The California Proposition 8 Case: Olson and Boies

[micatala]

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02262010/profile.html


Bill Moyers interviewed Theodore Olson and David Boies, the chief lawyers handling the suit against California's Proposition 8, this past Friday on PBS. Prop 8 was the ballot initiative banning gay marriage in CA that narrowly passed in the fall of 2008.

Olson is a prominent conservative, famous for handling the Republican case in Bush V. Gore.

Boies is on the opposite side of the political spectrum, and was on the opposite side of the Bush v. Gore case.

They are teaming up to represent one male and one female same-sex couples, a case that is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.

I would certainly recommend the full interview if you have time.


One main point of their legal strategy is to hammer home that the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that marriage is a fundamental individual right, and that extending this right to gays is not creating a new right, but simply treating gays equally with respect to an already firmly established right.

Conservatives, just like liberals, rely on the Supreme Court to protect the rule of law, to protect our liberties, to look at a law and decide whether or not it fits within the Constitution. And I think the point that's really important here, when you're thinking about judicial activism, is that this is not a new right. Nobody is saying, 'Go find in the Constitution the right to get married.' Everybody, unanimous Supreme Court, says there's a right to get married, a fundamental right to get married. The question is whether you can discriminate against certain people based on their sexual orientation. And the issue of prohibiting discrimination has never in my view been looked as a test of judicial activism. That's not liberal, that's not conservative. That's not Republican or Democrat. That's simply an American Constitutional civil right.

They noted that the Supreme Court has said that even prison inmates cannot be prevented from being married.


In the interview, they went on to pretty well demolish any legal justification for Proposition 8. Of course, they still have to win their case, and eventually in front of the SCOTUS.


Questions for debate:

1) Are Olson and Boies correct. Should the suit go forward regardless of the risk of losing?

2) How good is their case?

3) Are the likely to win?




The suit itself is entitled Perry vs. Schwarzenegger, even though neither the governor nor his attorney general are going to defend the proposition. The AG even noted he felt Prop 8 was unconstitutional.

See http://www.equalrightsfoundation.org/ou ... rzenegger/
for more background.


See http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010 ... act_talbot
for a New Yorker article on the suit.

[cnorman18]

All opposition to gay marriage is based on the idea that homosexuality is bad, objectionable, and/or perverted. That idea comes from nowhere but religion.

This does not apply to my non religous friend that is not in favor of gay marriage. Could it be because he was molested while sleeping, by a buddy of his in high school that was gay and he didn't even know it at the time?

Could that possibly affect his stance, or his feelings towards gays?

I'm not saying you and Cephus are wrong about your stance in general, just that you are wrong about it only coming from religious people. That belief lumps my buddy in with all the religious people that you do not feel should have a say, thus making his point (or vote, if he voted against it) not worthy to be counted either, if your saying that the idea comes from nowhere but religion that is, because his certainly does not.

We're talking about significant percentages here, not isolated individual cases. I think I've made it clear that in my opinion and I think in fact, 99+% of opposition to gay marriage is religious, overt or covert. What percentage of US voters would be represented by your friend? 1/100 of 1 percent? I doubt it's that high.

Further; AGAIN, I never said that anyone ought not have a "say." I've said that no one gets to force their religious beliefs upon others, and that is a matter of American law, not opinion.

[East of Eden]

Single parent households and same-sex households with kids are both bad options.

And yet single parent households are legal.

Yes, with negative consequences. See this UK study: http://www.civitas.org.uk/pubs/experiments.php

