, inclusive.” The Alabama statute went further, prohibiting colleges and universities that received public funding from permitting or encouraging its members to provide information or materials explaining how such acts may be performed. Sodomy was defined as ‘any act of sexual gratification between persons not married to each other involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another.” Thus, oral sex between unmarried persons was defined by the Alabama criminal code as a form of sodomy. This statute was clearly aimed at the gay and lesbian community, and was intended to prevent colleges and universities that received public funding from supporting the activities of any group or organization that promoted the so-called “homosexual lifestyle.”

It is well established that the First Amendment protects advocacy to break a law. With respect to such advocacy, this protection is limited in one important respect – in Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969), the US Supreme Court held that the only forms of advocacy or expression that may be criminalized are those forms of advocacy directed to “inciting or producing imminent lawless action and [that are] likely to incite or produce such action” [emphasis added].

The First Amendment therefore protects the right of any person, gay or heterosexual, to advocate breaking any law that prohibits same-sex or opposite-sex “sodomy” (as defined above). This conservative Court of Appeals held that the Alabama statute discussed and struck down was not capable of a narrowing construction that would have enabled the state to enforce it against speech directed to such incitement and likely to produce such action. The Alabama statute was broad by its very terms (referring to the promotion of a “lifestyle or actions”) – hence, it was not possible to argue that the statute merely impinged upon speech falling outside the protective ambit of the First Amendment, as described by Brandenburg. The appellate court also noted that the Alabama statute constituted viewpoint discrimination – something that is prohibited within the context of a limited public forum (such as those fora created by state universities and colleges). A state university may determine what subjects are appropriate for discussion in such a forum, but may not prescribe or proscribe the positions that students may choose to take with respect to those subjects (see Rosenberger v. Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, 515 U.S. 819 (1995)).

The appellate court also upheld the district court’s determination that the statute was unconstitutional on its face. A statute is deemed to be unconstitutional on its face if there are no sets of circumstances under which application of the statute in question could ever be found to be constitutional; in other words, a statute is unconstitutional on its face if every application of that statute, in every set of circumstances, would yield an unconstitutional result (see US v. Salerno, 481 U.S. 739 (1987), where this tent of statutory construction was expressed, albeit in dicta). Facial invalidation of a statute is “strong medicine,” and the Court of Appeals made it clear that such invalidation should only occur if the reviewing court is convinced “that the identified overbreadth is incurable and would taint all possible applications of the statute.” Generally, a statute should “be declared invalid to the extent that it reaches too far, but otherwise left intact.” In First Amendment jurisprudence, a statute that is challenged on its face will be upheld if it is “readily susceptible” to a narrowing construction that would make it constitutional. The key phrase to consider is the phrase “readily susceptible” – a federal court will not rewrite a state statute to conform it to constitutional requirements unless the state statute in question is readily susceptible to the proposed limitation. The District Court held that the Alabama statute was not readily susceptible to a narrowing construction that would render it constitutional, and the Court of Appeals agreed with the District Court.

Note that the above analysis would be applicable were gay sex to be illegal in the State of Florida, as was the case in some 14 states before the US Supreme Court handed down Lawrence (supra). Here, school principal Davis and the Holmes County School Board have attempted to gag a group of students who are in no way advocating the violation of any law. These students are merely attempting to express their support of the right of one of their members to be treated decently and in a manner consistent with the educational mission of the school. Both Davis and the School Board have engaged in the worst form of McCarthyism – declaring that those students who support the rights of gay people are members of an “illegal organization” and members of a “secret society.”

We are not living in the 1950s, much as many right-wing commentators would like to see a return to the values that defined that era in American political life. Joseph McCarthy – a vicious, thuggish, bullying drunk – died shortly after his disgrace and censure by the US Senate. We live in a diverse, pluralistic society in which gay people have won some measure of acceptance, in both state and federal political spheres. Notwithstanding the rantings of jurists such as Associate Justice Antonin Scalia and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, the US Supreme Court has declared that gay Americans are entitled to respect for their private lives, and that the constitutional guarantees of substantive fairness and the equal protection of the laws are available to members of this group, just as they are available to members of any other group of law-abiding citizens. Principal Davis and the Holmes County School Board have besmirched the values that are integral to the American political experience. Twelve years ago, another school board and another school principal disregarded these values, causing the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to reinstate a lawsuit filed by Jamie Nabozny against the Ashland, Wisconsin School District and against school principal Mary Podlesny; the school authorities literally laughed at Nabozny’s pleas for help after he was repeatedly beaten up, shoved into a urinal, and mock-raped by several homophobic bullies (see Nabozny v. Podlesny, 92 F.3d 446 (1996)). Just as Davis told Jane Doe “not to be gay,” Mary Podlesny told Jamie Nabozny that he should expect such vicious taunts and physical abuse if he “insisted” on being openly gay. Just as three judges of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit expressed their disgust, referring to the defendant’s arguments as “indefensible,” so too will three judges of the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit express their disgust when this case reaches them and when they learn about the “secret society” – members of whom comprise somewhere between 4% and 10% of the American population.


PHILIP CHANDLER

I feel, therefore I hate......

It has long been argued by many psychologists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals that homophobia may (at least in some cases) reflect deep-seated, unacknowledged feelings of same-sex sexual attraction on the part of those men and women who engage in homophobic conduct and who participate in verbal and physical attacks against openly gay men and lesbians. This argument borrows heavily from the Freudian concepts of “projection” and “reaction formation”. When a person has feelings about himself or herself that make that individual feel very uncomfortable, that person may assign these feelings to a convenient external target (projection), thus enabling the individual to evade the implications of any self-analysis that the individual would otherwise be forced to undertake. When these impulses are extremely powerful and evoke deep psychological discomfort, the subject may react to these impulses by creating an antithetical construct that serves to block this deep discomfort (reaction formation). In Freudian terminology, the subject creates an antithetical construct to block the repressed cathexes (the libido’s charges of energy). Thus, a person who harbors homosexual impulses and desires may project those impulses onto openly gay men and lesbians, and may repress these desires by manufacturing a powerful hatred of all homosexuals. This theory is reflected in English literature – the expression “The lady doth protest too much, methinks” (a statement made by Queen Gertrude in Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”) has come to stand for the assertion that the subject’s ardent denial of a proposition may really reflect an attempt to hide the embarrassing truth. The Bard of Avon possessed deep wisdom, also reflected in the advice that Polonius gave to his son Laertes (from “Hamlet”) “To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Are homophobic men and women really reacting negatively to homosexuality in others, or are they in fact desperately (and subconsciously) reacting to their own homosexual desires and impulses?

One of the most serious problems associated with psychodynamic theories is that they do not readily lend themselves to empirical testing, and have, for the most part, been unfalsifiable and hence untestable. However, a serious attempt was made to answer the above question by researchers from the University of Georgia in 1996.

