Paedophile theory is discredited

IN his letter (May 3), Aidan McGing, in response to my letter (April 19), relies largely on discredited studies or misinterpretation of existing studies in order to support his view that homosexuality and paedophilia are linked.

I would like to counter his argument and defend my previous statement that “there is absolutely no study” which shows a link between the two.

Both the 1988 and the 2000 studies from the Archives of Sexual Behaviour, which McGing cites, did not concern the sexual preference subjects had for adults.

In fact, the authors of the 2000 study make it clear that “ordinary homosexual men are no more likely to molest boys than ordinary heterosexual men are to molest girls”.

Equally, the authors of the 1992 article from the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, which McGing refers to, says there is no indication that “androphilic males” (males attracted to adult males) “have a greater propensity to offend against children than heterosexual males”.

McGing goes on to refer to Alfred Kinsey as a gay activist. This is untrue.

He also makes the sweeping statement that according to Kinsey in 1948, “37% of gay men had sex with children” – implying that 37% of gay men are paedophiles. Kinsey never advocated such a statistic.

Further, the study conducted by Young and Jay in 1979, which McGing also refers to, is highly discredited as being both statistiaclly worthless and methodologically unsound.

However, it is a study frequently used by anti-gay activists despite the authors’ statement on page 10 that they “do not claim to have a scientific or representative sample of lesbians and gay men”.

Anyone who has any doubts on the matter should seek out the extensive body of evidence showing that paedophilia, in fact, is a completely separate thing from homosexuality and indeed from heterosexuality also.

Laura Harmon

LGBT Campaigns/Human Rights Officer

University College Cork