Summary
The Experiment
Fewer children live with both their mother and their father
Routes into the fatherless family
Divorce
Births outside marriage
Changes in marriage and cohabitation
Is the married two-parent family a thing of the past?
Most people still believe in the ideal of marriage and do, in fact, get married
The Results: How does the Fatherless Family Affect Adults, Children and Society?
Lone mothers
Are poorer
Are more likely to suffer from stress, depression, and other emotional and psychological problems
Have more health problems
May have more problems interacting with their children
Non-resident biological fathers
Are at risk of losing contact with their children
Are more likely to have health problems and engage in high-risk behaviour
Children living without their biological fathers
Are more likely to live in poverty and deprivation
Have more trouble in school
Tend to have more trouble getting along with others
Have higher risk of health problems
Are at greater risk of suffering physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.
Are more likely to run away from home
Teenagers living without their biological fathers
Are more likely to experience problems with sexual health
Are more likely to become teenage parents
Are more likely to offend
Are more likely to smoke
Are more likely to drink alcohol
Are more likely to take drugs
Are more likely to play truant from school
Are more likely to be excluded from school
Are more likely to leave school at 16
Are more likely to have adjustment problems
Young adults who grew up not living with their biological fathers
Are less likely to attain qualifications
Are more likely to experience unemployment
Are more likely to have low incomes
Are more likely be on income support
Are more likely to experience homelessness
Are more likely to be caught offending and go to jail
Are more likely to suffer from long term emotional and psychological problems
Are more likely to develop health problems
Tend to enter partnerships earlier and more often as a cohabitation
Are more likely to divorce or dissolve their cohabiting unions
Are more likely to have children outside marriage or outside any partnership
Effects on the Social Fabric
Increased crime and violence
Decreased community ties
A growing divorce culture
Cycle of fatherlessness
Dependence on state welfare

Well, a gay couple could also serve as parents to an invitro child.

They couldn't provice both a mother and father.

DId I miss it, or do you have any actual evidence that children parented by gay people turn out worse than children of single parents, or poor people, or black people, or scientologists, or illegal immigrants, or native americans, etc. etc.?

Where did the scientologists and native American thing come from? I would be willing to bet children of gay couples do not do as well as families with a mother and father, and I bet most kids given the choice would prefer growing up with a mother and father. Kids should be more important than the gay agenda.

Are gays less likely to stay together than poor people, or black people, or scientologists, or illegal immigrants, or native americans, etc. etc.?

They are less likely to stay together than heterosexual couples.

Are gays more promiscous than poor people, or black people, or scientologists, or illegal immigrants, or native americans, etc. etc.?

They are more promiscous than heterosexuals.

And more to the point, do we prohibit any other group of people from getting married based on statistics regarding that groups likelihood to get divorced or be promiscuous? If so, who are they?

We're talking about who can provide a mother and father.

Your "pragmatic" reasoning is sounding very hollow. If you are not willing to make the same arguments against other groups based on the same or similar alleged behaviors then it certainly appears your objections are not pragmatic at all but ideological.

No surprise here, we disagree with each other. Others votes are their business.

[East of Eden]

We're talking about significant percentages here, not isolated individual cases. I think I've made it clear that in my opinion and I think in fact, 99+% of opposition to gay marriage is religious, overt or covert.

What percentage of US voters would be represented by your friend? 1/100 of 1 percent? I doubt it's that high.

Is that an assumption or do you have facts to back that up?

Further; AGAIN, I never said that anyone ought not have a "say." I've said that no one gets to force their religious beliefs upon others, and that is a matter of American law, not opinion.

Which means the Christian left can't support gay marriage either, right? That would be forcing their religious beliefs on me.

[East of Eden]

There are those phony reasons again. Lots of people can't procreate, and you aren't at all interested in banning marriage for the infertile or those over 50;

And there's that phony objection again, as I've pointed out before, an infertile heterosexual couple can provide a mother and father to an adopted or in vitro child.

Which of course brings us to the question of why you dont want to ban single parenthood and other parenting situations that arent normal, but only those that involve gays. That proves that your objection isnt to single parenthood, as youre hypocritically pretending, but ONLY to GAY parenthood.

and it isn't homosexuality that constitutes a "deadly lifestyle," but promiscuity.

Which is part and parcel of the homosexual lifestyle, making the concept of marriage meaningless.

No, it isnt. You are saying that homosexuals are ALWAYS promiscuous, that it isnt possible to be a homosexual and NOT be promiscuous, and that just isnt so.

