Racism on You Tube revisited

Last week, I posted briefly on the racist videos on YouTube and was glad to see that one racist’s account (johnsmithxp1) was suspended. However, johnsmithxp1 is now back as johnsmithxp2 with most of the same videos. Conspicuously missing is the video that sparked interest in the site in the first place — the clips of It’s Elementary (posted now at MassResistance).

For several days now, I have been reporting several videos (for examples, this and this) as hate speech with no change that I can see. If anyone reading this knows a better way to register protests at You Tube over this matter, let me know.

Values Focused Counseling: Sexual Identity Therapy illustrated

In January 2005, I interviewed David Akinsanya, then of the BBC, for a documentary called Sad to be Gay. The BBC special aired without this footage due to some technical issues and time constraints. Through the permission of David and the BBC, I have been granted permission to use the interview for educational purposes. This segment is at the beginning of the interview and demonstrates an application of the sexual identity therapy framework that Mark Yarhouse and I were beginning to develop at that time. As time permits, I plan to post additional segments of the interviews.

Only the gay die young? Part 6 – Exodus International statement

Apropos to the recent series of posts examining the recent report from Paul and Kirk Cameron on life expectancy is this action from Exodus International. Up to earlier today, Exodus had a page titled “Is there a connection between life expectancy and homosexuality?” with various assertions about the health status of homosexuals as a group. One point claimed a very short life expectancy for homosexuals (in the 40s). Now when you access that page, you see this message:

This article has been removed due to the inaccuracies surrounding the research of Paul Cameron.

Alan Chambers made a statement on ExgayWatch about this action.

I have also learned from the British Medical Journal that, in contrast to his statement in recent news releases, he is not considered a reviewer by that journal.

Racism on You Tube; It’s Elementary clips pulled in copyright claim

I received an email from Stephen Bennett yesterday alerting his mailing list to videos demonstrating schools and teachers teaching about homosexuality. These were clips of It’s Elementary, by Woman’s Educational Media. I figured that these clips would be gone quickly with focus placed on them and I was correct. They are now gone.

This not the main event as far as I am concerned. What shocked me was the other videos posted by the person or group who posted the It’s Elementary clips. Going by johnsmithxp1, this person has posted some horrid videos celebrating white supremacy. You Tube has a feature that allows users to report offensive videos. Anyone up for using it?

Just hours after I posted this, I saw an article about this on the Southern Poverty Law Center. Brentin Mock was way ahead of me.

UPDATE – 4/26/07 – The video I linked to above has now been removed due to violation of YouTube’s terms of use and the entire account of johnsmithxp1 has been suspended by You Tube. Now let’s go after this one…

Only the gay die young? Part 5 – Morten Frisch responds to Kirk Cameron

Just after I posted my evaluation of Drs. Cameron’s gay life expectancy report, I received the following email from Morten Frisch which is a reply to Kirk Cameron’s letter in rebuttal to Dr. Frisch.

Dear Dr. Throckmorton,

As sadly anticipated, Drs. Paul and Kirk Cameron were not objective when writing their report ’Federal Distortion of Homosexual Footprint (Ignoring Early Gay Death?)’ (1). The mission statement of their professional affiliation, the Family Research Institute, concludes as follows: ”We welcome all who would join in the fight to restore a world…where homosexuality is not taught and accepted, but instead is discouraged and rejected at every level.” As a consequence, any report on human sexuality originating from this institution will by definition be devoid of objectivity and of questionable scientific value.

As a statistical researcher, Dr. Kirk Cameron must know well the inferential problems that prevail when comparing the average age at death in two study groups with vastly different age distributions. Elementary textbooks in epidemiology warn against such undue comparisons because they lead to apparently common-sense, but overtly wrong, conclusions (2). Assume for the purpose of illustration that Cameron and Cameron had restricted their study to all newly-married and all newly-partnered people in Denmark during the study window 1990-2002 (Norway 1997-2002) with the aim to make the studied groups of homosexuals and heterosexuals more comparable. In Danish men, the median age at first homosexual partnership was 4 years higher (32.6 years) than the median age at first heterosexual marriage (28.6 years) in the period 1989-2001 and, in women, the difference was about 6 years, being 32.6 years for first homosexual partnership vs. 26.5 years for first heterosexual marriage (3). Among those relatively few newly-married and newly-partnered people who actually died in the short observation period, the average age at death would likely be higher in the homosexually partnered group than in the heterosexually married group, simply because of the older age distribution of the homosexually partnered group. Using the Camerons’ flawed logic of inference such a modification of their study design would lead to the opposite conclusion; i.e., that heterosexual marriages shorten peoples’ life span. Obviously, this conclusion would be as unsubstantiated as the one reached by the authors.

Working to promote their anti-homosexual agenda, the Camerons presumably have plenty of time and resources to discuss these issues at length. As a researcher continuously fighting hard to obtain the required funding and time for my projects and those of my students I will have to stop here, leave the Camerons with their tragic parody of science, and focus on true scientific questions instead. I have previously published studies in peer-reviewed scientific journals that were warmly applauded by gay advocacy groups (4) as well as studies that made me a persona non grata in the same circles (3). I don’t have an agenda or a political mission for my scientific work, but I certainly have a different starting point than the one expressed in the mission statement of the Family Research Institute. Unlike what Dr. Kirk Cameron believes, I don’t object to the theoretical possibility that homosexual persons may have somewhat shorter life spans than heterosexuals or, for that matter, the other way around. We just don’t have meaningful prospective data available to inform us yet.

Although the Camerons’ report has no objective scientific value, the authors should be acknowledged for providing teachers with a humorous example of agenda-driven, pseudo-scientific gobbledygook that will make lessons in elementary study design and scientific inference much more amusing for future epidemiology students.

Morten Frisch, MD, PhD, DSc(Med)

Senior epidemiologist

Copenhagen, Denmark

References

1. Cameron, P. and Cameron, K. Federal Distortion Of Homosexual Footprint (Ignoring Early Gay Death?). 1-27. 2007. Family Research Institute.

2. Rothman KJ. Introduction to Epidemiologic Thinking. In: Rothman KJ (ed), Epidemiology – An Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, 1-7

3. Frisch M, Hviid A. Childhood family correlates of heterosexual and homosexual marriages: a national cohort study of two million Danes. Arch Sex Behav 2006;35:533-47

4. Frisch M, Smith E, Grulich A, Johansen C. Cancer in a population-based cohort of men and women in registered homosexual partnerships. Am J Epidemiol 2003;157:966-72