"You shouldn't have done it. It ruined our lives!" cried a boy from the back of an Ohio courtroom as he confronted the man who sexually molested him. The perpetrator, a former Boy Scout leader, had just pleaded guilty to rape and sexual battery. As yet another example of the cycle of sexual abuse, the pedophile claimed that he too had been sexually molested as a child.[1]

Dave, another victim of sexual molestation by a Boy Scout leader, was reduced to living on the streets when his sexual tormenter was finally arrested. Dave had been eating out of garbage cans, running afoul of the law, and trying to numb the terrible memories with alcohol and drugs. His life fell apart one day as a seven-year-old boy dressed in a Cub Scout uniform, when the Scout leader began the sexual molestation. Now sixteen, Dave is still on a path of self-destruction, and there is seemingly little his heartbroken mother can do.[2]

Horrific stories about the victims of child sexual abuse serve as a lucid reminder that pedophilia is not merely an academic issue to be debated by scholars, but a crime that destroys young lives. In the Family Research Council's Insight paper, "Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse," we demonstrated how the allies of the pedophile movement within the scholarly community were attempting to justify men using boys to fulfill their unnatural sexual compulsions.

Despite efforts by homosexual activists to distance the gay lifestyle from pedophilia, there remains a disturbing connection between the two. While many homosexuals may not seek young sexual partners, the evidence indicates that disproportionate numbers of gay men seek adolescent males or boys as sexual partners. The linkage of homosexuality and pedophilia is explained in the following.

Almost all Pedophiles are Males

An essay on adult sex offenders in the book Sexual Offending Against Children reported: "It is widely believed that the vast majority of sexual abuse is perpetrated by males. Indeed, with 3,000 adult male sex offenders in prison in England and Wales at any one time, the corresponding figure for female sex offenders is 12!"[3] This finding was echoed in a report by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, which stated: "In both clinical and non-clinical samples, the vast majority of offenders are male."[4]

A Significant Percentage of Pedophile Victims are Boys

According to the Journal of Child Psychiatry, "contemporary studies now indicate that the ratio of girls to boys abused has narrowed remarkably. . . . The majority of community studies suggest a . . . ratio . . . in the order of 2 to 4 girls to 1 boy."[5] Indeed, the same study reports that there is likely "under-reporting of the incidence and prevalence of sexual abuse in boys."[6]

Only a Small Percentage of the Population are Homosexuals

Relying upon three large data sets--the General Social Survey, the National Health and Social Life Survey, and the U.S. Census--a recent study in Demography reported that only 4.7 percent of men and 3.6 percent of women in the United States had had even one same-sex sexual experience since age eighteen, and only 3.1 percent of men and 1.8 percent of women had had more same-sex than opposite-sex partners.[7] Even lower figures were reported in a study of the sexual behavior of men in the United States based on the National Survey of Men (a nationally representative sample comprised of 3,321 men aged twenty to thirty-nine, published in Family Planning Perspectives). The study found that "2 percent of sexually active men aged twenty to thirty-nine . . . had had any same-gender sexual activity during the last ten years."[8]

Homosexual Pedophiles are Overrepresented in Child Sex Abuse Cases

Homosexual pedophiles sexually molest children at a far greater rate compared to the percentage of homosexuals in the general population. A study of 457 male sex offenders against children in Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy found that "approximately one-third of these sexual offenders directed their sexual activity against males."[9] The author of the same study noted in a later article in the Journal of Sex Research: "Interestingly, this ratio differs substantially from the ratio of gynephiles (men who erotically prefer physically mature females) to androphiles (men who erotically prefer physically mature males), which is at least 20 to 1."[10]

In other words, although heterosexuals outnumber homosexuals by a ratio of at least 20 to 1, homosexual pedophiles commit about one-third of the total number of child sex offenses.

Similarly, the Archives of Sexual Behavior also noted that homosexual pedophiles are significantly overrepresented in child sex offence cases: "The best epidemiological evidence indicates that only 2 to 4 percent of men attracted to adults prefer men; . . . in contrast, around 25 to 40 percent of men attracted to children prefer boys. Thus, the rate of homosexual attraction is 6 to 20 times higher among pedophiles."[11]

Are Men Who Molest Boys Really 'Homosexuals'?

These three facts (that most molesters are men; relatively few men have engaged in same-sex sexual relations; yet about a third of child sex abuse cases involve men molesting boys) would seem to point inevitably to the conclusion that homosexual men, in proportion to their numbers, are far more likely than heterosexuals to be child molesters. So how do homosexual activists avoid this obvious, logical conclusion? Only by asserting that men who molest boys are not "homosexuals."

There is a three-fold aspect to this implausible claim. First, the defenders assert that "homosexuality" should be defined as an attraction to adults of the same sex, and that those who experience such attractions are not attracted to children.

Research, however, does not support such a sharp distinction. A study in Archives of Sexual Behavior, for example, found that homosexual men are attracted to young males. The study compared the sexual age preferences of heterosexual men, heterosexual women, homosexual men, and lesbians. The results showed that, in marked contrast to the other three categories, "all but 9 of the 48 homosexual men preferred the youngest two male age categories," which included males as young as age fifteen.[12]

Likewise, in The Gay Report, by homosexual researchers Karla Jay and Allen Young, the authors report data showing that 73 percent of homosexuals surveyed had at some time had sex with boys sixteen to nineteen years of age or younger" [emphasis added].[13]

The defenders of homosexuality also argue, on the other hand, that men who molest boys are generally not sexually attracted to adult males, and therefore should not be considered "homosexuals."