From Wikipedia, which gives its sources:

The American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the National Association of Social Workers state:
In 1952, when the American Psychiatric Association published its first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, homosexuality was included as a disorder. Almost immediately, however, that classification began to be subjected to critical scrutiny in research funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. That study and subsequent research consistently failed to produce any empirical or scientific basis for regarding homosexuality as a disorder or abnormality, rather than a normal and healthy sexual orientation. As results from such research accumulated, professionals in medicine, mental health, and the behavioral and social sciences reached the conclusion that it was inaccurate to classify homosexuality as a mental disorder and that the DSM classification reflected untested assumptions based on once-prevalent social norms and clinical impressions from unrepresentative samples comprising patients seeking therapy and individuals whose conduct brought them into the criminal justice system.
In recognition of the scientific evidence,[55] the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM in 1973, stating that homosexuality per se implies no impairment in judgment, stability, reliability, or general social or vocational capabilities. After thoroughly reviewing the scientific data, the American Psychological Association adopted the same position in 1975, and urged all mental health professionals to take the lead in removing the stigma of mental illness that has long been associated with homosexual orientations. The National Association of Social Workers has adopted a similar policy.
Thus, mental health professionals and researchers have long recognized that being homosexual poses no inherent obstacle to leading a happy, healthy, and productive life, and that the vast majority of gay and lesbian people function well in the full array of social institutions and interpersonal relationships.[3]

The research and clinical literature demonstrate that same-sex sexual and romantic attractions, feelings, and behaviors are normal and positive variations of human sexuality. The longstanding consensus of the behavioral and social sciences and the health and mental health professions is that homosexuality per se is a normal and positive variation of human sexual orientation.[56]

Dont tell me, I know Opinion.

Except that YOUR opinion should determine the law for EVERYONE, right?

Further: If the concept of marriage is meaningless to gays, why on Earth are so many of them working so hard to make it legal?

"Gay author Gabriel Rotello notes the perspective of many gays that "Gay liberation was founded . . . on a 'sexual brotherhood of promiscuity,' and any abandonment of that promiscuity would amount to a 'communal betrayal of gargantuan proportions.'"

Rotellos opinion is noted. He is considered an extremist, even among gays, and his attitude was considered atypical at the time and is now scarce, as you prove yourself below.

4 Rotello's perception of gay promiscuity, which he criticizes, is consistent with survey results. A far-ranging study of homosexual men published in 1978 revealed that 75 percent of self-identified, white, gay men admitted to having sex with more than 100 different males in their lifetime: 15 percent claimed 100-249 sex partners; 17 percent claimed 250- 499; 15 percent claimed 500-999; and 28 percent claimed more than 1,000 lifetime male sex partners.5By 1984, after the AIDS epidemic had taken hold, homosexual men were reportedly curtailing promiscuity, but not by much. Instead of more than 6 partners per month in 1982, the average non-monogamous respondent in San Francisco reported having about 4 partners per month in 1984.6

Ive noticed how you keep referring to that 32-year-old study, so I thought Id do a little research myself. Heres what I found:

Youre referring to Bell and Weinbergs book, Homosexualities, published in 1978, according to the footnote in your quote. Those statistics have been discredited for decades, and if youd looked beyond anti-gay websites where its still prominently featured, youd have known that.

In the mid-70s, San Franciscos Castro Street district had become famous, or infamous, depending on ones attitude, as the center for outrageously open gay behavior. Gays flocked there from all over the US, actively seeking that promiscuous lifestyle. There were pockets of it elsewhere, but by 1978, the Castro was world-famous for it.

Taking a survey on promiscuity in the Castro in 1978 is about as reliable and unbiased, not to say significant, as taking a survey on the promiscuity of young straight women who just happen to work in whorehouses. That survey is not representative of the lifestyles of all gays, and it never was.

Further, the authors of that study, Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg, say that themselves: . . . given the variety of circumstances which discourage homosexuals from participating in research studies, it is unlikely that any investigator will ever be in a position to say that this or that is true of a given percentage of all homosexuals. (Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1978)

[Promiscuity is] a much bigger problem among heterosexuals, from their sheer numbers alone.

Now that is a dishonest argument, as they are many more normal heterosexuals. Let's stick to per capita arguments, OK?

Why? If promiscuity is a huge problem among homosexuals, which it isnt, its just as big a problem among heterosexuals. Why do you want to do something about the miniscule numbers of promiscuous gays and nothing about the millions of promiscuous straights? In other words, why are you punishing being gay instead of being promiscuous, while hypocritically posing as punishing the latter?