Researchers Henry Adams, Lester Wright Jr., and Bethany Lohr of the Psychology Department at the University of Georgia conducted a study in which they assessed the levels of sexual arousal expressed by subjects drawn from two groups of men who viewed heterosexual, lesbian, and gay male pornography. The study involved a total of 64 men between the ages of 18 and 31. These men comprised two groups – homophobic men (the experimental group) and nonhomophobic men (the control group). The subjects were assigned to these groups based on their responses to the “Index of Homophobia” (a 25-question assessment tool that yields a score of between zero and 100 to determine the extent to which men display characteristics indicative (as explained by the researchers) of the levels of “dread” a person experiences “when placed in close quarters with a homosexual.”) In addition, the subjects were administered the self-rated “Aggression Questionnaire” to determine whether there was a correlation between anti-gay attitudes and overall measures of aggression.

Of the 64 men studied, 35 men exhibited strong homophobic traits whereas 29 men did not. All of the men described themselves as exclusively heterosexual, and all of the men stated that they had never engaged in any form of homosexual activity.

Each subject viewed videotapes displaying three types of sexually explicit activities – heterosexual, lesbian, and gay male sexual activity. The researchers included lesbian sexual activity because it had proven to be “highly sexually arousing to heterosexual men and is a better discriminator between heterosexual and homosexual men than other stimuli”. (Any person who is even vaguely familiar with heterosexual American norms knows that this statement is profoundly accurate!) To compensate for any effect that the order in which the tapes were viewed could have had an impact on the results, the orders in which the tapes were shown to the subjects were randomly varied. The videotapes were shown to the subjects individually, in a soundproofed room. Each subject was hooked up to a penile plethysmograph. A plethysmograph is an instrument that measures changes in volume within an organ or whole body, usually as the result of blood flowing into that organ or whole body; a penile plethysmograph measures changes in blood flow into and out of the penis using a mercury-in-rubber ring placed around the shaft of the subject's penis to measure changes in circumference, thereby providing researchers with a truly objective and accurate measure of sexual arousal. By showing the subjects these videotapes in random order, individually, in a soundproofed room, relying on readings of sexual arousal from an instrument that objectively detected tumescence as opposed to relying on self-reports of sexual arousal, the researchers eliminated several potential confounding variables (such as embarrassment at taking this test in front of peers, effects resulting from the sequence in which the videotapes were shown, and inaccurate self-reporting about the extent to which the subjects were actually aroused by the different forms of sexual activity that they observed).

After watching the videotapes, the men were all asked about the extent to which they were aroused during their viewings of each of the three forms of sexual activity. This provided the researchers with subjective responses that they could compare to the objective readings obtained from the penile plethysmograph.

When asked to give their own subjective assessment of the degree to which they were aroused whilst watching the three videotapes, the men in both groups gave answers that correlated significantly with the results of the objective physiological assessment (the results reported by the penile plethysmograph), with one marked exception: the homophobic men gave verbal responses that diverged sharply from the physiological responses reported by the penile plethysmograph, in that their verbal responses significantly underreported the degree of arousal that they experienced when watching the videotape showing gay male sexual activity.

Men in both groups were aroused to about the same extent when viewing the videotape showing heterosexual sexual activity and when viewing the videotape showing lesbian sexual activity. There was, however, a significant difference in the degree of sexual arousal exhibited by men from the two groups when viewing the videotape showing gay male sexual activity. In the words of the researchers, “The homophobic men showed a significant increase in penile circumference to the male homosexual video, but the control [nonhomophobic] men did not”.

A more detailed breakdown of the results revealed that while 66% of the nonhomophobic men (from the control group) showed no significant arousal whilst watching the gay male videotape as measured by tumescence, only 20% of the homophobic men showed little or no evidence of sexual arousal as measured by tumescence. Similarly, while only 24% of the nonhomophobic men showed definite tumescence while watching the videotape showing gay male sexual activity, 80% of the homophobic men showed “moderate to definite tumescence” while watching this videotape.

Plethysmographs do not lie. However, it appears that an overwhelming percentage of the homophobic men did lie.

There was no relationship between homophobic attitudes and overall aggression (as measured by the “Aggression Questionnaire”).

This study was limited to men, due in part to difficulties associated with determining the extent to which women are sexually aroused. Extrapolation of the conclusions of this study to lesbians and to outwardly heterosexual women who harbor gay tendencies is dangerous for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the different set of dynamics that motivate women (heterosexual women have shown themselves, in poll after poll, to be less likely to harbor homophobic attitudes than are heterosexual men).

What can be inferred from the results of this study?

If one assumes that the plethysmograph really did measure sexual arousal in all of the subjects, then one unavoidable conclusion of this research is that the men from the experimental group (the homophobic men) were sexually aroused by the videotape showing graphic gay male sexual activity, whereas the men from the control group (the nonhomophobic men) were not sexually aroused by this activity. This supports the assertion that the overt anti-gay attitudes exhibited by the homophobic men did indeed serve as a “cover” (or “beard”) for their own desires to engage in gay sexual activity. A corollary of this conclusion is that those men in the control group (the nonhomophobic men) were secure in their sexuality and did not “need” to resort to expressions of homophobia. In short, one conclusion that may be drawn from this research is that overt expressions of homophobia do, in at least some cases, constitute forms of projection and reaction formation, and that overtly homophobic men may indeed, at least in some cases, suffer from internalized homophobia and self-hatred.

(It should be noted that the researchers did propose one alternative hypothesis, which was dismissed by academic peers as highly unlikely. The researchers proposed that the increased blood flow to the penises of the homophobic men might have been a reflection of anxiety as opposed to sexual arousal. While this is possible, the writer knows of no link between anxiety and the attainment of erections! Indeed, anxiety has (in the writer’s opinion) precisely the opposite effect on male sexual physiology…)

The results of this study were printed up in the highly prestigious “Journal of Abnormal Psychology”. It should be noted that this journal is one of the most influential and prestigious scientific journals in the field, and that the results of studies are not printed in this journal unless the studies meet a number of criteria of excellence. (In a different post, I have addressed the poor quality of the vanity journal which Paul Cameron has paid (by the page!) for his “studies” to be published.)

This research is of more than academic significance. Up until fairly recently, many courts of law in the US tolerated the “gay panic” defense in those cases where ostensibly heterosexual men were accused of murdering gay men who made sexual advances towards them. This defense held that murders committed under these circumstances were reflections of the sexual ambiguity of the perpetrator, who was regarded as the true “victim” insofar as he was “forced” to kill the gay “provocateur” in order to reconcile himself to the true nature of his desires. This obscene inversion of the status of the victim and the perpetrator was actually tolerated throughout the US for many years. Matthew Shepard – the University of Wyoming college student who was robbed, pistol-whipped, beaten to a pulp, and then tied to a split-rail fence outside of Laramie, WY – was the victim of a savage gay bashing perpetrated by two Laramie-bred thugs (Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson), both of whom advanced this defense when tried for Shepard’s murder (Shepard was found tied to the fence about 18 hours later, cut down, and taken to the hospital, where he died several days later without ever regaining consciousness). McKinney’s girlfriend, Kristen Price, told reporters that robbery was only one motive for the crime – according to Price, Shepard embarrassed the two perpetrators by telling them that he was gay and that “he wanted to get with Aaron and Russ”, setting the other patrons to “snickering.”

