Do Gay Men Have More Sexual Interest in Children than Straight Men Do?

I thought about holding off on this post until the next time somebody in the news declares that gay men are to blame for the sexual abuse of children. I’d probably only have to wait a couple of weeks at most. But I’ve decided to go ahead and put this research notice out there, so that hopefully the next time this issue comes up, the rational folks talking about it have the data they need to back up their hunches.

So, at the outset, let me give away the answer to my headline question: Do gay men have more sexual interest in children than straight men do? No. And we have lab studies to prove it.

In fact, the British Journal of Psychiatry published a major study backing up the “no” answer almost 40 years ago. The distinguished sex researcher Kurt Freund and his colleagues used a laboratory method (described below) that demonstrated that the sexual responses of gay men to boys were similar to the responses of straight men to girls. (Both responses are relatively low.) This past June in Canada, at the major international research conference on sexual orientation science, sex researcher Ray Blanchard (who was trained under Freund) presented substantial new data confirming and expanding on Freund’s findings.

Blanchard has published this work online, making the work freely available to all comers. Click here to see the full paper. But, because this work is so important (the scientists assembled in Canada were stunned into near silence when they saw the impressive datasets and theoretical work Blanchard put before us), I asked Blanchard to explain the work somewhat more plainly for those who are not scientists. He’s been kind enough to do so for us here.

Of Kinks, Crimes, and Kinds: The Paraphilias Proposal for the DSM-5

When is a kinky interest really sick?

That’s the central question the Paraphilias Sub-Work Group of the American Psychiatric Association has had to face as they’ve developed proposed revisions for the DSM-5. Pity those given the task of trying to figure out how, when, and why to medicalize or de-medicalize everything from asexuality to zoophilia (the latter being the sexual interest known to less progressive types as bestiality).

Looming over the whole task is the ugly history of the pathologizing of homosexuality. As I teach my students every year, it took until 1973 for the American Psychiatric Association to stop officially categorizing all forms of homosexuality as mental disorders. And that official demedicalization happened not because a happy and spontaneous consensus emerged that the science supported the change, but because gay psychiatrists understandably had had enough.

Nowadays, you can find self-appointed representatives of every sexual interest who will try to align their history with homosexuality, because, like the gay psychiatrists of the early 1970s, they want out of the DSM. The bondage folks, the zoophiles – even the pedophiles want out. At least the vocal ones do. They’ll tell you that, like gay men and lesbians, they never should have been in the book in the first place.

I would have been watching the progress of the Paraphilias Sub-Work Group regardless; as an historian of sexuality, I’m professionally fascinated to see where it will all go. But as it turns out, I’ve had something of a ringside seat, because my friend Ray Blanchard has been serving as the chair of the sub-work group.