Since monogamous homosexual couples, of which there are many, lead a lifestyle no "deadlier" than monogamous heterosexual couples, legalizing gay marriage would logically make promiscuity LESS common among gays, not more so.

Far fewer gay couples stay together, and the ones that do are far more promiscous than their heterosexual counterparts.

More discredited studies? Or just your opinion, this time?

You DID NOT respond to this, so Ill repeat it:

, legalizing gay marriage would logically make promiscuity LESS common among gays, not more so.

Why does it make sense to PREVENT gays from engaging in monogamous, committed relationships?

Then logically you should want to prohibit single parenthood, and children living with one parent and a same-sex sibling of that parent, and children being raised by single grandparents, and so on. The fact that your objection doesn't apply to those groups proves that your objection is actually to homosexuality, not to other-than-conventional parenthood. If the same-sex couple isn't gay, or if the single parent isn't gay, it's not a problem, or at least not a problem serious enough to ban marriage for those people. QED.

Few would argue that single parenthood is a good thing, and there is plenty of documentation to its negative effects. Black children, for example, raised in intact households with a mother and father do about as well in life as their white counterparts.

Single parent households and same-sex households with kids are both bad options.

No one ever said that single parenthood was an ideal; thats another straw man, of course. But you only want to ban these situations when they involve gays! WHY NOT THE OTHERS?

Thats PROOF that youre not actually concerned about non-conventional parenting, as youre pretending, but about the parents being gay. You admit that these are all bad options, but they only ought to be BANNED if the couple is GAY. Are you getting this? Your reasons are indeed phony, because they arent your real concern even according to your own words right here.

And you KEEP ON trying to misrepresent what I'm saying; at this point, I would have to say that that is dishonest. I've never said that Christian involvement in public policy is bad, no matter how many times you try to put those words in my mouth.

See? You can't mount an actual argument; all you can do is argue against strawmen and keep presenting the same well-refuted arguments about procreation and disease and so on. We've been over all this more than once already, and you keep pretending we haven't.

Wow, you refuse to address this, don't you? Once again, if liberal Christians opposed Prop. 8 because of their religious convictions, wouldn't that make it un-Constitutional, by your reasoning?

Okay, youre not going to let go of this, so lets deal with it three different ways:

First: Opposing or supporting anything on any grounds isnt unconstitutional. Thats nonsense. Only a LAW can be unconstitutional; but supporting a law that is, or would be, isnt. Freedom of speech is the rule there; you can support taking the vote away from women, slavery or monarchy if you like, and its as constitutional as all hell.

The laws that any of that totally legal and constitutional support would pass, though, would be struck down by the Supreme Court on first review. Does that help?

Second: Imposing a religious doctrine on everyone isnt illegal if it involves only ONE denomination or ONE religion, but if it imposes any religious doctrine at all. That is the clear text of the Amendment, and the clear ruling of every Supreme Court since the Constitution was ratified in 1789.

The Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion, and if the members of ANY religion want to perform gay marriages, prohibiting them infringes upon that practice. NOT prohibiting gay marriage, on the other hand, doesnt infringe on anybodys rights or practice. Period.

Third: Even if gay marriage were made legal primarily because of the involvement for religious reasons of liberal Christians, which is pretty clearly not the case (only a few such organizations have openly espoused and supported it), it would not be an unconstitutional law. Why not? Because it infringes on no ones liberty, as noted above. It could be said that Dr. Martin Luther Kings religious convictions were encoded into law in the Civil Rights Act of 1964; BUT, that was inarguably and unquestionably constitutional because no ones rights were violated by it.

Whose rights are violated by the legalization of gay marriage? How would it limit or infringe upon your rights?

You do NOT have the right to live in a society where everyone lives according to your rules, sorry about that. Legalizing gay marriage doesnt dictate what anyone has to do or not do. Therefore theres no challenge to it, and no way it could even theoretically be unconstitutional.

Thats all pretty clear, I think. Itll be interesting to see how youre going to respond to it without actually addressing the issues.

Like I said; I've made myself too clear here for you to have misunderstood me. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Christians, fundamentalist Christians, or anyone else opposing gay marriage and working to ban it for whatever reasons they like, including reasons based on religion. Okay?

