While the conservative Christians who champion reparative therapy say they are motivated by sympathy for trouble gays, that is not true of everyone in the crusade against homosexuality. Extremists advocate the death penalty for gays, based on a radical interpretation of the Bible. The most notorious Anti-gay activist is the Rev Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro, Baptist church in Kansas, whose Web-site address is godhatesfags.com. To a man, the mainstream Christian-right groups have denounced Phelps, and he in turn has denounced the religious right as "lukewarm cowards." Phelps' followers actually picket funeral of gay people. "We display large, colorful signs containing bible words and sentiments," says Phelps, including "GOD HATES FAGS, FAGS HATE GOD, AIDS CURES FAGS, THANK GOD FOR AIDS, FAGS BURN IN HELL, etc". He cites "statistics" such as, "The average fag fellates 106 men, swallows fifty seminal discharges, has seventy-two penile penetrations of the anus and ingests feces of twenty three different men every year."

One thing that Phelps has in common with the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition and ex gay ministries like Exodus is that they all refer to the work of Dr. Paul Cameron, founder of the Family Research Institute and ISIS, the institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality. Cameron, 59, a former psychologist* based in Colorado Springs, issues a stream of data often used by anti-gay activists: that gays are far more likely than straights to molest children, that gays are more likely to commit crimes as mundane as tax evasion or shoplifting, and so on. "We're kind of the wellspring of most of the statistics about the gay lifestyle." Cameron says. Cameron, who in the 1980s called for quarantining gays to prevent the spread of AIDS, has been attacked not only by gay-rights groups but also by psychologists, psychiatrists and sociologists, who have engaged in decades long war with Cameron. Like many of his allies, Cameron believes that, if left unchecked, homosexuality will destroy America like God did Sodom. "Untrammeled homosexuality can take over and destroy a social system," says Cameron. "If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one's own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get- and that is what homosexuality seems to be-then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm." So powerful is the allure of gays, Cameron believes, that if society approves that gay people, more and more heterosexuals will be inexorably drawn into homosexuality. "I'm convinced that lesbians are particularly good seducers," says Cameron. "People in homosexuality are incredibly evangelical," he adds, sounding evangelical himself. "It's pure sexuality. It's almost like pure heroin. It's such a rush. They are committed in almost a religious way. And they'll take enormous risks, do anything." He says that for married men and women, gay sex would be irresistible. "Martial sex tends toward the boring end," he points out. "Generally, it doesn't deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does" So, Cameron believes, within a few generations homosexuality would be come the dominant form of sexual behavior.

[*Cameron was expelled from the American Psychological Association. -- Ed]

One doesn't usually see fear of the other expressed so blatantly as in Phelps and Cameron -- in very different ways, of course. It's easy enough to write off Phelps as a deranged hatemonger, but less easy to deal with Cameron in the same way.

Clearly, Cameron believes that a single homosexual act will almost inevitably lead heterosexuals into a lifetime of being gay, a belief that I think would surprise a large number of Americans who know otherwise from personal experience. One has to wonder what events in his life lead him to these very odd perceptions, and why he feels so strongly about these things that he'd falsify data in order to "prove" them.

As Atrios wrote in his comment, you couldn't write a parody better than Cameron is in reality.

[via TBogg and Atrios]