You might have a gay kid if…

August 11, 2005

Ezra said the other day that even hearing about James Dobson hurts his soul. And while I’m hesitant to ruin Ezra’s day, I’m afraid Dobson keeps saying things I find fascinating and post-worthy. I’m afraid I can’t resist.

The latest is from Dobson’s “Focus on Your Child” website, which offers parents clues on what to watch for with boys aged 5 to 11. The question, of course, is simple: “Is My Child Becoming Homosexual?” Here, apparently, are the warning signs:

1. A strong feeling that they are “different” from other boys.

2. A tendency to cry easily, be less athletic, and dislike the roughhousing that other boys enjoy.

3. A persistent preference to play female roles in make-believe play.

4. A strong preference to spend time in the company of girls and participate in their games and other pastimes.

5. A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys, who may tease them unmercifully and call them “queer,” “fag” and “gay.”

6. A tendency to walk, talk, dress and even “think” effeminately.

7. A repeatedly stated desire to be — or insistence that he is — a girl.

Now, I don’t recall those years all that well, but it seems to me just about every boy I knew, including myself, might have been able to check off a few of these between the ages of 5 and 11. So, according to Dobson’s group’s criteria, there are way more kids out there teetering on the edge of gayness than most of us realize.

“By the time the adolescent hormones kick in during early adolescence, a full-blown gender identity crisis threatens to overwhelm the teenager,” warns psychologist Dr. James Dobson. To compound the problem, many of these teens experience “great waves of guilt accompanied by secret fears of divine retribution.”

I wonder what kind of sick person would try and scare children and force them to deal with waves of guilt and fears of divine retribution? Oh wait, that would be Dobson.

Blame the fucking victim, huh?

5. A susceptibility to be bullied by other boys, who may tease them unmercifully and call them “queer,” “fag” and “gay.”

Yeah, it’s the kid’s fault that other kids tease them and beat them up.

Dobson is such a tool

  • If I hadn’t checked the link, CB, I’d have
    accused you of swiping this off
    http://www.landoverbaptist.org.

    These people are so pathetic they
    have become parodies of themselves.

    Too bad millions of real children will
    suffer from this kind of psychobabble.
    Otherwise this piece would have
    served as today’s howler.

  • Except for the actual recognition that gays exist, this sounds as though it could have come straight out of the repressed culture of the 1950s. It’s based entirely on the stereotyped “femme” gay male. This is the view most Americans had of gays fifty years ago. Acting out that role was the only acceptable way of finding each other and of submitting to the dominant culture (like the Steppin Fetchit black).

    As sex researchers have written for decades now, this is a hopelessly ignorant view of gays. Ignoring arguments about the biological significance of the term “gay”, there are cultures which do tend to emphasize the “femme” role – in Latin America the tendency is to couple a “macho” and “femme” in a kind of stereotypical male-female relationship. Eunuchs in India may gather in groups largely “femme”. American society tends much more to emphasize male-male (and female-female) relations, often viewing the macho-femme one as exploitive. The ancient Greeks tolerated, even celebrated, male-male relations provided one was an older (an adult teacher, general, artist) and the other was much younger (student, soldier, protege); in contrast to the American model, both partners to this relationship were also expected to marry and raise children, and if the relationship lasted beyond the “learning” phase it was publicly ridiculed and condemned. Among the Comanche typical man-woman marriage was often augmented by another male, the “berdache”, who played something of the female role with the dominant male.

    I’m not sure what Dobson & Co. would make of all this. Oh, I forgot, they’re “faith-based” and all this other scholarly nonsense is “reality-based”. Sorry I mentioned it.

  • Gene Stone at Huff Po has a good take on this release.

    In the comments someone makes an interesting point:

    “I guess Mr. Dobson has never been in a leather bar where many of the men would scare the hell out of him. I doubt that they played with dolls,
    other than to amputate their arms. There are all kinds of tough gay men, who were butch as kids and are macho as adults, just as there are many fairies of the heterosexual world. Hasn’t anybody noticed that Tom Delay minces and flutters and flirts and titters?â€?

    This isn’t just a calculated attempt to demonize homosexuality to nervous parents, it also plays well as an attack on thoughtfulness, female equality, etc. (Dobson advocates only a strict-father, compliant woman family model). By bashing femininity—as defined by being different, non-athletic, or thinking “like a woman� (what is that?)—he is able to dictate gender roles and exclude people who don’t fit into a particular stereotype. So, march on Iraq now or you’re a woman-thinking fag. Got it.

    How much did that list sound like Karl Rove’s childhood?

  • What are we to make of Bush’s nervous giggles, his evident need to hold hands with Arab princes in flowing robes, the awe he feels when staring deeply into the eyes of dominant Russian leaders, his need to play “dress up” with the flyboys (and that crotch grabbing outfit he wore) during “Mission accomplished”, and his fixation on overcoming his father’s “failures”, and that overcompensating “swagger” of his?

