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In
June 2006, Focus on the Family grossly distorted a study
by this Canadian researcher that showed teenage lesbians
had a higher rate of suicide attempts. Unconscionably,
Melissa Fryrear, a spokesperson for Focus on the Family,
blamed gay activists for causing the deaths, saying that
teaching self-acceptance caused the young women to be
suicidal.
"Regrettably,
they think they have to embrace homosexuality because
pro-gay advocates told them that they were born gay,"
said Fryrear.
This
interpretation of the data "baffled" Dr. Saewyc
who conducted the study.
"Nothing
in the brief results we presented or in our overall study
could lead to such conclusions," she said after Truth
Wins Out contacted her and showed her how Focus on the
Family portrayed her study results. "Population surveys
cannot determine cause and effect, they can only suggest
possible links. Even so, other researchers have not found
these sorts of links, and neither have we."
The
Canadian
Press, a wire service, interviewed Sawwyc and she
expressed further alarm on how her scholarly work had
suddenly ended up as culture war fodder.
"The
research has been hijacked for somebody's political purposes
or ideological purposes and that's worrisome."
This
is not the first time right wing groups have mangled research
on gay youth. In May 1998, Dr. Robert Garofalo published
a study in Pediatrics showing that self-identified gay
high school students are more likely to engage in a variety
of "risk behaviors" than other students are.
In
a survey of 4,159 Massachusetts high school students,
the researcher found 104 students who said they were gay,
lesbian or bisexual. The gay youths were 2-3 or even more
times more likely than other students to smoke pot, use
alcohol, use cocaine, inject drugs, be threatened with
a weapon, miss school out of fear or attempt suicide.
On
July 14, a group of religious right and "ex-gay"
groups, led by Focus on the Family's political arm, The
Family Research Council, placed an advertisement in the
Washington Post citing Garofalo's research as proof that
gay life is self-destructive.
"Studies
also show a high degree of destructive behavior among
homosexuals, including alcohol, drug abuse, and emotional
or physical violence," said the ad, "it's not
lack of acceptance... it's... the visible response to
a broken heart."
"It's
a complete misrepresentation of what the research actually
says," Garofalo said in an Aug. 4 interview with
the Boston Globe. "It comes to the completely opposite
conclusion of what the paper concluded." Garofalo
told the Globe that the youths' behavior was actually
a result of the alienation that gay teenagers face "in
a culture that is often unaccepting." In other words,
the cultural climate created by these anti-gay groups
is directly responsible for harming GLBT youth.
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