Stop Paul Cameron’s “Research” from Misrepresenting LGBT Families

I don’t usually do long political tirades like this, but sometimes I make exceptions.

Paul Cameron, chair of the far-right, anti-LGBT Family Research Institute, is using books by members of the LGBT community to “prove” that “Children of Homosexuals and Transexuals [Are] More Apt to Be Homosexual.” If this weren’t enough, he has managed to get his so-called “research” into the May 2006 Journal of Biosocial Science, published by the otherwise-respected Cambridge University Press.

Cameron’s previous work includes such “findings” as “Homosexual parents were disproportionately of poor character and disproportionately associated with various harms to their children,” “Homosexual practitioners were proportionately more apt to abuse foster or adoptive children sexually,” and “Homosexuality is taught by or caught by sexual interaction with homosexual practitioners.”

The “sample” of children upon whom Cameron bases his most recent article is drawn from three LGBT-positive collections of writings by and about growing up in LGBT families: Abigail Garner’s Families Like Mine: Children of Gay Parents Tell It Like It Is, Andrew Gottlieb’s Sons Talk About Their Gay Fathers: Life Curves, and Noelle Howey and Ellen Samuels’ Out of the Ordinary : Essays on Growing Up with Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Parents These essays and interviews were not meant to be representative, scientific, or statistically significant, and Cameron grossly misuses them.

His largest “sample” is taken from Abigail Garner’s wonderful book of interviews. Garner is a full-time writer, speaker and educator for LGBT rights and the daughter of a gay dad. For the purpose of the book, Garner tells us,

I had made a point of having a roughly even number of straight kids and second generation kids [i.e., LGBT kids born to LGBT parents] so that both views would be evenly represented in the book. In other words, because of the goals of my book, I deliberately aimed to have 50% of the kids interviewed to be queer. Not because it is statistically reflective of the population, but to give it balance of perspective.

Cameron, however, takes Garner’s interviewees as representative, and uses them (along with “data” from the other two books) to prove “parents’ sexual inclinations influence their children’s.” His methodology is sloppy in other ways, too, as Jim Burroway of the Box Turtle Bulletin explains.

Garner has written extensively about this on her blog, Damn Straight. She also unsuccessfully contacted Cambridge University Press to have them further investigate Cameron’s article before publication. (One might think they would have stopped it on the grounds of sloppy science, if nothing else.) Note that Garner does not deny that some children of LGBT parents turn out to be LGBT. She objects to the fact that a discredited homophobe is distorting the material in her book as part of his deceptive attempt to build a case against gay parenting.

What can you do to stop Cameron’s “results” from spreading as fact? I have spoken with Garner, and she recommends:

• If you see any news coverage of Cameron’s “research,” be aware that the three sources he cites do not support his use of their work, and in fact, disagree strongly with his views.
• Write to Cambridge University Press and ask them to publish a retraction of this paper. Remind them how detrimental this article and its author are to their reputation. (Cambridge is the institution of such scientific luminaries as Isaac Newton and Stephen Hawking.)
• Post about this on your blogs, so we outnumber the far-right bloggers citing the press release of Cameron’s work. This means that when uninvolved people and the media look into it on Technorati and other blog search engines, they will find more opposition than support for the article. Cite the three books above by name, so others can easily find them and see they would never support Cameron’s “results.”