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The following video is a perfect demonstration of the slick ways so-called religious right experts pass along propaganda and lies about the lgbtq community:
Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America has done this sort of thing before. Last year in fact.
And just like that time, she does not say where she got her statistics. It’s probably because she either relying on junk science or distortions of legitimate science.
When it comes to legitimate science, religious right phony experts, like Ms. Crouse here, have been known to take convenience sample studies – i.e. studies taken at STD clinics or studies in which the authors have indicated cannot be taken to generalize about the entire gay community – and distort them to demonize lgbtqs in mass.
Or when they talk about negative behaviors (i.e. suicide) and diseases in the gay community – and Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council is a master at this – they are quick to cite the studies talking about these things but omit the portion of the studies which places the blame on how societal homophobia contributes to these diseases and negative behaviors.
Let’s look at Crouse’s claim that gays live 20 years less than heterosexuals (.11 seconds). My guess is that she received statistic from the 1997 Oxford study (which I have talked about more times than I can count).
Those who know of this 1997 study also know that in 2001, the authors of the work had to go on record complaining about how folks like Crouse was distorting their work.
As you can see, Crouse doesn’t really care. As long as she has something to demonize gays, she will continue to use it.
Just like every other phony religious right “expert.”
Related posts:
CWA’s Janice Crouse crams a bunch of anti-gay lies in one statement
How religious right groups distort legitimate research to demonize the gay community
Editor’s note – The attached video is a short snippet. The longer version is here and as you can see, Crouse does NOT provide any statistics for her charges.
Hat tip to Right Wing Watch
3 Comments
Of all the completely ridiculous and clearly fictious statistics this hag spouts, the one that strikes me as the most bizarre is “lesbians (notice how she could barely spit out the word) are 4.5 more likely than heterosexual women to have had more than 50 sexual partners.” What? Maybe I travel in the wrong circles, but I haven’t met too many women who’ve had more than 50 sexual partners, and it’s been my experience, admittedly anecdotal, that in general lesbians are far less promiscuous than straight women. But maybe I just have a boring life and boring friends.
I tracked this ridiculous claim about lesbians back to the so-called “Facts About Youth” online article by the fake “American College of Pediatricians”.
http://factsaboutyouth.com/posts/attention-school-superintendents/
This is a small conservative religious fringe group with less than 100 members. (as opposed to 60,000 members from the REAL American Academy of Pediatricians).
This group focuses on anti-gay propaganda and little else. George ‘rentboy’ Rekers was the main author of the article. They emailed this atrocious piece of anti-gay propanda out to all the schools about 18mths ago.
http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2010/04/05/21620
The Propaganda “Facts about Youth” piece claimed: “An Australian study found that 93 % of lesbians reported having had sex with men, and lesbians were 4.5 times more likely than heterosexual women to have had more than 50 lifetime male sex partners.”
THIS is the study they are blatantly misrepresenting:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1744205/pdf/v076p00345.pdf
The study does NOT say that 93% of lesbians reported having had sex with men. The study was on women who visited a sexual health clinic in the 90’s in Australia. They surveyed women who had reported ever having sex with a woman- even once. This included heterosexual, bi-curious and bi-sexual women. Not just lesbians.
The study stated that 9% of these women (heterosexuals, bi-curious and bi-sexuals included) had had sex with more than 50 men. Again, NOT lesbians, NOT lesbians in general and not even women in general. Just women who went to a sexual health clinic. Which would include sex workers.
Also, Dr Francis Collins, Director of the National Health Institutes wrote a complaint about this “Facts about Youth” garbage.
http://www.nih.gov/about/director/04152010_statement_ACP.htm
Thanks for tracking all this down. It’s interesting how they don’t quite make things up, but instead completely distort existing research. I guess so they can claim that they’re just “interpreting” the data. Evil, evil people.