There are some FAQ’s on the Exodus International website that are written with a reasoned approach and present their case without resorting to histrionics and wild assertions. Exodus does have some participants who are logical and they seem to be called upon to answer questions about church life and witness. But when Exodus addresses a social question and wants an answer that is bat-poop crazy, they know they can call on Nancy Brown.

So it’s no surprise that Nancy was called on to answer the question

Is there a connection between life expectancy and homosexuality?

What health issues are involved with homosexuality?

I don’t think anyone will be surprised to find that Nancy has opinions on this subject and that none of them are hindered by the constraints of factuality or honesty. There are no flights of fancy too whimsical or “statistic” too ludicrous to be repeated by Nancy.

There are a significant number of health issues connected with homosexuality. Consider the following health statistics:

Alrighty, let’s consider them. To make analysis easy and fun, we’ll group her claims by her basis for support.

First we’ll look at the claims for which Nancy provides no support other than her own bile:

74% of AIDS cases originated with homosexual contact

23.1% of male homosexuals, 39% of female homosexuals are raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked by a cohabitating partner at some time in their lives

What can you say when someone doesn’t even pretend to know what they claim? I suppose I could claim that Nancy Brown kicks her dog on 74% of Tuesdays and burns dinner 23.1% of the time. Who knows if it’s true?

But as for 74% of AIDS cases origination with homosexual contact, from a global perspective this is ridiculous, irresponsible, and callous. The National Institutes of Health (a far more reputable source than nothing at all) says this:

Worldwide, more than 90 percent of all adolescent and adult HIV infections have resulted from heterosexual intercourse.

Nancy doesn’t tell us where she heard the quote about rape and assault, but fortunately we already know. This is the National Violence Against Women Survey and she borrowed it from Focus on the Family. Now here’s where anti-gay activists play with numbers (follow along, it will amuse you, I promise).

The numbers Nancy quotes look like its woman-on-woman and man-on-man violence. It’s actually a combination of all the violence they’ve experienced in relationships from either sex. As Jim Burroway brilliantly illustrates on his site, when you break these out and look at the raw data,

Same-sex cohabiting women were nearly three times more likely to report being victimized by a male partner than a female partner

[and]

gay men are safer around their same-sex partners than straight women are around their husbands or opposite-sex partner.

Nancy’s next batch of “wacky fun facts for demonizing gay folks” come from E. Fields from Marietta, GA. and his article, “Is Homosexual Activity Normal?”

Homosexuals are 100 times more likely to be killed by partner abuse than heterosexuals

The median age of death of a Lesbian is 45

The median age of death of a homosexual man without AIDS is 42, with AIDS is 39

We aren’t provided a link to Mr. Fields’ fine tract and I don’t seem to find it online anywhere so we can’t mock Linda’s reliance on it directly. However, the following question was raised on another website about this particular source

So who is Dr. E. Fields of Marietta? I hope he’s not, but expect he is, the same individual described in a report by the Center for Democratic Renewal, an Atlanta-based hate-group watchdog organization: “The Truth At Last, handed out by various KKK factions, Populist Party, and neo-Nazi groups, is published by Marietta’s Ed Fields. Fields was co-founder of the America First Party, a white supremacist political party.”

In general, when seeking credibility for your screeds against a minority of the population, it’s best not to link up too closely with white supremacists, Nancy. Rational people tend to think that your opinions are like theirs, lies used to justify hatred and inhumanity. The next thing you know, you’ll be justifying slavery. Just out of curiosity, Nancy, do you subscribe to Dr. Fields’ Jew Watch?

But these claims aren’t really unfamiliar to us and they don’t originate with the racist Mr. Fields. These are claims made by the discredited and dishonest Paul Cameron. Nancy has wisely tried to deflect any association with Cameron because he is well known, even in conservative circles, to be a propagandist and unethical. Exodus loves to quote Cameron but only when they can pretend that he isn’t the source.

Oh, and in case you haven’t guessed, the claims are not true.

