link established between homophobia and homosexual arousal

[wpa997]

Let's see,

1. "Study" commissioned by homosexual activist "scientists". (Henry Adams is a known homosexual activist.)

2. The "study" relied upon self-reporting surveys which were supposed to identify an ambiguous term (homophobia).

3. Extremely small sample size (64) consisting entirely of volunteers from a non-representative cross section of society. (Young male college students from one University, and one department research pool within that University.)

4. Volunteers were only self-identified as heterosexual.

5. Only caucasian males were sampled.

6. Volunteers were granted partial academic credit for participation.

7. No real control group.

8. Reliance in part upon a debunked scale to measure "homophobia". (Kinsey Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale.)

9. Laughable questionnaire with no real scientific basis for each question asked. (You can take the test yourself here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/etc/quiz.html).

10. A penile plethysmograph is about as reliable a scientific instrument as an EMF detector is for hunting ghosts. (http://skepdic.com/penilep.html)

I could go on, but there is no need.

This was a propaganda piece of pseudo-science designed to follow the homosexual activist blueprint of silencing dissenters.
I am amazed that anyone would rely on this trash to prove anything.

IMHO anyone who uses this "study" to attempt to prove anything is engaging in a bigoted attempt to silence those with moral opposition to homosexual behavior.

 

[NavyGuy7]

Watch out, it's teh definition nazi!

Hello, He-Who-Makes-Thousand-Entrances. What brings you this fine day to this thread?
But seriously. You could be a little less... well, of a jerk, really.
I'm gonna let this one slide.
*takes mouse off of "Report" button*
And he wasn't really defining the word. He was merely saying that the word was unrelated to him. He's straight, who cares what anyone else thinks?

 

[NavyGuy7]

Let's see, homosexual activist "scientists".

Self reporting survey which are supposed to identify an ambiguous term.

Extremely small sample size consisting entirely of volunteers from a non-representative cross section of society. (Young male college students from one University.)

Reliance in part upon a debunked scale to measure "homophobia". (Kinsey Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale.)

I could go on, but there is no need.

This was a propaganda piece of pseudo-science designed to follow the homosexual activist blueprint of silencing dissenters.

I am amazed that anyone would rely on this trash to prove anything.

I'm not amazed. I can think of at least ONE group who would grab this up in a heartbeat (and have already), aside from the obvious homosexual crowd. Ah.... politics, how I loathe thee.....

 

[cantata]

Hello, He-Who-Makes-Thousand-Entrances. What brings you this fine day to this thread?
But seriously. You could be a little less... well, of a jerk, really.
I'm gonna let this one slide.
*takes mouse off of "Report" button*
And he wasn't really defining the word. He was merely saying that the word was unrelated to him. He's straight, who cares what anyone else thinks?

Wasn't he talking to me?

And is it any of your business to report things you regard as insults against other people?

 

[Futuwwa]

The only consequence here is people thinking you are gay. Hardly draconian. As a straight man, I honestly could not care less if someone thought I was gay. I'd probably just think they must think I have good dress sense or something.

Not only thinking you are gay, but a sorry insecure case of self-denial too. Hardly a perception which gives you much respect or credibility. Whether there is a statistical correlation between latent homosexuality and homophobia is irrelevant - promoting the view and using it as a supposed argument in debates on homosexuality is still ad hominem rhetorics of the worst kind.

 

[JadeTigress]

I know I get turned on watching two men go at it.

So if people bashing gay guys are gay themselves, does that mean that those of us who enjoy it aren't gay?

Either way, I'm not gay, nor am I a man. So I guess it doesn't really matter.

 

[BigBadWlf]

Not only thinking you are gay, but a sorry insecure case of self-denial too. Hardly a perception which gives you much respect or credibility. Whether there is a statistical correlation between latent homosexuality and homophobia is irrelevant - promoting the view and using it as a supposed argument in debates on homosexuality is still ad hominem rhetorics of the worst kind.

Lets see. I oppose anti-gay hatred…you must think I am gay too.


Hmmm


I also oppose racism…so I must be black…right?

 

[cantata]

Lets see. I oppose anti-gay hatred…you must think I am gay too.


Hmmm


I also oppose racism…so I must be black…right?

Did you actually read the post he was responding to? He didn't say anything at all like this.

