Today's news from the Prop. 8 trial is that discrimination against lesbians and gay men can have ill effects on their lives.
That should hardly need proving, but this is a court of law, and to opponents who are disinclined to believe much of anything we say, proof is necessary.
The witness assigned to this matter was Dr. Ilan Meyer, Associate Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University. He has worked in this field for two decades, and has done numerous studies of the effects of stigma on gay people and same-sex couples.
After reading the liveblogs of his testimony at both Firedoglake and the Courage Campaign, I have to say that the impression I came away with is that the Clinical Sociomedical Sciences make bigger claims than they can live up to. Dr. Meyer was articulate, thoughtful and dedicated, but on cross-examination, it became clear to me that he's attempting to quantify something that is unquantifiable. In the (imperfect but amazingly timely) transcripts of his answers he constantly seemed, to me, to be tripped up by pretty obvious things.
For example, his research purports to measure how much the stress from social stigmas affects minorities, specifically lesbians and gay men. But when asked whether he could factor out stress from being a racial minority or a woman from stress due to homosexuality he was unable to do so. That would seem to be a central point for someone who's an expert on how much of a problem the stigma resulting from homosexuality is.
But I can't really blame him. No one could accurately measure, or even approximate, such a thing. But that wasn't the worst obvious knot he couldn't extricate himself from: While his conclusion is that homosexuals suffer more psychological stress than heterosexuals, his side is also presenting evidence that same-sex couples are as well-adjusted as opposite-sex couples, particularly when it comes to raising children. What rational cross-examiner would miss that glaring contradiction? We've happily left behind the days when homosexuality was considered a mental illness, and marched, banners flying, into an age where we deploy academics to calibrate the damage from stigma.
The pity is that we're caught here in a pseudo-science of our own making. At the beginning of his testimony, Dr. Meyer offered an example of the problem we face that is as compelling as it is incapable of mathematical appraisal. In the 1969 blockbuster book, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask), this question-and-answer was included on the subject of homosexual couples:
Q: What about the happy homosexual couples who've lived together for a long time?
A: Happy homosexuals are might rare birds among the homosexual flock. Morever, the 'happy' part remains to be seen. The bitterest argument between a husband and wife is a passionate love sonnet by comparison with a dialogue between a butch and his queen. Live together? Yes. Happily? Hardly.
In 1969, this was not only not maddeningly offensive, it was the reason of its day. No homosexual now can read such words without feeling a sickening sensation. And I hope no responsible heterosexual would feel differently. Of course Dr. Meyer and others would want to answer such a charge (and so many others), which pervaded even academic thinking in those years and many more afterward. In light of the notion's wide acceptance, of course he would want to answer the accusation (and it is an accusation) in objective, scientifically verifiable ways so that there would be no doubt about its wrongness.
But that's not the way it works. You can't measure pain, or
prejudice or stigma. And you can't respond to something that isn't
science with something that purports to be.
I am one of those people who grew up when this book was all the
rage, and I, too, in all my ignorance, eagerly looked for the parts
dealing with homosexuality, mostly because there was nothing else
at the time that I knew of which dealt with the subject.
Was I harmed? You bet. Did the stigma affect me? Absolutely. But I think people are wasting their time trying to assign a percentage to it, or a weight or an amplitude.
Science is the left's military, and the left misapplies it, just as the right does with our armed forces, in situations where it has no business being. Science is one of the glories of mankind, and particularly of the last two centuries. But today was not its finest moment.
11 Comments for “Some Things You Did Not Want To Know About Sex”
posted by Jorge on
Or to put it another way, can he factor out the stress due to being a Black Panther supporter whose side lost from the stress due to being an MLK supporter who lived through his leader being gunned down?
posted by Lymis on
I know that the Right will try to use the same argument that you do, but it doesn’t hold up.
Most importantly, science is not about precise measurements and exact quantifiability. Science is about observation of reality and comparing it to whatever hypothesis is being checked to see if the hypothesis holds up. If the aspect of reality is rigid, regular, and repeatable, then you can get extremely precise data and make hypotheses that include that sort of quantifiability.
But if the hypothesis is about something fuzzier, like individual feelings, the you aren’t going to get precise numbers.
In other words, it does nothing whatsoever to invalidate the science to be unable to separate out the stressors from being black in America from the stressors from being gay in America.
A big part of that is because each individual will experience different levels of that stress from similar situations, depending on a huge variety of factors.
Dr. Meyer made it very clear that this sort of science depends very heavily on carefully setting up your study population so that you can highlight the effect being studied, and that his career has been very focused on LGBT people and the stressors on us.
It doesn’t invalidate him as an expert when he says that he has not focused on blacks or other minorities, but can say with some authority that he believes that those groups also face stressors – because OTHER people are the experts on that.
He doesn’t have to be able to quantify which stresses a black lesbian faces because she is black and because she is lesbian. He can state with authority that based on his studies, at least some of the stresses she faces are because she is gay. That’s all he was there to testify, and that’s what he was saying.
posted by Regan DuCasse on
Perhaps someone can help me out here.