Now let’s look at the claims for which Nancy provides a source

25-33% of homosexual men and women are alcoholics

Nancy’s source here is R. Kus, “Alcoholics Anonymous and Gay America,” Medical Journal of Homosexuality, 14(2) (1987), p. 254. Now that really sounds credible, doesn’t it; it’s all right there in the “Medical Journal of Homosexuality”.

Wait. What “Medical Journal of Homosexuality”?

Surely if this prestigious journal existed there would be some reference to it on the internet. Yet this authoritative sounding source has contributed only one “discovery” to the billions of contributions available on the world wide web: this rather spurious claim about gay Americans and Alcoholics Anonymous which is repeated blindly on anti-gay activism sites. Also, oddly enough, the Library of Congress hasn’t heard of the Medical Journal of Homosexuality either.

Now I can’t claim that this journal never existed, but I’ll believe it when I see it. (or when our very knowledgeable readers correct me).

More likely, this is a misquote of a refernce in the Journal of Homosexuality (which does exist) about an AA meeting in which the following phrase is used “alcoholism is believed to be the number one health problem among both male and female homosexuals, afflicting between 20-33% of this population”. The support for this reference? Three first-person articles written by recovering gay alcoholics in the 70’s.

Yep, the 70’s. It will take us some time to find these articles and determine if the wide range of “20 to 33%” is based on anything more than a wild guess. But I can guarantee you that Nancy hasn’t read them.

Let’s move on to the next really stupid thing that Nancy (and Exodus) have for us

50% of Suicide victims are homosexual

This time Nancy’s source is a newspaper (one that actually exists outside her fevered imagination): Kaifetz, J. “Homosexual Rights Are Concern for Some”. Post-Tribune, 18, December 1992.

WOW!! If it was in the newspaper it must be true. Right?

Well who is this “J. Kaifetz”?

Jerry Kaifetz is a businessman who has owned an operated a chemical company near Chicago since 1986. He has developed over 24 industrial cleaning products that are manufactured in Chicago and sold nationwide. He has two degrees in Pastoral Theology and a Ph.D. in Philosophy in Religion.

[snip]

Dr. Kaifetz has published numerous articles over the years and has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Chicago Sun Times, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, Fox, The Associated Press, NBC, CBS, and ABC affiliates in Chicago. He has also been a columnist for The Times and the Post Tribune in Northwest Indiana. He is a past recipient of The Sword of the Lord Award for Evangelism.

So Kaifetz is a religious commentator. And his qualifications to discuss suicide statistics? Zilch (unless maybe someone used a cleaning product).

It’s really unethical to claim an anti-gay columnist’s guesses as factual, Nancy. That’s bad even by Exodus standards.

78% of homosexuals have one or more STD

Nancy’s source? Enrique Rueda, “The Homosexual Network: Private Lives and Public Policy,” (Old Greenwich, CT: The Devin Adair Company, 1982), 53.

Father Rueda was a Catholic priest who railed against the Church’s dawning acceptance of gay persons into the fabric of spiritual life. I’ve not read the book but I have my doubts as to whether Father Rueda was a good source on STD rates. Not even 24 years ago.

Perhaps Nancy was more confused than usual and didn’t intend to footnote this claim with Rueda’s book. It sounds very similar to a Paul Cameron claim. Or perhaps she thought no one would really notice – and if you’re using bogus “statistics” does it really matter where they came from? It’s all about throwing footnotes on a page to appear credible when spouting hateful mistruths.

Nancy ends her document of deception with a list of diseases gay people can get. While it’s a nice scare tactic, none of them is specific solely to gay people. She might as well have included halitosis and West Nile Virus while she was at it.

But in a classic move of making a claim that simply is not true – not kinda true, not for-all-practical-purposes true, not yeah-but true – Nancy lashes out at gay men and women with this accusation

The sexual activities engaged in by homosexuals inevitably lead to a whole range of viral and bacterial infections that can result in sterility, cancer and death [emphasis added]

I can see little reason to lie in such a way unless you are motivated by hatred and bitterness. And, though it’s only speculation, I can guess the basis for that hatred and bitterness.

Using Paul Cameron, fake journals, and white supremacists. Really classy, Nancy, you should be proud.

Jim Burroway contributed significantly to this article

Categorized in:

Tagged in: