[Church_of_Christ] Re: Today a law that permits Gay marriage, tomorrow what?

Where are we headed, will congress institute laws in the future to do away with sexual abuse towards minors from adults?

Everything you wanted to know about

The Rind Controversy http://www.mhamic.org/rind/

What happened


The controversy centered around the study "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples," published in the APA's Psychological Bulletin in 1998 (Vol. 124, No. 1, pp. 22-53). The authors were Bruce Rind of the Department of Psychology at Temple University, Philip Tromovich of the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, and Robert Bauserman of the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan. The study was a review of 59 studies of college students assessing the effects of childhood and adolescent sexual experiences with adults. During the peer review process (in which the APA reviewers critique the article and suggest or require changes before publication), the action editor asked Rind and his colleagues to discuss the implications of the studies' findings that willing minors often experienced such activity as neutral or positive, and evidence of psychological harm often could not be found. As a result of this request, the authors wrote in their article that using definitions of "abuse" and "consent" based on legal or moral rather than scientific considerations resulted in poor predictive validity, and impeded an understanding of the phenomenon and its effects. Thus they recommended that more neutral terminology ("adult-minor sex" rather than "abuse") be used for interaction experienced positively and resulting in no sign of harm—a recommendation for which Rind et al. would later be attacked by politicians and professionals.

In the summer of 1999, the article was discovered by the National Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality (NARTH), a conservative organization that believes homosexuality is a disorder that can be cured. NARTH condemned the study in an article on its website. As a result, two conservative Christian publications discovered and also condemned the study, and it eventually came to the attention of syndicated radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger. Schlessinger, who considers homosexuality to be "unnatural", publicized the study on her radio show and website, referring to it as "junk science." Along with NARTH and the Family Research Council (a conservative lobbying group), she put political pressure on Congress to condemn the study.

Under threat of being censured itself by Congress, the APA publicly responded to the controversy by distancing itself from the study in a statement which said that some of the authors' conclusions were "inconsistent with the positions of the APA." However, an internal memo indicated that the APA had earlier supported the article, saying its findings were "consistent with, and, in fact, based on, the 59 previous studies." It agreed with Rind and colleagues that some subjects found sexual experiences with adults during childhood or adolescence "positive," that this may be an "artifact" of overly broad definitions of child sexual abuse, and that boys respond more positively than girls. Furthermore, the APA found the study's methodology to be sound: "This study passed the journal's rigorous peer review process and has, since the controversy, been reviewed again by an expert in statistical analysis who affirmed that it meets current standards and that the methodology, which is widely used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop guidelines, is sound." The APA concluded that "science has been misrepresented to further the cause of politics and sensationalist publicity."

I believe it is only a matter of time.
Clay

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