For those of you who are interested, the study,
Sexual arousal patterns of bisexual man, so dear to Pittguy’s heart is not exactly a milestone in the field of human sexuality. The methodology used by Dr. J. Michael Bailey is seriously flawed and he manipulated the data, such as it was, that he gathered.
From Dr. Bailey’s
Wikipedia page:
The study received wide attention after a New York Times piece on the study.
The article and study were criticized by gay and bisexual groups and by FAIR. Critics argued the sample size was relatively small, consisting of one hundred (100) men. Also, all of these subjects were "self-selected", from ads placed in gay and "alternative" publications. Then the researchers had to disregard results of thirty-five percent (35%) of this population, as non-responders.
The National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce (the oldest LGBT rights group in the US) published a critique of the New York Times article,
Straight, Gay, Or Lying?, and Dr. Bailey’s study, which can be read
here (PDF file).
Of particular pertinence to this thread is this statement:
Modern school of thought is that sexual orientation is defined by a combination of cognitive and physical responses, not just by whether one’s genitals respond a certain way to pornography. The overarching theme of the article, however, is to accept the study’s hypothesis that “arousal is orientation.”
That wouldn’t be the first or the last time that the august Dr. Bailey and his work has come under criticism.
But first, a little about Dr. Bailey. He’s a psychology professor who studies male homosexuality. He’s heterosexual, and has two children. I found out about his sexuality in an
interview conducted by a Steve Sailer, who
claimed Dr. Bailey as a friend. Sailer is a columinst for VDare.com, a white supremacist website (VDare.com was recently
in the news as Mint.com, a popular personal finance website, cited content from it). Sailer is also the founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute, a pro-eugenics group.
Dr. Bailey is on HBI’s email discussion list. He
said of his assciociation with the group:
I find some postings on the list fascinating and useful, and others disagreeable for various reasons. I do not need to agree with everything people say in order to associate with them.
Okay. If you say so, Doctor. But wait. What about this
abstract from a paper you wrote with a lawyer?
As we learn more about the causes of sexual orientation, the likelihood increases that parents will one day be able to select the orientation of their children. This possibility (at least that of selecting for heterosexuality) has generated a great deal of concern among supporters of homosexual rights, with such selection being widely condemned as harmful and morally repugnant. Notwithstanding this widespread condemnation, and even assuming, as we do, that homosexuality is entirely acceptable morally, allowing parents, by means morally unproblematic in themselves, to select for heterosexuality would be morally acceptable. This is because allowing parents to select their children's sexual orientation would further parent's freedom to raise the sort of children they wish to raise and because selection for heterosexuality may benefit parents and children and is unlikely to cause significant harm.
Whatever issues Dr. Bailey has with HBI, selective procreation, the central tenet of eugenics, is certainly not one of them.
A couple more gems from the psychology professor.
From
The Man Who Would Be Queen, Dr. Bailey’s
book on transsexualism:
The standard lecture is that sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender role behavior are separate, independent psychological traits; a feminine man is as likely to be straight as gay. But the standard lecture is wrong. It was written with good, but mistaken, intentions: to save gay men from the stigma of femininity. The problem is that most gay men are feminine, or at least they are feminine in certain ways.
From Dr. Bailey’s interview with Steven Sailer, part of Dr. Bailey’s explanation of his interest in studying male homosexuality:
First, I found working with gay people a lot more fun and interesting than working with crazy people.
Yeah, I think I’ll disregard Dr. Bailey and his little study. Dr. Bailey is not some trailblazing iconoclast revolutionizing the field of human sexuality. He is a propagandist who stomps on good, solid, established science and research to advance his dangerously skewed views on homosexuality.