The “homosexual advance” defense has been presented in courtrooms throughout the US to reduce murder charges to manslaughter, in cases where “self-defense” was shown and in cases where the killings took place in “the heat of passion”. Such defenses have even succeeded in cases in which the defendant actually had sex with the gay victim and then killed the gay victim. This defense is premised on the theory that a person with latent homosexual tendencies will react with extreme and uncontrollable anger when propositioned by a gay man, or immediately after having sex with a gay man. Even in cases where this defense is not explicitly presented at trial, the mere admission of the victim’s homosexuality has led juries to convict the defendant on the lesser of multiple charges, as though the victim was “asking for it” by his behavior or even by his mere existence (in much the same way that women who have been raped have been depicted in courtrooms throughout the US as having been “asking for it”).

Juries have not been the only entities to display such bias. In 1988, in a case that drew national headlines and was reported by the three major television networks, Texas state court judge Jack Hampton, at the sentencing hearing of a man who was convicted of killing two gay men, handed down a 30-year sentence instead of the life sentence requested by prosecutors. In handing down the lenient sentence, Hampton made the following observation: “I don't much care for queers cruising the streets picking up teenage boys ...[I] put prostitutes and gays at about the same level ... and I'd be hard put to give somebody life for killing a prostitute."

In 1987, Broward County (Florida) Circuit Judge Daniel Futch, presiding over the murder trial of a gay man named Daniel Wan (who was beaten up and killed outside of a bar by assailants who referred to him as a “faggot” as they kicked him to death and threw him up against a moving car), jokingly asked the prosecution at a pre-trial hearing: “That's a crime now, to beat up a homosexual?" When the prosecutor responded, "Yes, sir. And it's a crime to kill them”, the judge quipped, "Times really have changed." Although the judge apologized and maintained that he was joking, he was removed from the case.

The societal implications of this mindset are chilling. Until gay people are accepted by mainstream US society – accepted, as opposed to tolerated – there will always remain a stigma associated with being gay. This stigma will continue to feed into the dynamic outlined in this article. Outwardly heterosexual men who have homosexual tendencies will continue to bury those feelings under a blanket of self-hatred, which in turn engenders overt expressions of homophobia (which can, in extreme cases, lead to the murder of gay men and lesbians). Some of the very courts that are tasked by society to bring gay-bashers to justice have, themselves, endorsed the behavior of the gay-bashers. In 1986, the US Supreme Court enshrined contempt for gay Americans into constitutional law, holding that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment did not grant to gay persons the right of sexual privacy (see Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986)). This opinion was written in tones of sneering contempt. Fortunately, the US Supreme Court explicitly and bluntly reversed Bowers on June 26, 2003 (see Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), in which this Court actually apologized to gay Americans for its decision in Bowers, holding that “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled.”). While the outright reversal of Bowers will accomplish much to ensure that gay Americans are treated as equals in society, it takes more than a US Supreme Court decision to change the attitudes of a generation. Study after study has shown that heterosexual Americans who know gay people personally are much less likely to be homophobic than are heterosexual Americans who claim not to know gay people personally.

It is for this reason that gay Americans have a responsibility both to themselves and to their community to live their lives openly and honestly. It is for this reason that those gay men and lesbians who remain closeted are in a position to advance both their own interests and the interests of the gay community more generally – simply by ending the lies and being themselves.

PHILIP CHANDLER

Another Country......

I am currently doing business in the UK, and am stunned by the difference between the manner in which the UK treats gay people and the manner in which the US treats gay people. Whereas gay people living in the UK receive respectful treatment and a modicum of fairness from both their government and their society, the US appears to be headed full tilt backwards with respect to this particular issue.

Here in the UK, employment and other forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation are strictly prohibited; such discrimination is treated as severely as is discrimination on the basis of race or national origin. It is considered completely unacceptable to fire a person from a job at which that person excels merely because that person is gay. Furthermore, this is not a mere government objective; this is considered to be unacceptable by the people. Gay persons living in the UK may enter into “Civil Partnerships” which are the equivalent of marriage in all but name. Whereas only one state in the US (Massachusetts) permits gay marriage, Civil Partnerships are recognized throughout the UK. Gay marriage in Massachusetts is recognized at the state level only, thereby denying to gay couples in such marriages about 1,049 federally recognized benefits and privileges enjoyed by married heterosexual couples. Civil Partnerships in the UK grant to gay couples all of the rights and privileges of marriage at all levels. Several states in the US recognize gay marriage at the state level in all but name. These relationships are referred to as “Civil Unions” in Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and New Jersey, and as “Domestic Partnerships” in California, Hawaii, and Oregon. Although there has been progress in the US (a total of about eight states now grant to gay couples the privileges and benefits of marriage at the state level), this progress has been much slower and more halting than the progress realized by gay people living in the UK. (At the time of writing this, a state court in Iowa has just handed down a decision holding that the denial of marriage licenses to gay couples is violative of the Iowa state constitution; if this decision is upheld by the Iowa Supreme Court, the State of Iowa will be forced to recognize either gay marriage itself or some form of civil union as described above.)

One reason for this is undoubtedly the lack of an organized evangelical right-wing movement here in the UK. Whereas fundamentalist “Christians” are still able to disease the cultural discourse in the US, there are far fewer people in the UK who tap into a fundamentalist Christian model and who consider it to be their duty to force their particular narrow, moralistic agenda onto the people of the UK. The full provisions of the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) went into effect here in the UK a few months ago. Although exemptions exist for priests and ministers of religion, even religious organizations must abide by the provisions of this Act. Thus, a Catholic adoption agency that wishes to serve the public by providing children in need of homes to prospective adoptive couples must consider applications filed by gay couples who are capable, in terms of the requirements of adoption law, of giving loving homes to children in need of such homes. Several Catholic adoption agencies have actually shut themselves down in the face of this requirement, thereby depriving children in need of loving homes of the possibility of being adopted.

The exemptions apply only to those members of religious organizations who are actual ministers of religion. Thus, no church can be forced to marry a gay couple, since such marriages invariably involve senior church officials. However, a church that matches children for adoption up with prospective adoptive parents cannot refuse to consider applications filed by gay couples, and must treat such applications on an equal footing with applications filed by heterosexual couples. One right-wing newspaper – the Daily Mail – complains about this, making explicit the (demonstrably false) assumption that a child fares better when raised by two people of the opposite sex (there is now an abundance of literature that shows that children raised by two same-sex parents fare just as well as children raised by two opposite-sex parents); but that is the extent of the protest against the “gay lobby.”

Legislation that forces religious bodies to treat gay people in the same way as heterosexual people would be unthinkable in the US, by virtue of the fact that the US has a written Constitution; federal courts have established a massive body of case law dealing with the First Amendment rights of both people and churches. However, the lack of a written constitution permits Parliament in the UK to pass legislation that would have the above-cited impact on Catholic adoption agencies. In the US, such Catholic adoption agencies would be able to assert a First Amendment defense for the practice of excluding gay people as adoptive parents.

