This a portion of the article called “Homosexuality and the Church Crisis,” written by Brian W. Clowes, April 19, 2010, for publication in a number of Roman Catholic publications:

Opponents of the Church know that there is a well-documented and strong correlation between male homosexuality and child sexual abuse, but claim that there is no evidence supporting this connection.

This paper demonstrates that there is indeed a very strong link between male homosexuality and child sexual abuse. It also shows that there is a similar rate of child sexual abuse among other very large groups of adult males (e.g., Protestant clergy, who are usually married), thus proving that celibacy is not the root of the problem ─ homosexuality is.

(Dr. Brian Clowes is a graduate of West Point, a former A-Team leader for the Army Special Forces (“Green Berets”), and holds a PhD in Civil Engineering and Systems Science. He is Director of Research and Training for Human Life International, a pro-life missionary group.)

An open letter to Brian Clowes:

Brian,

I think I’ve said most of what I wanted to say.

One of my major issues is the way our culture tends to look at things in a binary way: gay/straight, good/evil, left/right, black/white, red states/blue states. We seem to have intolerance for ambiguity but want to categorize in an either/or way.

In-groups categorize out-groups, and vice versa. As I said before in mentioning that correspondent (who also called me a pagan and a Nazi), he doesn’t know me, and yet he insisted that he did because he knew one or two things about me (gay, psychiatrist).

He then halted any efforts to understand me in any other way than the characteristics he had assigned to me. When you wrote in your note, “Homosexuality is just wrong,” I am apprehensive, to say the least, about how you might use anything I say.

I still don’t know who you mean by “the leadership of gay activists.” I doubt that any of the gay men I know would be able to name them, perhaps would not even recognize their names. Gay men are as diverse as men are in general, so to think there is a group of people who speak for all of us is a bit absurd.

We constantly hear about a “gay agenda,” but where is it? Why haven’t I seen it or read it? When I asked someone to what they were referring, they pointed out some book written in the 70s. But since it is nearly impossible to prove a “negative,” we are accused of having an agenda and it is impossible to prove that there is not one.

As to the article reference I sent you earlier this evening (Christian right leader George Rekers takes vacation with “rent boy”), one of the things we get very reactive about is hypocrisy.

Over and over, those (mostly) men who have been most damaging to us have been caught with their pants around their ankles. I don’t believe homosexuality is wrong, but I do believe that hypocrisy is wrong.

I have no research interest in pedophilia or pederasty. My original research has been done on mature men who have sex with men; in order to capture information about non-gay identified men, I have purposely avoided the word “gay.” One large study suggested there are more heterosexually identified men who have sex with men than there are gay men, and that a significant percentage of men who are married have had sex with a man in the preceding year.

Age is a difficult issue. There is no doubt that the state has a duty to protect those who cannot protect themselves and very few would argue that point. Age is a number and represents chronological age. Age alone does not consider other elements that contribute to maturity and decision making e.g. culture, body, life experience, intellect etc. But talking about age brings us back to categorizing — and ignoring ambiguity– black and white, good and evil.

I once had a patient from Africa who was hospitalized for Bipolar Disorder. He sent for his wife to come to the U.S. and bring their infant twins. She was but 15 years old. I questioned him about how a 15 year old could possibly travel 36 hours from Africa to the United States without speaking English and bringing two infants with her. He said, “Dr. Olson, you don’t understand our culture,” and I didn’t. She was quite capable of doing something that neither of my daughters, quite capable and independent by U.S. standards, would have been able to do at age 15. I have never forgotten that lesson.

When you say that 1/3 of homosexual men have had sex with a child, I can not relate to that. It is not a part of my experience nor have any of the gay men I know shared that experience with me. Your statement is meaningless to me, first of all because I cannot figure out who “homosexual men” are. And who are “heterosexual men?”

Because of the varying age of men coming out, because many men conceal their homosexual behavior, and because there are many “heterosexual” men who have sex with men, there can be no meaningful sampling of homosexual men. What is the control group for heterosexual men? Have they been studied in a double blind fashion?

And all of the research related to homosexuality, even the best of it, is only demonstrating correlations, not causality.

Loren A. Olson MD DLFAPA