OK, I get that, but it is completely contradictory with your next sentance:

What I keep trying to tell you is that imposing a religious doctrine on all Americans is unconstitutional, and any law that enshrines the idea that homosexuality is in any way "bad," "evil," or otherwise subject to special sanctions under the law is absolutely a religious doctrine.

Maybe Ive explained that adequately above. The fact that you see a conflict between these paragraphs pretty well demonstrates that you dont understand what Im talking about.

Its legal to support an unconstitutional law. Its futile and pointless, but its legal.

You haven't given [a reason to oppose gay marriage] yet that you'll apply to straights as well, which means your "reasons" aren't about what you pretend they are, but about being gay.

Yes, that's what the debate is about.

So you ADMIT that you dont care about single parents, same-sex caregivers, infertile people, life expectancy, or any of those stalking horses; they only matter if the people involved are GAY.

That seems clear enough to me. Thanks.

Repeating a misstatement of fact doesn't make it true; and an objection based on an argument I haven't made (and that you know I haven't made) is meaningless.

It isn't your argument about the Christian left supporting gay marriage that gets me, it's your double-standard silence on it.

Silence?!?! Ive explained why your objection is nonsense half a dozen times.

Like in the next thing you quote.

Because it's a question based on a lie. I never said that involvement of fundamentalists in the political process was wrong in the first place, so the question contains an implicit falsehood.

No, you just said if the 'fundamentalist' were to prevail, it should get thrown out as unconsitutional. That is arguably an infringement on free excercise of religion.

I think thats explained above, but please, for the record, tell us how living in a country where gay marriage is legal infringes upon the free exercise of your religion.

You dont get to dictate the practices of OTHER people, no matter what your religion is; but you are perfectly free to continue to oppose gay marriage, and to NOT marry someone of the same sex as yourself, even after its legal. Wheres the infringement?

One more time (and I point out that your failure to answer this is very, VERY suggestive): Can you cite any opposition to gay marriage at all, from any source, that ISN'T based on the idea that being gay is "bad"? Sorry, but assuming that that idea is self-evidently true doesn't count.

5,000 years of human experience and no culture until now believed marriage to be anything other than between a man and woman. You can say definatively that that was 100% religious?

Changing the subject isnt answering the question, to wit: Can you cite any opposition to gay marriage at all, from any source, that ISN'T based on the idea that being gay is "bad"?

And no, just because something has been done for thousands of years doesnt make it right or correct. By that standard, we should still be treating women (and others) as property and selling debtors into outright slavery.

References? The reasoning behind this? Quotes? Sources?

Anything?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/30/fashi ... RIAGE.html

FASCINATING! The very article you cite shows that the promiscuity youre so concerned about is a thing of the past, if it ever existed at all outside of the Castro Street district.

From your own link:

For better or for worse, to be unattached and gay is not what it used to be. Gone are the guilt-free days of free love in the clubs, of hooking up at bathhouses and reveling in promiscuity, which Mr. Dobbs prefers to call sexual generosity. In are elaborate weddings, shared property, pets and children.

Mr. Dobbs said that even on Fire Island, where cohabitating with 12 other men was once a time-honored tradition, a friend who is an utterly bourgeois gay homeowner complains that he gets the gimlet eye from gay and lesbian parents because he is not in a relationship. Another friend scolded Mr. Dobbs that if he had never wanted to marry, there must be something wrong with him.

And that brings me around, again, to a point Ive made over and over, and that you have ignored entirely; Gay marriage would encourage monogamy among gays and lesbians and, without a doubt, reduce the incidence of promiscuity that you think is such a huge problem (though it apparently isnt when it occurs among straights). Why dont you have a quick, facile answer to that, too?

Being gay is no more "bad" than being tall or left-handed.

Your opinion. To me, the drastically shortened lifespan of gay males is 'bad'.

Hello! Another discredited statistic.

That information comes from one Paul Cameron, a thoroughly discredited anti-gay activist who has distorted and misused statistics from many scientists who are on the record as protesting the misuse of their work.

Here is the conclusion of a review from the University of California at Davis:

The Cameron group's gay obituary study reports many numbers and statistics. However, they are absolutely worthless for estimating the life expectancy of gay men and lesbians.

Before you dismiss that as opinion, as you usually do with points which you find hard to answer, read the review. The Camerons approach, methods and results were all so deeply flawed that they are statistically worthless.