Another difference between the UK and the US (in terms of popular culture) is the differing emphasis placed on marriage. In the UK, it is entirely reasonable and widespread for women to bring children up on their own, and for men and women to live together without getting married. The Conservative Party (also known as the Tory Party) wishes to re-emphasize the importance of marriage and the traditional family, but faces fierce opposition from figures in government who themselves are either divorced or who never married. David Cameron – the leading light of the opposition party (the Tories) – was flustered into silence recently when asked by a highly educated, intelligent woman who had risen through the political ranks and who was also a single mother, whether she should get married. The social culture in the UK is much more accepting of different family structures than is the social culture in the US.

Together with legal acceptance of gay people has come cultural acceptance. Schools have implemented zero-tolerance anti-bullying campaigns that make it much easier for gay children to participate both socially and academically. Whereas gay boys in the US have to worry about getting themselves shoved into urinals by heterosexual bullies, gay boys in the UK are protected from such abuses by stringent anti-bullying campaigns that are taken seriously by both teachers and students alike. Quite simply put, it is not acceptable to harass and abuse a child in the UK merely because that child is gay or is perceived to be gay.

Ironically, the progress that gay people have made in the UK can be explained to some degree by the extent to which gay people in the UK were previously hated, marginalized, shunned, and harshly treated by the law. Alan Turing – the mathematical genius who developed key concepts in computer science and whose contributions to the branch of mathematics dealing with encryption and code breaking enabled the British authorities to crack the Nazi Enigma machine and the Lorenz SZ 40/42 machine – was openly gay, and was arrested for “gross indecency” under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885 after he acknowledged having had a sexual relationship with a man in Manchester. Turing was unrepentant and open about his sexuality in an era and in a country in which homosexual acts were illegal and in which homosexuality itself was treated by psychiatrists as a mental illness, The alternative being a prison sentence, Turing was forced to undergo hormone “therapy” in which his body was pumped full of estrogen, causing him to grow breasts. Turing was found dead on 8 June 1954, apparently having committed suicide by biting into and eating part of an apple laced with cyanide. Although the cause of death was established by the autopsy as cyanide poisoning, the apple itself was never tested for cyanide, leaving open the question as to whether Turing had indeed committed suicide, was the victim of an accident (his mother vehemently asserted that Turing was careless in handling and storing dangerous chemicals), or was assassinated (his homosexuality was certainly perceived as a security risk). Oscar Wilde – the brilliant playwright, novelist, and poet – was convicted under the same statute on 25 May 1895 and was sentenced to two years’ hard labor (scholars agree that the prison sentence at Reading Gaol ruined Wilde’s health and contributed to his early death a mere two years following his release). Sex between men eventually became legal in the UK, but the age of consent for gay sex was set at 18, whereas the age of consent for heterosexual sex was set at 16. In July 2000, the European Court of Human Rights heard an appeal from a gay man from Yorkshire who had been prosecuted for engaging in group sex and who had been conditionally discharged for two years in November 1996 – the Court of Human Rights vacated his conviction, and the man received almost GBP 21,000.00 in damages and slightly over GBP 12,000.00 in costs. It is against this backdrop of harsh oppression that the law was finally modified to recognize the equality and dignity of the lives of gay citizens in the UK. Now, gay marriage is legal throughout the UK, at all levels, in all but name (mocking those “civil unions” in those US states that permit them). A gay man or woman may enter into a civil partnership with a citizen of another nation, and may sponsor that person into the UK in the same way that a man or woman may enter into a marriage with a citizen of another nation and sponsor that non-citizen into the country. The age of consent for gay sex is now the same as the age of consent for heterosexual sex (16).

Another important difference -- a difference that resonates throughout the broader culture -- lies in the fact that the UK Armed Forces no longer discriminate against gay servicemembers. Whereas it was once legal to discharge a member of the Armed Forces merely for being gay, servicemembers in the UK are now no longer subject to such naked discrimination. In September 1999, the European Court of Human Rights held that the ban on openly gay men and women serving in the UK Armed Forces was a clear-cut breach of the Human Rights Convention. This unanimous ruing, handed down by judges in Strasbourg, held that the ban violated the privacy rights of gay men and women who wished to serve in the UK Armed Forces. In 2000, the UK officially ended its ban on openly gay personnel from serving in th Armed Forces, and firmly asserted that servicemembers could no longer be discharged merely for being gay. It is important to bear in mind the fact that legal discrimination against gay men and lesbians in the Armed Forces can be "borrowed" to justify other forms of government-sponsored discrimination against gay men and lesbians, as Boushka has noted elsewhere (see "Do Ask, Do Tell").

It is indeed ironic that gay people have made so much progress in the UK, given the fact that the US was founded following a revolution in which the American colonies broke away from the UK in search of greater freedom. It is ironic in the extreme that gay sex in the US only became legal in all 50 states following the handing down, in 2003, of a US Supreme Court opinion (Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003)) holding that state sodomy statutes violated the rights of gay Americans under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (A.J. O’Connor’s concurrence relied not on the reach of the Due Process Clause, but on the protective ambit of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause to arrive at the same result). Just 17 years before Lawrence was handed down, the US Supreme Court mockingly dismissed a Due Process challenge to the Georgia sodomy statute filed by a man (Michael Hardwick) who had been arrested, but ultimately not prosecuted, for having oral sex with another man in the privacy of his own bedroom (see Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986)). The Court, in Bowers, made the infamous assertion that the privacy challenge (grounded in the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause) mounted by Hardwick in response to his arrest for consensual oral sex was “at best, facetious.” That ruling is now history -- the Lawrence Court went to considerable pains to acknowledge that it had erred in handing down Bowers, opining that "[i]ts continuance as precedent [Bowers] demeans the lives of homosexual persons...Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. It ought not to remain binding precedent. Bowers v. Hardwick should be and now is overruled."It is the fervent hope of this commentator that the overwhelming majority of the citizens of the US will, one day in the not too distant future, see their fellow gay Americans as equals, both before the bar of justice and in the eyes of broader society, just as the majority of the citizens of the US now reject the days of Jim Crow and have no desire to return to such a legally and morally destructive social order.

PHILIP CHANDLER

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics...

It is very easy to confuse people who lack a fundamental educational background in the mathematical sciences by manipulating data derived from flawed “research” protocols (supposedly scientific studies, surveys, etc.) and publishing the results of such manipulations in what appear, on their face, to be scientific journals and academic archives. Many people assume that the mere publication of a set of “findings” in a scientific journal or academic archive is tantamount, in and of itself, to the endorsement of such “findings” by “experts” in various fields, particularly if the journals in question have official-sounding names, and particularly if the articles in which these “findings” are published are indexed by extensive bibliographic references. Most people of good will lack the time and the requisite educational backgrounds to distinguish high quality documentation pertaining to validly constructed scientific research protocols from poor quality documentation, or from documentation pertaining to grossly unreliable or poorly designed research protocols.

This holds true regardless of whether the issue in question lends itself readily to precise and accurate assessment, or whether the issue in question requires some understanding of the context in which it is encountered, and / or some awareness of the limitations that qualify precise and accurate measurements in the field. Psychological research is particularly vulnerable to errors in data analysis, interpretation, and communication of results, and the vast majority of non-professional people lack the skills necessary to distinguish between valid and reliable assessment tools on the one hand, and invalid or unreliable assessment tools on the other hand.