  • Gadzooks! I now see that I was an incipient gay!
    My parents were sure I was weird.
    I was the anti-Christ of athletes.
    My sisters and I(!!!) sometimes dressed up in mom’s old clothes.
    I liked girls, and I liked to play with them.
    I can sure remember being bullied and called those names.
    Not sure what it means to think effeminately, but I *do* like pink.

    Thank GOD the tough-love training I got from my religion and my boy scout troop pulled me back from the abyss. But did they *really*? Could it be that I’m still a sodomite at heart and don’t know it? I *do* still have a pony tail, unfashionable though it be. OMG!!!! Guess I’ll be spending this year’s vacation in Colorado Springs.

  • Imagined conversation with Mullah Dobson on an AM talk radio:

    Hello and welcome to Christian Help line…

    What?

    Caller you are on the air. Go ahead Caller.

    Can you hear me Mullah Dobson?

    Yes Friend and May the Lord Bless you… How can I help you son?

    (sobbing) Mullah Dobson… I suspect my little boy is gay. I can’t tolerate such blasphemy. My wife and I have only lived pure holy lives. Why have we been damned by the seed of the devil? And is it possible we can sacrifice him like the Spartans sacrificed their soiled infants?

    Radio silence.

    Then… cut to a quick commercial:
    Loud inane singing hyping an obesity control drug.
    (Sung to the tune of: Now you can be as thin as Jesus)

  • problems with gender identity also can produce alcohol/drug problems, hate/violence toward women, ranting and raging against gays to cover their own possible problems with sex identity. so this can apply to bush, dobson, falwell, robertson etc. their need to make women second class behind their MAN belies their own sexual inadequacy feelings. anyone who must shove someone down to make themselves bigger always feels inadequate/inferior. they call these people with these feelings BULLIES. mary

  • Wait a second! Why isn’t likeing WHAM! music not on this list?

    Seriously, shouldn’t the best indicator for homosexuality be, um, having a sexual desire for people of the same sex? I swear, these Dobson measures are so indirect and vague that they are practically useless (and I can see his followers panicking over their poor sons being just one step away from repeatedly dropping their soap in the boys bathroom and saying loudly while bending over…”Ooops! I did it again!”

  • Why is there no concern over the “detection of lesbians”? Shouldn’t we watch for:
    * Little girls who want to be Ken rather than Barbie
    * Who would rather play baseball than house
    * If they did play house they were the father or the brother
    * The lack of interest in make up and attantion to hair
    * heavy sports involvment
    What is the good (Ehm) Dr’s call for weeding out girls who will surely be “one of those”.

  • I can’t speak for anyone else, but for my entire post-blastocyst existence I have been totally guilty of this one:

    “4. A strong preference to spend time in the company of girls and participate in their games and other pastimes.”

    Especially in college. And why is that, Dr. Dobson might ask? To which my answer would be, “Because I wanted to get laid, dummy!”

    You’d think he could figure that one out without having to hear it from me. Sheesh.

  • How much did that list sound like Karl Rove’s childhood?

    LOL Great query, Eadie!

    Uh-oh, I said query.

    I was wondering what sort of solution Dr. D has dreamed up for such unfortunate kids, so I went to the article and found out: 3. “Call to make an appointment with a professional therapist who believes change is possible.” Well, that narrows the field considerably.

    In a study they were quoting on his site, they noted that among the “effeminate” boys they were questioning (just how macho is a six year old supposed to be, anyhow? Can you imagine how they found the subjects for this study?), “83 percent said they wished they had been born a girl.â€?

    Maybe I’m gay and just don’t know it. Because I’ve considered that myself when I see an ecstatic lover who can have rollicking orgasms and has that nice smooth body with all those bumps and curves in all the right places. I’ve thought about how if I could switch places I’d have a helluva time messing around with all those cool parts. Probably wouldn’t ever get any work done, but what the heck. ‘Course I’d be a lesbian, so I guess I’m probably bound for hell for just thinking about all this.

    Damn, Dobby, you are a troglodyte!

  • A few years ago when we had our son my wife bought me a book about raising boys by Dobson. my wife knew he had a radio show called focus on the family but I had never heard of him. Focus on the Family? I said, sounds O.K. I guess. My wife said she read the back of the book and it looked alright to her. I said, “here’s how we can tell” , I looked up the word homosexual in the back of the book and went right to the authors first mention of it. Dr. Dobson said the father basically is the cause or prevention of homosexuality. The book was returned the next day. Ahhh those blissful days of ignorance before I’d ever heard of this idiot.

  • It seems clear that Dobson is still consumed with guilt about these feelings he describes from his childhood.

    Or maybe he’s not speaking from personal experience, but has merely interviewed a large number of gender-confused young boys…

  • As far as I know, the only way the ‘treatment’ works, is if the ‘counselor’ essentially does the same the nutjobs do – shame their kids back into the closet.
    It seems that their whole religion is based on two principles – shaming gentle spirits that they love and disdain at the same time, and damning/hating/murdering strong willed spirits who do not agree with them.
    Maybe in his next life, he will come back as one of the people that threatens his identity the most in this one.

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