Further: Cameron was expelled from the American Psychological Association in 1983.

Reason? "He was misrepresenting and distorting other peoples' psychological research and using it to sensationalize his point of view on homosexuals. He talks about homosexuals being mass murderers and child molesters and credits other people for those findings. If you read their research, they have in no way made such claims. We have letters from those researchers saying his (work) has distorted their research." Natalie Porter, assistant professor of psychology at University of Nebraska. (LA Times-8/20/1985).

Yet one more time: Do you have an argument against gay marriage that doesn't begin with the premise that being gay is "bad," which is a sectarian religious doctrine?

The fact you don't agree with the answers already given doesn't mean you haven't gotten answers.

True. Okay. So, just for the record, lets review the answers you claim that youve given already. Here are the questions again:

What reasons are there to oppose gay marriage that arent based on the idea that being gay in itself is bad?

Why should Christians have the right to force their religious beliefs and practices on everyone?

You are here claiming that youve given answers to those, and I havent seen any. Ive seen dodges, tu quoque,, changes of subject, the repetition of weak points that have been refuted multiple times, and non sequiturs by the dozen, but I havent seen those answers.

Dont bother to claim that I didnt understand them. Just repeat them, and well let the readers decide if theyre coherent or meaningful.

I'm not inclined to continue this discussion with you, but I did want to post Paul Cameron's side after your attempted defamation. He actually resigned from the American Psychological Assn. in 1982 in protest of their promotion of abortion and the gay agenda. They went after him, just as it was pressure from the gay activists that got the abnormal labal dropped earlier. The fact is, homosexuality has about as high a cure rate as anything else psychologists treat people for.

http://www.familyresearchinst.org/2009/ ... uary-2009/

[Wyvern]

I'm not inclined to continue this discussion with you, but I did want to post Paul Cameron's side after your attempted defamation. He actually resigned from the American Psychological Assn. in 1982 in protest of their promotion of abortion and the gay agenda. They went after him, just as it was pressure from the gay activists that got the abnormal labal dropped earlier. The fact is, homosexuality has about as high a cure rate as anything else psychologists treat people for.

http://www.familyresearchinst.org/2009/ ... uary-2009/

According to your article he resigned while under charges, not as you say as a means of protest. Do you have any evidence to back up your claim of treatment outcome?

[East of Eden]

I'm not inclined to continue this discussion with you, but I did want to post Paul Cameron's side after your attempted defamation. He actually resigned from the American Psychological Assn. in 1982 in protest of their promotion of abortion and the gay agenda. They went after him, just as it was pressure from the gay activists that got the abnormal labal dropped earlier. The fact is, homosexuality has about as high a cure rate as anything else psychologists treat people for.

http://www.familyresearchinst.org/2009/ ... uary-2009/

According to your article he resigned while under charges, not as you say as a means of protest.

Wrong, "I was not expelled from the American Psychological Association. As you can see from our website (). Having no APA charges against me, 26 years ago, on November 7, 1982, I resigned and got a letter of acknowledgement from the President of the APA November 29, 1982. My letter explaining my reasons for my resignation, as requested by the APA President, was published in the Monitor in March 1983. My letter said that I believed the APA had abandoned its scientific stance and become an advocate for abortion and gay rights."

Do you have any evidence to back up your claim of treatment outcome?

From Exodus International:

"The surveys and studies are being done and information is being complied. I believe we will all see that the statistics for change are much higher than 30%. In the past 10 years First Stone Ministries has noted that the men and women who truly work through the program and wholeheartedly apply themselves reveal that the percentage rate of people who are able to overcome the homosexual lifestyle is much greater than 50%."


Strange how some think pedophiles can be rehabilitated, but gays can never change.

[Wyvern]

I'm not inclined to continue this discussion with you, but I did want to post Paul Cameron's side after your attempted defamation. He actually resigned from the American Psychological Assn. in 1982 in protest of their promotion of abortion and the gay agenda. They went after him, just as it was pressure from the gay activists that got the abnormal labal dropped earlier. The fact is, homosexuality has about as high a cure rate as anything else psychologists treat people for.

http://www.familyresearchinst.org/2009/ ... uary-2009/

According to your article he resigned while under charges, not as you say as a means of protest.