A solid understanding of the concepts of validity and reliability is crucial in the field of psychological assessment. Clinical psychologists and other clinicians dealing with abnormal psychology have at their disposal a number of tools with which to assess and describe such issues as personality, mental illnesses, and psychological disturbances.

The validity of a psychological assessment tool is a measure of the extent to which the tool in question actually measures the characteristic or construct that it is intended to measure. The original Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is widely regarded as the most extensively researched psychological assessment tool in the world. The original MMPI was released in 1942 by the University of Minnesota, which has the copyright for this tool. This test was revised in 1989 and is now commonly denoted as the MMPI-2; another version reflecting additional revisions (the MMPI Restructured Form or MMPI-RF) is scheduled for release in late 2007. A special version of the MMPI was released in 1992; this version (the MMPI-A) was developed for the purpose of testing adolescents. This particular psychological assessment tool is one of the most widely utilized tests of adult psychopathology. It is also utilized in criminal justice and correctional contexts, and is part of a battery of tests utilized by agencies such as the Secret Service and the FBI for the purpose of psychological evaluation, where it is utilized for the identification of suitable candidates for high-risk public safety positions. The MMPI is also utilized in college and career counseling, in developing substance abuse treatment protocols, and in designing effective treatment strategies for both psychological problems and medical problems (e.g. chronic pain management). A huge body of literature exists in which the validity of this tool has been discussed, and the vast majority of clinicians and other professionals who utilize this tool consider it to be invaluable in terms of both validity and reliability.

The reliability of a psychological assessment tool is a measure of the extent to which the tool in question yields results which are stable across time. If repetition of the test yields similar results for the test subjects with each repetition, then the test in question is reliable. The MMPI is so widely used precisely because it has been found to be both valid and reliable. This particular tool measures various psychological attributes with a high degree of validity, i.e. it accurately measures what it is intended to measure. It is also reliable, in that repetitions of this test on the same subjects across extended periods of time yield similar results with each repetition.

The Rorschach Inkblot Test (RIT)is the second most widely utilized test in personality assessment. The subject, or testee, is shown a total of 10 symmetrical inkblots and is asked to describe what he or she sees in each inkblot. The subject’s responses are noted. Everything that the subject says and does is captured by the tester, who interprets the results with the aid of a scoring system referred to as the Exner scoring system, or Comprehensive system. This scoring system includes frequency tables which show how often specific responses to each inkblot are given by the general population. This scoring system includes scales for Form Quality, Deviant Verbalizations, Complexity, Human Figure, Organizational Activity, and Overall Total Responses (these are just a few of the scales). Some of these scales have been shown to correlate reasonably well with intelligence, across different testers. For example, Overall Total Responses (abbreviated as the R scale) correlates highly with intelligence; there is definitely a correlation between the R scale and intelligence, with high values of R correlating with higher intelligence. However, high values of R also correlate with higher values on some of the scales which indicate psychopathology. The overall validity of the Rorschach Inkblot Test is most controversial, as is its reliability. Intuitively, this is easy to understand; a degree of subjectivity is unavoidable when administering and scoring this test, regardless of who performs the test and how often the test is performed. Furthermore, the 10 inkblots comprising the test materials were leaked in print in 1983 and were distributed on the Internet in 2004, enabling potential testees to “rehearse” their answers, particularly under circumstances in which this test is administered for diagnostic purposes within the criminal justice system (granting parole, assigning custody, etc.).. It is accurate to state that both the validity and the reliability of this test are questionable, particularly when compared to the validity and reliability of the MMPI.

Most readers of this blog will have stumbled across this information for the first time right here, in this post, above. Those readers to whom both of these tests have been administered will probably be quite surprised to learn that one of these tests is considered to be much more reliable and much more valid than the other. This is not the fault of the reader; it is mentioned merely to underscore the extent to which ordinary men and women place considerable faith in the protocols utilized by clinicians and diagnosticians in the field of psychological assessment, particularly as pertains to the diagnosis of mental disorders.

The hard right in the US knows full well that the majority of people lack scientific backgrounds and can therefore be mislead by assertions made by “scientists” and “researchers,” particularly when dealing with controversial issues such as the rights of gay people and the manner in which gay people lead their lives. It is therefore very easy to mislead people by publishing the results of “research” in journals which have authoritative-sounding names. Tapping in to such ignorance and presumptions is precisely what anti-gay organizations (such as “Focus on the Family” (FOTF), the “American Family Association” (AFA), the “Traditional Values Coalition” (TVC), and the “Family Research Council” (FRC)) engage in with respect to shaping public policy and public opinions of gay people in the US. The “researcher” most frequently cited by these organizations in their attempts to portray gay people as depraved, diseased, uncaring, and immoral is a man named Paul Cameron.

Cameron was born in 1939 in Pittsburg, PA. He received his B.A. from Los Angeles Pacific College in 1961 and went on to obtain his M.A. from California State University, Los Angeles, in 1962. Cameron then obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in 1966, submitting a dissertation titled “Age as a determinant of differences in non-intellective psychological functioning.” He was affiliated with several colleges and universities until 1980; these institutions included Wayne State University (1967 – 1968), University of Louisville (1970 – 1973), Fuller Theological Seminary (1976 – 1979), and the University of Nebraska (1979 – 1980). In 1982, Cameron founded an organization named the “Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality” (ISIS), which is now known as the “Family Research Institute” (FRI) (Cameron is Chairman of this organization).

The FRI was formed following an unsuccessful attempt by the Lincoln, NE City Council to pass an ordinance which would have prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Cameron headed up an organization named the “Committee to Oppose Special Rights for Homosexuals,” which led the opposition to the proposed measure. During his campaign to defeat this measure, Cameron delivered a speech at the Lutheran chapel of the University of Nebraska, in which he stated that a four-year-old boy had been brutally sexually assaulted by a gay man at a local shopping mall. In fact, the police were unable to confirm that any such attack had occurred, and Cameron has since admitted that he had heard (and repeated) this accusation as a mere rumor.

The mission statement of the FRI declares that the FRI has “…one overriding mission: to generate empirical research on issues that threaten the traditional family, particularly homosexuality, AIDS, sexual social policy, and drug abuse. This organization further seeks “"...to restore a world where marriage is upheld and honored, where children are nurtured and protected, and where homosexuality is not taught and accepted, but instead is discouraged and rejected at every level." The FRI moved from Lincoln, NE to Washington, DC, and then to Colorado Springs, CO, where it remains active and continues to generate anti-gay propaganda.

Cameron is a tireless crusader who is utterly determined to portray the gay community as a threat to public health, a danger to small children, and a scourge to civilization itself.

Ordinarily, ad hominem observations are useless when debating issues of fact, and tend to undermine the credibility of the person who makes them. However, when such observations bear directly on the credibility of a person who assumes a self-appointed role as guardian of the public health and welfare, then it is entirely reasonable to make reference to such observations, particularly when the person in question casts aspersions on the credibility of the group that he or she attacks. Bearing this in mind, the following observations should be made relative to Cameron and his relationships to professional bodies and peers.

