Alternative Thoughts: L/G/B/T, kink, poly issues

April 23, 2010
REALLY?  WE'RE STILL DISCUSSING THIS? by Margie Nichols
Our colleague James Cantor, Ph.D., published a CNN article article showing physiological evidence that gay men are not pedophiles.  He pointed to differences in brain structure, and differences in "phallometric" response (that's right, a 'peter meter').  Gay men's brains look like those of straight men; both differ from the pedophiles brain in some distinct ways.  And straight and gay men alike have very little phallometric response to images of children, in contrast with child molesters.  Cantor wrote this article at the request of CNN and of course because the Catholic Church is trying to blame gays for the horrible child abuse perpetrated by it's priests.

   But what saddens me about this is that we still have to refute such claims.  Images of sleazy men in raincoats lurking around school yards were what came to mind when you thought about homosexuality - in the 50's.   Sixty years later, we have science to argue against this belief, not just Cantor's research but a ton of research documenting very clearly that are pedophiles aren't gay and vice versa.  I'm glad we have a mountain of  research.  I'm sorry we still need it.