 

[stan1980]

Not only thinking you are gay, but a sorry insecure case of self-denial too. Hardly a perception which gives you much respect or credibility. Whether there is a statistical correlation between latent homosexuality and homophobia is irrelevant - promoting the view and using it as a supposed argument in debates on homosexuality is still ad hominem rhetorics of the worst kind.

Well if you want to be a bigot, with no rational reasons to back up your views, you are going to have to face the fact that people are going to speculate on your motives. If you don't like it, tough luck... freedom of speech works both ways remember.

If you're going to sling mud you might get dirty, and to be honest, I have no sympathy for the homophobes whatsoever.

 

[Futuwwa]

Well if you want to be a bigot, with no rational reasons to back up your views, you are going to have to face the fact that people are going to speculate on your motives. If you don't like it, tough luck... freedom of speech works both ways remember.

Of course, people should be accountable for what they say. For what they say, and that only. Not for other unrelated things. Someone who supports increased military spending should be accountable for his support of increased military spending, not for being a neo-fascist, an imperialist or anything else he gets branded as as a result. Do you see the difference?

If you're going to sling mud you might get dirty, and to be honest, I have no sympathy for the homophobes whatsoever.

What happened to "I don't agree with what you say, but will fight for your right to say it"?

 

[stan1980]

Of course, people should be accountable for what they say. For what they say, and that only. Not for other unrelated things. Someone who supports increased military spending should be accountable for his support of increased military spending, not for being a neo-fascist, an imperialist or anything else he gets branded as as a result. Do you see the difference?



What happened to "I don't agree with what you say, but will fight for your right to say it"?

To be honest, I don't care. Homophobes are always irrational and coming out with nonsense, now they get a bit of mud thrown back at them and they don't like it. Tough luck.

This isn't really going anywhere so I'll leave it there.

 

[Futuwwa]

Irrational? How can a moral statement be rational or irrational?

 

[stan1980]

Irrational? How can a moral statement be rational or irrational?

Their reasons for condemning or fearing homosexuals are always irrational imo. There is no rational reason I can think of to condemn or fear gays. You may disagree, but I can't be bothered to get into this again so this conversation ends here on my part.

 

[Futuwwa]

Well, unless you believe in absolute morality, moral stances are matters of opinion, not reason. Care to elaborate on how any moral statement can be rational or irrational? Pick any example you like.

 

[cantata]

Well, unless you believe in absolute morality, moral stances are matters of opinion, not reason. Care to elaborate on how any moral statement can be rational or irrational? Pick any example you like.

When arguments and truth claims are made in support of those stances, that's when the irrationality creeps in.

 

[quatona]

Well, unless you believe in absolute morality, moral stances are matters of opinion, not reason.

Whatever. In case people reason for their opinion, I will scrutinize these reasons in terms of rationality. If people argue in a form that operates with means of logic (indicated by the use of "because", e.g.) I will investigate the logical plausibility.

Care to elaborate on how any moral statement can be rational or irrational?

He didn´t say that. He said that the reasoning in favour of a moral opinion can be rational or irrational.
I thing the disagreement is not between you and stan, but between you and those who try to rationalize their disapproval of homosexuality.

 

[stan1980]

^^^^^ what they said

He didn´t say that.

Especially that part.

 

[TheManeki]

I'm glad to see some actual specific criticisms of the journal article, and not just vague "I don't agree with this" comments. Thanks for your participation, wpa!

Here are my thoughts:

1. "Study" commissioned by homosexual activist "scientists". (Henry Adams is a known homosexual activist.)

Interesting. Can you provide some information about the activism of Henry Adams? I could be wrong, but scientists tend to research areas that interest them, and this could be the case here, and nothing more.

Activist or not, the great thing about science is that the data can be scrutinized independently. If you would like to go through it with me in a follow-up post, I'm more than willing.

2. The "study" relied upon self-reporting surveys which were supposed to identify an ambiguous term (homophobia).

I can see a problem with self-reporting surveys where the survey-taker may lie, giving inaccurate responses. I'm sure there are some statistical methods for dealing with this, although I don't know if they were used in this survey. If there was lying, however, wouldn't you expect that there would be some anomalies in the results? Instead, there was a very strong statistical correlation.