Cameron describes himself as a “Researcher / Clinician” on his resume. However, Cameron was only permitted to practice psychology in the State of Nebraska, and his license to practice psychology in that state is currently listed as “Inactive” on the Web site of the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (see http://www.nebraska.gov/LISSearch/search.cgi, where you can perform a search for his credentials). His license (#100334) lapsed into “Inactive” status effective January 2, 1995. Cameron is therefore not a licensed clinician, and his continued references to himself as a clinician are therefore flat-out lies.

Cameron was expelled from the “American Psychological Association” (APA) in December 1983, after ethics charges were brought against him in response to his misrepresentation and distortions of the results of studies performed by other psychologists working at the University of Nebraska. Cameron insists that he resigned from the APA – however, the APA’s bylaws make it clear that a member of the APA may not resign during the course of an ethics investigation of that member. The APA formally expelled Cameron on December 2, 1983, stating that “Paul Cameron (Nebraska) was dropped from membership for a violation of the Preamble to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists.” Cameron has gone to elaborate and embarrassing lengths to explain this away on his Web site – however, his formal expulsion from this body stands.

The “Nebraska Psychological Association” (NPA) adopted a resolution at its membership meeting on October 19, 1984, stating that this organization “formally disassociates itself from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron in his writings and public statements on sexuality.” The NPA went on to state that “…the Nebraska Psychological Association would like it known that Dr. Cameron is not a member of the Association. Dr. Cameron was recently dropped from membership in the American Psychological Association for a violation of the Preamble to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists” [emphasis added].

In 1985, the “American Sociological Association” (ASA) adopted a resolution declaring that “Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism," also noting that "Dr. Paul Cameron has repeatedly campaigned for the abrogation of the civil rights of lesbians and gay men, substantiating his call on the basis of his distorted interpretation of this research." This resolution formally charged an ASA committee with the task of "critically evaluating and publicly responding to the work of Dr. Paul Cameron."

In August 1986, the ASA accepted the committee’s report and adopted the following resolution: “The American Sociological Association officially and publicly states that Paul Cameron is not a sociologist, and condemns his consistent misrepresentation of sociological research. Information on this action and a copy of the report by the Committee on the Status of Homosexuals in Sociology, "The Paul Cameron Case," is to be published in Footnotes, and be sent to the officers of all regional and state sociological associations and to the Canadian Sociological Association with a request that they alert their members to Cameron’s frequent lecture and media appearances.”

Cameron’s shameful abuse of the public trust has been noted by organizations outside of the US. In 1996, the Board of Directors of the “Canadian Psychological Association” (CPA) released a position statement denouncing Cameron’s work and distancing the CPA from Cameron’s “findings,” stating that Cameron had “consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism.”

It is difficult to find any contemporary figure in the human sciences who has been denounced by so many well-respected and prestigious organizations, including the largest professional organization of psychologists in the US (the APA). However, criticism of Cameron and his methodology has not been confined to statements made by professional organizations. In 1985, US District Court Judge Jerry Buchmeyer subjected Cameron to a blistering tongue-lashing. Judge Buchmeyer, presiding over proceedings pertaining to the constitutionality of the Texas “homosexual conduct” statute, concluded that “…Dr. Paul Cameron...has himself made misrepresentations to this Court" and that "[t]here has been no fraud or misrepresentations except by Dr. Cameron" (see Baker v. Wade (1985) (p.536)).

Undaunted by these criticisms of both his integrity and his methodology, Cameron went on to participate in the now-notorious “gay obituary” study, the results of which purported to show that gay men and lesbians have much shorter lifespans than heterosexual men and women. In 1994, Cameron and his associates counted obituaries published by the gay press in gay newspapers and periodicals, and used this data to estimate the lifespans of gay men and lesbians. This is a textbook case revealing the deficiencies associated with drawing conclusions from a convenience sample as opposed to a representative sample.

A representative sample is precisely what the name implies: it is a sample from a population that is representative of the entire population. When a doctor performs blood tests, e.g. for the diagnosis of an infection, the doctor does not drain all of the blood from a patient’s body in order to determine the white blood cell count (WBC) and the presence or absence of antibodies. Instead, the doctor takes one or more test tubes and fills those test tubes with blood drawn (usually) from a vein. The doctor then performs the necessary tests against these blood specimens. This is methodologically sound because blood drawn from a vein in the arm is very similar to blood drawn from a vein in the foot; in most cases, the WBC will be the same regardless of from where the blood was drawn. This is, in other words, a representative sample of the patient’s blood.

Now consider obituaries published in gay periodicals and newspapers. These obituaries are hopelessly unrepresentative of the populations in question (the entire gay and lesbian population). Reasons for this lack of adequate representation are directly attributable to the following observations:

Most gay community newspapers do not have sections of death notices. As the AIDS epidemic began to claim the lives of so many gay men during the 1980s, however, many (but certainly not all) gay newspapers and periodicals began to publish obituaries. These obituaries are usually compiled by, and submitted by, close friends and relatives of the deceased (exceptions to this occur in those cases when the deceased is a public figure, or an influential figure in gay politics, in which cases obituaries are frequently prepared by organizations seeking gay equality in the US). In the vast majority of cases (those cases where the deceased is not a public figure), obituaries only appear in gay community newspapers and periodicals if (1) a loved one or friend of the deceased notifies the newspaper of the death of the deceased, often after preparing an obituary for the deceased, and (2) the editor of the newspaper or periodical in question decides to print the obituary.

Thus, most gay men and lesbians do not have their deaths written up in obituaries published in the gay media. The following is a list (by no means exhaustive) of the groups of gay men and lesbians who, upon passing away, are unlikely to have obituaries printed in the gay media:

· Gay men and lesbians who are not involved in the gay community (men and women who are not activists or outspoken contributors to the politics of gay equality);
· Gay men and lesbians who are closeted, i.e. not open about their sexual orientation. Sadly, this reflects a large percentage of the overall gay population in the US;
· Gay men and lesbians whose families do not wish for the sexual orientation of the deceased to be made a matter of public record;
· Gay men and lesbians whose families or significant others simply do not consider sending obituaries to the gay press;
· Gay men and lesbians whose families or significant others did not send in obituaries for other reasons (shock and grief can prevent a gay-supportive family or circle of friends from thinking about sending obituaries to the gay press
· Gay men and lesbians who die without leaving loved ones to write obituaries for the deceased, e.g. gay people whose loved ones die before them).

An accurate estimate of the lifespans of gay men and lesbians would have to include the lifespans of people from all of the above groups even to approach adequate and accurate representation of the average ages of death of gay men and lesbians. Furthermore, this “research” is fatally flawed in another, important respect: it is by its nature a retrospective analysis of lifespans, where a prospective analysis would be much better suited to accomplishing the task in question. A prospective study would require the selection of groups of heterosexual and gay men and lesbians (at least four groups in total – gay men, lesbians, heterosexual men, and heterosexual women) carefully chosen to eliminate confounding variables such as socio-economic status, congenital illnesses (which have no bearing on sexual orientation), access to healthcare, differences in schooling and education, etc.). Retrospective studies, whilst useful, are flawed in that they cannot, even under the best of circumstances, yield results as meaningful as those yielded by prospective studies. For example, when assessing the efficacy of anti-retroviral medications, it is almost always necessary to identify a control group and an experimental group, members of which both of which have to be matched for such factors as prior exposure to specific anti-retroviral drugs, comparable viral loads, comparable clinical presentation, etc. Only when the efficacy of the drug in question is established by observing and documenting improvements in clinical outcomes, or improvements in terms of lower viral load, higher CD4 counts, etc. can the experimental drug be said to be effective as an addition to existing treatment regimens. Prospective studies, however, are beset with ethical problems – many doctors regard it as immoral to maintain patients on the non-experimental protocol, for which reason patients receiving the non-experimental protocol are frequently granted access to the experimental drug as soon as the improved outcome of utilizing that drug in combination with those already prescribed has been established.

