The Poisonous Mushroom of Paul Cameron

I knew the vile Paul Cameron, a man who creates fraudulent “research” and has been expelled from at least two professional associations because of it, would open his yap about Mary Cheney having a child. Cameron is to gays what Julius Streicher was to Jews.

Cameron’s hatred toward gay people is one of the most severe cases around. He is obsessed with the issue and it all he talks about. Much of what he says is so disgusting I would not print it here.

Cameron said: “Unmarried women should not deliberately have children. Their children are more apt to experience privation and disruptions...[blah, blah, blah]. These wrongs are compounded when the child is brought into a homosexual setting.”

He says: “Her pregnancy is further evidence that participation in homosexual activity distorts value systems, induction practitioners to harm the commonweal. Our society has too many children born without the benefit of marriage. Cheney’s actions is not only a bad example, but poor treatment of an innocent child.”

Isn’t this rich! Cameron fights full time to deny gay couples the right to marry then attacks them for having children “without the benefits of marriage.”

He gets worse. In fact he goes right back to his lying research. He says the odds are that “this child will lose at least one caretaker before graduating high school.” In fact the odds are not that all. In 18 years the oldest of the two will still be several years below the average life expectancy of women. Of course Cameron has fake research claiming the average gay person will die at some outrageously young age: 42 years. He is mathematically illiterate so such errors on his part are not uncommon.

He supports society making it as difficult as possible for gay couples to remain together and then attacks gays because “ high proportion... break apart.” Legalize marriage is one way to help encourage people to stay together. Cheney and her partner have been together for 15 years which is longer than a lot of conservative Republicans have managed in numerous straight marriages.

He argues that the child will be around gays who are a “class” “apt to have STDs and a criminal history, be interested in sex with children, involved in substance abuse, etc.” The “etc.” is some of the more vile invented research by Cameron.

And finally the child “will have a much higher probability of learning homosexual tastes”. This doesn’t mean a liking for show tunes. He means they will be gay. In fact the research does not show that. But the Christianists like Cameron twist research, once again, to mean something it does not say.

Studies do show that children raised by gay parents are more tolerant of homosexuals. You’d expect that wouldn’t you. And it does show that they are more likely to think about whether they are or are not gay themselves. Again that would seem to make sense. But when it comes down to what they actually decide they are no more likely to decide they are gay than children born to straight parents. The claims they are more likely to be gay is based on the higher proportion of these children, saying that as teens they wondered if they might be gay.

This is like the claims that children raised by a lesbian couple are more likely to have social problems because children born to single mothers have more problems. The single mother’s child is raised “fatherless” and he assumes the lesbian couple’s child is “fatherless” and therefore they will have the same problems. It is the single mother versus the coupled mother not whether or not one of the parents has a penis.

The single mothers in these studies tend to be teens, tends to be uneducated, tend to have problems themselves. Often end up dependent on welfare and involved in serial relationships with many men, men who are often abusive. It would be a miracle if the children raised in these circumstances did not turn out troubled. That is much different than a well off, educated couple, in a long term (15 years) stable relationship with supportive parents and sufficient financial resources. I really think that if one of the “two mommies” suddenly and miraculous grew a penis that things would not be materially different.

But then I don’t see gay people as evil personified, as some sort of “Poison Mushroom” (See the Streicher link to understand that remark.)