Wrong, "I was not expelled from the American Psychological Association. As you can see from our website (). Having no APA charges against me, 26 years ago, on November 7, 1982, I resigned and got a letter of acknowledgement from the President of the APA November 29, 1982. My letter explaining my reasons for my resignation, as requested by the APA President, was published in the Monitor in March 1983. My letter said that I believed the APA had abandoned its scientific stance and become an advocate for abortion and gay rights."

Simply amazing how you can quote one part but ignore just a few lines down that states specifically that the APA dropped him from membership while under charges.

Do you have any evidence to back up your claim of treatment outcome?

From Exodus International:

"The surveys and studies are being done and information is being complied. I believe we will all see that the statistics for change are much higher than 30%. In the past 10 years First Stone Ministries has noted that the men and women who truly work through the program and wholeheartedly apply themselves reveal that the percentage rate of people who are able to overcome the homosexual lifestyle is much greater than 50%."

So your answer is no, strange how you try to make a negative response sound so positive.

[cnorman18]

I'm not inclined to continue this discussion with you...

Imagine my surprise. I guess you ran out of ways to duck and dodge.

...but I did want to post Paul Cameron's side after your attempted defamation. He actually resigned from the American Psychological Assn. in 1982 in protest of their promotion of abortion and the gay agenda. They went after him, just as it was pressure from the gay activists that got the abnormal labal dropped earlier. The fact is, homosexuality has about as high a cure rate as anything else psychologists treat people for.

http://www.familyresearchinst.org/2009/ ... uary-2009/

Yeah, sure. Those claims have been discredited too. I suppose all those other scientists who protested Cameron's distorting and misusing their work were all lying to promote the gay agenda, too.

Here's the Wikipedia article on Cameron and a few quotes. Feel free to refute it with more from the man himself or from his anti-gay websites:

Criticism

For the most part, official scientific organisations have paid very little attention to Cameron's studies, and thus extensive scientific analysis of his claims have not been widely available. However Cameron's research, public statements and legal testimony have received criticism from researchers and organizations over methodologies they view as academically dishonest and misleading.

From professional organizations

The American Psychological Association (APA) launched an investigation into Cameron after receiving complaints about his work from members.[2][3] The APA President Max Seigel sent Cameron a letter on December 2, 1983 stating that the Board of Directors had decided to drop him from membership for failure to cooperate with their investigation.[18] [The Family Research Institute, Cameron's organization,] has contended that Cameron had already resigned from the organization in November 1982, citing correspondence from before his formal expulsion.[19] In a letter published in the March 1983 edition of the APA Monitor, Cameron stated that his reasons for leaving included his opinion that the organization was becoming more of a "liberal PAC" than a professional society.[20] An APA spokesperson told The Boston Globe in 2005, "We are concerned about Dr. Cameron because we do believe that his methodology is weak."[3]

In 1984 the Nebraska Psychological Association issued a statement disassociating itself "from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron".[3] In 1986 the American Sociological Association passed a resolution condemning Cameron for "consistent misrepresentation of sociological research".[21] This was based on a report from the ASA's Committee on the Status of Homosexuals in Sociology, which summarised Cameron's inflammatory statements and commented, "It does not take great analytical abilities to suspect from even a cursory review of Cameron's writings that his claims have almost nothing to do with social science and that social science is used only to cover over another agenda. Very little of his work could find support from even a bad misreading of genuine social science investigation on the subject and some sociologists, such as Alan Bell [Note; This is one of the authors of the 1978 study that has been so widely misused, including here] have been 'appalled' at the abuse of their work."[22] In 1996, the Board of Directors of the Canadian Psychological Association approved a position statement disassociating the organisation from Cameron's work on sexuality, stating that he had "consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism".[23]

From individuals

After Dr. Cameron submitted affidavits to the U. S. District Court of Dallas in Baker v. Wade (1985), Judge Buchmeyer wrote in his opinion that Cameron had "made misrepresentations to this Court".[13] However, Buchmeyer's decision was later overturned by the Fifth Circuit sitting en banc, which specifically reversed the "misrepresentations" finding by Buchmeyer.[24] FRI has disputed Judge Buchmeyer's assessment of Dr. Cameron's affidavits.[25]