In short, Cameron’s “obituary studies” are utterly worthless in terms of predicting and comparing the lifespans of gay people versus heterosexual people. Cameron has a Ph.D. – he is not a naïve fool. The poor quality of his analysis and the highly selective nature of the “convenience sample” in question leads inevitably to the inference that Cameron conducted his “obituary study” not for the purposes of the dispassionate analysis and the advancement of legitimate scholarship, but for the purpose of generating “empirical data” for the purpose of “restor[ing] a world where marriage is upheld and honored, where children are nurtured and protected, and where homosexuality is not taught and accepted, but instead is discouraged and rejected at every level.”

During 1983 and 1984, Cameron conducted a “National Survey,” supposedly for the purpose of accurately and dispassionately quantifying the behavior of gay men and lesbians. The “National Survey” study was intended to provide the world with accurate information about the sexual activity of gay men and lesbians throughout the US. This survey therefore drew upon responses from the citizens of seven municipalities (Bennett (NE), Denver (CO), Los Angeles (CA), Louisville (KY), Omaha (NE), Rochester (NY), and Washington (DC)); data from Dallas (TX) was added later. However, at least six serious errors have been identified in Cameron’s sampling techniques, survey methodology, and interpretation of results. Any one of these errors, on its own, would render Cameron’s conclusions highly suspect – the combination of all six errors results in the generation of data which is completely meaningless. The six errors are discussed below:

1) There is nothing “national” about data derived from only eight municipalities. By deriving data only from respondents living within these eight municipalities, Cameron systematically excluded all US adults who resided elsewhere. At best and assuming otherwise flawless sampling techniques, methodology, and interpretations, Cameron’s “findings” could be extrapolated only to the populations of the eight municipalities in question. However, there was nothing flawless about the sampling techniques utilized within these eight municipalities, as will be discussed in (2) below.

2) Cameron never reported the response rate he obtained within each of these eight localities. Instead, Cameron reported a “compliance rate,” where the “compliance rate” was the percentage of respondents in each city who returned the survey form after actually being contacted and given the survey form. In other words, Cameron omitted the vast majority of respondents who simply refused to participate in the survey (some of these people refused to accept the survey form and wanted nothing to do with the study). There are major differences between people who refuse to participate in a study and those who choose to participate in a study, particularly when the information gleaned from the study is highly sensitive and personal in nature. This was an error that any first-year student of inferential statistics would recognize in a heartbeat. Cameron reported a compliance rate of 43.5% for the seven-city survey (which was later corrected to 47.5%) and a 57.7% compliance rate for the Dallas survey. The actual response rates, given the above distortion, were much, much lower. Usage of the “compliance rate” was grossly misleading because it excluded the large number of households within the eight cities who were never successfully contacted (the so-called “not-at-homes”). Legitimate research of this nature requires that the researcher report the true response rate – the actual number of completed surveys divided by the total number of households initially targeted by the survey. Using Cameron’s own data, the true response rate for the seven-municipality survey was a mere 23.6; the response rate for the Dallas survey was a mere 20.7%; and (using appropriate weighting techniques in these calculations) the overall response rate across all eight municipalities was approximately 23%. More than three out of every four households targeted for this survey either refused, outright, to participate in the survey; accepted a survey form but failed to return it; or could not be contacted. This pitifully low response rate makes it impossible to take Cameron’s conclusions seriously. While there is no uniformly accepted figure for a “good” response rate, it is clear that the Cameron surveys relied not upon a random sample but instead upon a convenience sample. It is impossible to generalize from a convenience sample to an entire population with any confidence in the legitimacy of the generalization; yet this is precisely what Cameron attempted. Again, it should be stressed that Cameron is not a fool, nor is he naïve, leading inevitably to the inference that his publication of these “results” was motivated by raw animus to the class of persons targeted by the “survey” (gay Americans).

3) Had Cameron’s 1983 – 1984 combined sample been a true random sample (which it most certainly was not, as discussed in (2) above), it would have been large enough (N = 5,182) to permit Cameron to make estimates of general population characteristics with only a small margin of error. This, however, is moot, due to the extremely low response rates and the fact that Cameron employed a convenience sample instead of a random sample. However, even if one makes the assumption that Cameron’s sample was a random sample (which it was not), Cameron tried, in several papers, to make reliable estimates about the characteristics of extremely small subgroups within this sample. For example, Cameron identified a total of 17 respondents within their 1983 – 1984 samples who claimed to have a gay parent. Cameron then scrutinized the questionnaires completed by these 17 respondents for negative sexual experiences, one of which was incestuous sexual activity with a gay parent. Of the 17 respondents who were asked whether they had ever experienced an incestuous sexual encounter with their gay parents, five answered in the affirmative. This enabled Cameron to argue that 29% (five divided by 17) of gay Americans have incestuous relationships with their parents, as opposed to only 0.6% of the children of heterosexual parents, and that “having a homosexual parent(s) appears to increase the risk of incest with a parent by a factor of about 50.” Reliance upon such a small subset of respondents is invalid due to the fact that data from such a ridiculously low sample have an unacceptably high margin of sampling error. In a true random sample of 17 (and this was not a true random sample of 17, as discussed in (2) above), the margin of error due to sampling (with a confidence level of 99%) is plus-or-minus 33%. Thus, had the subset of 17 people been drawn from a true random sample (which it was not), all that one would have been able to conclude from Cameron’s data is that the true proportion of adults who have a gay parent and who have been sexually abused by that parent is anywhere from -4% (effectively zero) and 62%. Such a wide margin of error renders the result completely meaningless. Furthermore, because the confidence interval includes zero, Cameron could not legitimately conclude that the true number of children of gay parents (in the eight municipalities sampled) who were the victims of gay incest was actually different from zero.