3. Extremely small sample size (64) consisting entirely of volunteers from a non-representative cross section of society. (Young male college students from one University, and one department research pool within that University.)

How large would you have preferred? What's wrong with using volunteers?

For the statistical analyses used in the paper -- ANOVA and the Student's t test, both of which are common tools -- there is little improvement in accuracy gained from increasing the sample size from 64 to several hundred subjects. A glimpse at my statistics book shows that for a 95% confidence level, the t-constant for 60 subjects is 2.000 and the t-constant for an infinite number of subjects is 1.960. That's an increase in accuracy of only about 1%. For a 99% confidence level, the constants are 2.660 and 2.576, respectively -- a whopping 3% increase in accuracy. So 64 subjects -- not to mention the smaller groupings of 29 and 35 subjects -- are enough to draw meaningful conclusions.

What makes you think this is not a representative cross-section? At college one encounters people from a diverse number of backgrounds, and possibly moreso than in other places. And we're talking about the University of Georgia here, a public school, not some artsy-fartsy liberal private school full of rich kids.

Also, just because it says the subjects came from the "Psychology Department Research Subject Pool" doesn't mean they were all psych majors. Many majors require an intro to psych class, and many more college advisers recommend taking one anyway. Mine sure did. The subject pool then is from a diverse group of majors who happened to be taking psych classes when this study was recruiting subjects.

The main limiting factor here is age, with the subjects' age ranging from 18-31. And this is still a fairly wide range.

4. Volunteers were only self-identified as heterosexual.

See my response to #2.

5. Only caucasian males were sampled.

This reduces the variability among subjects. The downside is that the results may be less applicable to non-caucasians, but there is now less uncertainty about the results when applied to caucasians.

6. Volunteers were granted partial academic credit for participation.

What is wrong with this? When I took psych 101, it was common as part of the class requirements to have to participate in a study. You could pick which study to participate in, and there were plenty to choose from. More importantly, the students received partial credit for participating, not for giving a particular response.

7. No real control group.

What kind of control group would you have set up for this kind of test? Sure, you could have another nonhomophobic group and another homophobic group, expose them to no sexual stimulus, monitore their reaction, and then use it as a baseline. But the scientists here actually did something more accurate -- instead of using a control group's average baseline, they measured the reaction of each person before any stimulus was present to get a baseline. This allows for less uncertainty than comparing each person to a control group's average baseline.

8. Reliance in part upon a debunked scale to measure "homophobia". (Kinsey Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale.)

The Kinsey test was not used to measure homophobia. The Index of Homophobia test was used to measure homophobia.

9. Laughable questionnaire with no real scientific basis for each question asked. (You can take the test yourself here: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/etc/quiz.html).

The link doesn't work. Please fix it so we can discuss this point.

10. A penile plethysmograph is about as reliable a scientific instrument as an EMF detector is for hunting ghosts. (http://skepdic.com/penilep.html)

I read the webpage, and it didn't question how accurately a penile plethysmograph measures changes in penis size. It did question the usage of penis measurements to measure arousal in different cases. However, the statistics in Adams' paper shows that in this particular case there is a strong correlation in homophobes between homosexual stimuli and an increase in penile size. Adams does not conclude that this is solely because the homophobes are actually homosexual; he simply presents this hypothesis along with an alternative -- that the homosexual scenes induce anxiety in the homophobes, and this anxiety results in an increase in penile size. He adds that additional research would be needed to distinguish between an anxiety response and an erotic response.

I am looking forward to your comments on this post. Here's hoping we can discuss the science further.

 

[Futuwwa]

Well, of course, one's reasoning for holding a particular opinion can be flawed. But the opinion itself isn't. So there, one can be homophobic for irrational reasons. But if one consider homosexuality wrong in itself, rather than because of some stated reasons, how could one argue against that?

 

[cantata]

Firstly, the link to the test: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/etc/quiz.html (you just needed to delete the bracket at the end).

Secondly, of course the participants were self-identified as straight - the whole point of the study was to investigate whether purportedly straight homophobic people were aroused by gay pornography. So arguably it was at least partially a study to test whether people who claim most vehemently to be heterosexual might have some homosexual tendencies. What they claimed to be was profoundly important. If they tested the individuals in some other way for homosexuality, it would make the study completely pointless.