Epidemiologists Morten Frisch and Henrik Brnnum-Hansen argue that Cameron was wrong to infer reduced life expectancy from the fact that deaths among homosexually married partners in Denmark and Norway occurred at a lower median age than those among heterosexually married partners: "Because the age distribution among persons in same-sex marriages was considerably younger than that of people who had ever been heterosexually married, the average age at death among those who actually died during the observation period was, not surprisingly, considerably younger in the population of same-sex married persons." Their own analysis found that excess mortality in Danish same-sex marriages since 1995 was "restricted to the first few years after a marriage, presumably reflecting preexisting illness at the time of marriage".[26] Similarly, critics have argued that obituaries in gay-themed newspapers, which Cameron used to estimate homosexual mortality, do not provide a representative sample of deaths and ignore surviving members of the same generation.[27]

Cameron has also been criticized for placing responsibility for same-sex child sexual abuse on "homosexuals"; opponents state that someone who carries out such abuse need not have a homosexual orientation with respect to other adults. [28][29] Gregory M. Herek, a psychologist specialising in prejudice against sexual minorities, charges that Cameron misrepresented the literature he had reviewed and cited to support his claims, such as a Groth and Birnbaum (1978) study in which none of the participating child molestors actually identified as homosexuals, and none of those who were bisexual claimed to prefer men over women. Furthermore, while Cameron assumed all the same-sex molestations were perpetrated by homosexuals, he did not assume all the opposite-sex molestations were perpetrated by heterosexuals; he included a "bisexual correction" only for opposite-sex molestations that effectively increased the number of perpetrators described as "homosexual" without changing the number described as "heterosexual".[30]

Herek noted that most of the Cameron group's academic publications in the past 15 years have been based on a survey study conducted in 1983 and 1984. The main survey was completed in seven U.S. cities and towns in 1983. Data were later added from a 1984 Dallas (TX) sample. Most of the Cameron group's papers have reported data from the combined samples. According to Herek, a critical review of the Cameron group's sampling techniques, survey methodology, and interpretation of results reveals at least six serious errors in their study. The presence of even one of these flaws would be sufficient to cast serious doubts on the legitimacy of any study's results. In combination, they make the data virtually meaningless. Herek concludes, "an empirical study manifesting even one of these six weaknesses would be considered seriously flawed. In combination, the multiple methodological problems evident in the Cameron group's surveys mean that their results cannot even be considered a valid description of the specific group of individuals who returned the survey questionnaire. Because the data are essentially meaningless, it is not surprising that they have been virtually ignored by the scientific community."[31]

In a widely publicized interview with Midweek Politics with David Pakman, Cameron compared homosexually to drug use[32], a comparison that drew criticism from a number of gay rights blogs, websites, and the Huffington Post[33]

So much for Cameron and his ilk. If one must falsify data and lie about research in order to support one's points, it is a betrayal of the fact that one must be aware that one's factual case is very, very weak.

I think I've proven my points:

(1) There is no significant opposition to gay marriage that isn't religion-based:

(2) There is no reason why Christians should have the right to dictate the beliefs and practices of Americans to the exclusion of those who believe otherwise; and

(3) Those who oppose gay marriage for religious reasons would not have their rights to practice their own religion infringed to the least degree by its becoming legal.

Thanks for the conversation. I enjoy slicing and dicing baloney.

[East of Eden]

To those who claim inability to procreate is a good reason to ban gay marriage:

Do you also wish to stop infertile heterosexuals from getting married?

They have a chance to adopt and provide a mother and father, something gays can never do.

Heterosexuals who want to get married but don't want to have kids?

They often change their mind, speaking from personal experience.

All those who have had vasectomies or tubal ligations done?

See my first answer.

[East of Eden]

Simply amazing how you can quote one part but ignore just a few lines down that states specifically that the APA dropped him from membership while under charges.

1983 comes after 1982. You ignore the part where he was asked three times to rejoin. They probably were embarrasded at the heavy-handed PC tactics of the 'brownshorts'.

So your answer is no, strange how you try to make a negative response sound so positive.

Uh, what kind of success rates to you think other disorders get?