Again, however, the research does not bear out such a claim. A study of sex offenders against male children in Behavior Research and Therapy found that male homosexual pedophiles are sexually attracted to "males of all ages." Compared to non-offenders, the offenders showed "greater arousal" to slides of nude males as old as twenty-four: "As a group, the child molesters responsed [sic] with moderate sexual arousal . . . to the nude males of all ages."[14] Similarly, a study of Canadians imprisoned for pedophilia in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence noted that some of the adult male offenders also engaged in homosexual acts with adult males.[15]

Many pedophiles, in fact, consider themselves to be homosexual. A study of 229 convicted child molesters in Archives of Sexual Behavior found that "eighty-six percent of offenders against males described themselves as homosexual or bisexual."[16]

Finally, pro-homosexual activists contend that a man who molests boys but also has sexual relations with adult women--perhaps even marrying and having children--cannot be considered a homosexual. This, however, overlooks the fact that pedophiles exhibit a wide variety of sexual attractions and behavior--often to draw attention away from their primary lust for boys. A study on sex offenders in the International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology notes that "the reason child sexual abusers are successful at remaining undetected is because they do not fit a stereotype."[17]

The fact that "homosexuality" and "pedophilia" are overlapping categories, rather than mutually exclusive ones as homosexual activists argue, is demonstrated by the fact that the very term "homosexual pedophile" is common in the academic literature, having first been used in the early 20th century by the Viennese psychiatrist Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing, who pioneered the systematic study of sexual deviance.[18]

Pedophilia in Gay Culture

David Thorstad, homosexual activist and historian of the gay rights movement, argues that there is a natural and undeniable connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. Thorstad writes:"Boy-lovers were involved in the gay movement from the beginning, and their presence was tolerated."[19] The inaugural issue of the Gay Community News in 1979 published a "Statement to the Gay Liberation Movement on the Issue of Man/Boy Love," which argued that "the ultimate goal of gay liberation is the achievement of sexual freedom for all--not just equal rights for 'lesbian and gay men,' but also freedom of sexual expression for young people and children."

Thorstad cites Jim Kepner, then curator of the International Gay and Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles:

In 1985 the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which openly advocates "adult-child sex," was admitted as a member in New York's council of Lesbian and Gay Organizations as well as the International Gay Association--now the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA). In the mid-1990's ILGA's association with NAMBLA and other pedophile groups cost the organization it's status as a Non-Governmental Organization in the United Nations.[21]

Pedophile Themes Abound in Gay Literature

The late "beat" poet Allen Ginsberg illustrates the seamless connection between homosexuality and pedophilia. Biographer Raymond-Jean Frontain has written about Ginsberg's "involvement with the controversial North American Man/Boy Love Association" and "the pattern of references to anal intercourse and to pederasty that emerged" from a reading of his works.[22]

Ginsberg was one of the first of a growing number of homosexual writers who cater to the fascination with pedophilia in the gay community. Mary Eberstadt, writing in the Weekly Standard, has documented how the taboo against sex with children continues to erode.[23] Revealingly, the examples she provides of pedophilia in current literature come from gay fiction.

Eberstadt cites the Village Voice, which states that "Gay fiction is rich with idyllic accounts of 'intergenerational relationships,' as such affairs are respectfully called these days."[24] She lists numerous examples of pedophilia-themed gay fiction that appear in "mainstream" homosexual anthologies. The Gay Canon: Great Books Every Gay Man Should Read features novels containing scenes of man-boy sex. One such book features a protagonist who is "a pedophile's dream: the mind of a man in the body of a boy."[25] Yet another anthology of homosexual fiction, A History of Gay Literature: The Male Tradition, published by Yale University Press, includes "a longish chapter on 'Boys and Boyhood' which is a seemingly definitive account of pro-pedophile literary works."[26]

A significant percentage of books that have appeared on the Gay Men's Press fiction bestseller list contain pedophilia themes. Titles include Some Boys, described as a "memoir of a lover of boys" that "evokes the author's young friends across four decades"[27]; For a Lost Soldier: the story of a sexual relationship between a soldier and an eleven-year-old boy[28]; and A Good Start, Considering: yet another story about an eleven-year-old boy (!) who suffers sexual abuse but is rescued by a teenager who "offers him love and affection."[29] One book published by the nation's largest gay publisher, Alyson Publications, is called The Age Taboo, and claims:"Boy-lovers . . . are not child molesters. The child abusers are . . . parents who force their staid morality onto the young people in their custody."[30]

Some homosexual commentators have candidly admitted that an inordinate fascination with pedophilia exists within the gay community. Lesbian columnist Paula Martinac, writing in the homosexual newspaper Washington Blade, states:

Martinac adds that:

The Consequences of Homosexual Child Abuse

Perhaps the most tragic aspect of the homosexual-pedophile connection is the fact that men who sexually molest boys all too often lead their victims into homosexuality and pedophilia. The evidence indicates that a high percentage of homosexuals and pedophiles were themselves sexually abused as children. The Archives of Sexual Behavior reports:

Another study of 279 homosexual/bisexual men with AIDS in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported: "More than half of both case and control patients reported a sexual act with a male by age 16 years, approximately 20 percent by age 10 years."[34]

Noted child sex abuse expert David Finkelhor found that:

The circle of abuse is the tragic legacy of the attempts by homosexuals to legitimize having sex with boys. For too many boys it is already too late to protect them from those who took advantage of their need for love and attention. All too many later perpetuate the abuse by themselves engaging in the sexual abuse of boys. Only by exposing the lies, insincere denials, and deceptions--including those wrapped in scholastic garb--of those who prey sexually on children, can we hope to build a wall of protection around the helpless children among us.