4) The validity of the questionnaire items was most doubtful. Data derived from self-reporting is useful only to the extent that respondents answer the questions truthfully and honestly. When participants give incorrect or unreliable answers to questions, it is either because (1) they are unable to give accurate responses or (2) because they are unwilling to give accurate responses. In Cameron’s “survey,” reasons exit to assume that both factors operated. Cameron’s questionnaires contained 550 items and took, on average, at least 75 minutes to complete. A large number of questions dealing with highly sensitive aspects of human sexuality were included, in some cases in a very complex format. The problems of respondent fatigue and item difficulty both played a role in reducing the validity of the questionnaire. Respondent fatigue is particularly likely to creep into a lengthy survey that takes more than an hour to complete. It is possible to control for respondent fatigue by repeating some of the questions asked earlier in the test, towards the end of the test (if discrepancies are noted with consistency, the test should be revamped to reduce respondent fatigue). Cameron did not utilize any such consistency checks in his questionnaire. Furthermore, some of the questions, in addition to being extremely sensitive, were presented in extremely complex multiple-choice format. In one section, for example, respondents were expected to read a list of 36 categories of persons (e.g., my female grade school teacher, my male [camp, Y, Scout] counselor), then to note the age at which each person made serious sexual advances to me, then to note the age at which each person had experienced physical sexual relations with me, and then to report the total number of people in each category with whom the respondent had sexual relations. Another item asked respondents why they thought they had developed their sexual orientation, and gave a checklist of 44 reasons, including I was seduced by a homosexual adult, I had childhood homosexual experiences with an adult, and I failed at heterosexuality. Many respondents probably became confused, tired, and alienated by the content of some of the questions. In addition, when presented with long lists of alternatives, many respondents may have skipped the lower items on the list, or read them incompletely. Another validity problem that can arise when dealing with such complex issues takes the form of respondents intentionally giving incorrect information. Any test or questionnaire based on self-reporting relies on the honesty of the participants to include full and accurate information, and many respondents may have been made uncomfortable by some of the questions that were asked. One way in which an experienced psychologist can reduce the likelihood of false or malicious answers being given is to ensure the respondents that their answers will remain anonymous (as opposed to confidential). This procedure is utilized in cases where the subject matter is complex and in which respondents do not wish for their names to be associated with their answers. Cameron’s own notes and conclusions imply that the questionnaire that he distributed was not anonymous. (There is a big difference between confidentiality and anonymity, and Cameron may have promised only the former.) The manner in which the questionnaires were presented almost certainly impacted negatively on the validity of the results; complete strangers simply arrived on the doorsteps of the respondents, without any affiliation with a prestigious University, college, or institute. In Bennett (NE), the local newspaper actually reported on advice given by a police offer to a neighbor not to complete the survey. Furthermore, it is entirely possible that some people may have used this opportunity to sabotage the test by giving outrageous and inaccurate answers to the more sensitive questions (e.g. exaggeration of sexual activity, exaggeration of participation in multiple unconventional sexual acts, imputing instances of incest, etc.). As discussed earlier, Cameron’s analysis of subgroups was particularly sensitive to fake answers because of the tiny numbers of people involved (17 people stated that they had a gay parent; two or three exaggerated answers would have dramatically skewed the results). The impact of mischief-makers is maximized when dealing with very small subset samples, as occurred in Cameron’s case. Furthermore, nobody from the study was present with the participants when they completed their questionnaires – a factor which could have played a dramatic role in permitting mischief-makers to skew the results.

5) The interviewers may have been biased and may not have followed uniform procedures. Professional survey organizations go to considerable lengths to ensure that testers approach the issues in question from a non-biased and non-judgmental viewpoint; they strictly follow standardized procedures and communicate a neutral, non-judgmental attitude towards the respondents. Furthermore, the interviewers frequently know nothing of the goals of the survey. It is impossible to know whether Cameron followed this protocol. In his published report, he made no reference to such quality control procedures, which in and of itself implies that he did not employ such procedures. It is not clear whether a supervisor randomly contacted some of the respondents in order to ensure that the respondent had, himself or herself, taken the test (numerous studies have been sabotaged by lazy administrators failing to distribute the tests properly; some such administrators may complete several tests themselves, in order to skip the hard work of going from door to door). Such controls would have strengthened the validity of Cameron’s findings; the fact that they were not mentioned in his report suggests that they were not implemented in the field. More serious, however, is the undisputed fact that several high-level members of the research team were active in distributing the questionnaires and collecting the data. This is problematic because these people can be expected to have strong biases and a vested interest in the outcome – an interest that can cause them to transmit their expectations to the respondents (this is why people who have no knowledge of the objective of the study are usually employed to gather data).

6) Cameron made his bias known during the period that the survey was being conducted. In order to study a social phenomenon, researchers take great care to ensure that the individuals being studied do not become aware of the expectations or goals of the research in question. Should the subjects become aware of the goals or expectations of the researchers, then the subjects may deliberately tailor their answers to thwart or to encourage the expectations of the researchers. Cameron ignored this universally accepted caution and made headlines in Omaha, NE (one of the cities selected for his “nationwide” research), characterizing his survey as providing "ammunition for those who want laws adopted banning homosexual acts throughout the United States," and he was quoted as saying that the survey's sponsors were "betting that (the survey results would show) that the kinds of sexual patterns suggested in the Judeo-Christian philosophy are more valid than the Playboy philosophy." During the course of conducting his survey, Cameron was publicly vocal in his support for a proposed quarantine of all gay people (he spoke out publicly about this proposal in Houston at the same time that the survey was being conducted in Dallas). It is entirely possible that respondents in other cities became aware of Cameron’s goals and deliberately decided not to participate in the survey, or decided to give answers reflecting their personal bias and their personal desire to shape public policy.

Then there is the question of the publications in which Cameron published the results of his research. Research studies are often evaluated in terms of the prestige of the scientific journals in which they are published, as well as in terms of the number of times these studies are cited in the literature by other researchers and scholars. The Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) and the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) provide objective measures for these criteria, respectively.

The SSCI is a quarterly publication that lists, alphabetically by author, all articles that have been cited in scientific journals during that time period and the bibliographic reference for the articles that have cited them.

The JCR compiles data from the SSCI to report an impact factor for individual academic journals. The impact factor describes the average frequency with which articles in a particular journal are cited. It is computed as the number of times any article from that journal is cited during the first two years following its publication divided by the total number of articles published in that journal during the time period. To provide a simplified example, suppose that a particular journal published 25 articles in 1990, and those 25 articles were subsequently cited a combined total of 125 times between 1990 and 1992. The journal's impact factor for 1990 would be 125/25 or 5.0. Although the impact factor has limitations, it is widely used by librarians, information scientists, and researchers from a variety of disciplines as an objective indicator of a journal's quality, value, and impact.

Cameron’s “research” has been published in four very low quality journals (i.e. journals with a very low impact factor). Most of his “research” was published in one journal named "Psychological Reports". Unlike prestigious journals, Psychological Reports charges the researcher a fee by the page to print the so-called research. This journal is, in fact, a vanity journal in which “researchers” may get material published which would be rejected by prestigious and highly regarded journals. Cameron himself once described another journal in which his “research” has been published as “obscure.”

Based on data from the SSCI, Cameron’s work had almost no impact whatsoever on the literature.

It should be clear, taking all of the above issues into consideration, that Cameron and his acolytes are skilled liars and fraud artists. Cameron’s “work” has been savaged by other, reputable researchers, and the few times in which his articles have been cited in the professional literature have taken the form of critiques of his methodology. This is a man who is little more than a hired gun with a veneer of academic respectability. He is not interested in legitimate scientific research – to the contrary, he is committed to abusing research protocols in an effort to lend credence to his quackery and his efforts at extreme right-wing social engineering.

PHILIP CHANDLER