Why do the defenders of 8 get to make CLAIMS regarding some kind of threat from gay people without showing that there is a BIG difference between an INCIDENT one which has nothing to do with your STATUS in our society?.
And being at risk over a lifetime from anti gay bias?
But the gay folks, actually faced with bans, discrimination, physical violence and bullying over a lifetime, have to state and prove it’s harmful?
EVERYONE should already KNOW that this kind of vulnerability to abuse has a historical precedent among other groups.
Furthermore, the opposition is already hanging their defense on ‘gay people can’t have children or shouldn’t’ meme.
There isn’t a hetero alive that has to take THAT kind of test for competence or interest in children. And sometimes not even in each other to qualify to marry.
As I see it, those who are really trying to redefine marriage is the opposition.
They are redefining it beyond recognition.
Gay folks and straight folks would and should be held to the SAME standards.
If the test for morals, child care competence and so on exists for heteros, then fine.
Until it does, such a test is on it’s face, not right for a gay person to be confronted with.
posted by BobN on
One of the triumphs of science over the common-sense approach you seem to prefer is the recognition that we are not the sad perverts people thought we were.
If it weren’t for social scientists trying to separate reality from society’s certain opinions, we’d all be in the closet.
posted by Amicus on
(David, as an aside, I think that Q&A is not an accurate transcript. The part about a “butch and his queen” may have been read by the defense lawyer.)
posted by David Link on
Good point, Amicus. Which is why we OUGHT TO HAVE CIVIL TRIALS LIKE THIS ONE AVAILABLE DIRECTLY, rather than having to rely on multiple layers of hearsay. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is not being able (or allowed) to see exactly what’s going on.
Which won’t stop me from having opinions about it. The main point, I think, is to make it clear to the Supreme Court in particular that sometimes the public really is interested in these only nominally “public” trials.
posted by Jorge on
Perhaps someone can help me out here.
Why do the defenders of 8 get to make CLAIMS regarding some kind of threat from gay people without showing that there is a BIG difference between an INCIDENT one which has nothing to do with your STATUS in our society?.
And being at risk over a lifetime from anti gay bias?
Because there are no gays making the claim that they will be harassed if their testimony is taped.
Elegant, no?
posted by DragonScorpion on
Yes, one would think if he is claiming the existence of such stresses and the correlation to the social and legal stigmas of being a homosexual in our society, that he would have needed to make distinctions between types and degrees of stresses to better understand their causation.
As for having happily left behind the days when homosexuality was considered a mental illness, I suppose that all depends on who you ask. A lot of folks around this country haven’t made up their mind on that yet. In fact, it is all too typical to claim that the psychiatric community didn’t change it’s definition of homosexuality based on biased studies that relied mostly on assumptions and dubious evidence. Going on to claim that the official change was merely a political decision.
We still have a long way to go before we can legitimately claim that we have left the dark days of homosexuality-as-mental-illness behind…
Perhaps the whole argument is a waste of time. Not only common sense but first hand experience illustrates that being stigmatized and legally segregated from the sort of rights and privileges that heterosexuals can take for granted does typically bring us stresses and burdens that we shouldn’t have to be subjected to en mass. But isn’t this really just a matter of law; right and wrong; the unconstitutionality of denying classes of people equal protection of the laws?
It seems to me that either excluding same-sex couples from civil marriage and the protections thereof is either fair or it isn’t.
And as you pointed out, Mr. Link, invoking the emotional damage that such exclusions causes homosexuals and same-sex couples also creates the obvious contradiction to claims that same-sex couples are just as well-adjusted as opposite-sex couples.
Again I wonder. Do we really want to muddy the waters like this, when the legal aspects of this should be clear enough?
posted by DragonScorpion on
Regan brought up a good point about hypocrisy, but it lead me to wonder about a different hypocrisy evidenced here.
Isn’t there an inherent hypocrisy in demanding a quantitative break down of the psychological damage that is done to individuals who are ostracized by society at large and institutionally marginalized by the legal system, whilst those who claim a vague, theoretical harm that legal recognition of homosexuality would inflict upon all of society, particularly heterosexual/married society and children in particular, are given a free pass?
Surely they are able to provide some actual numbers? Some quantitative evidence as to the harm caused and a solid case made illustrating the direct correlation to tolerance of homosexuality? No, apparently not. But the claim makes for compelling sound bites and look quite damning in sensationalized, ‘scary’ advertisements.
Also, I thought Regan was quite right in stating that same-sex couples should be held to the same sort of substantive standards in determining if they are qualified to adopt, for instance, that opposite-sex couples do. This cannot be overstated.
posted by David Link on
Quite right, DragonScorpion. And I’d go further than you (I think you would, too) that it’s not just “adoption, for instance” that is at issue here — it’s the right of couples to get married, period. No one on the right I know of has argued that same-sex couples could get married if the law also prohibited them from having children. But if this were really a serious discussion, that would seem to be a serious position.
It’s not. “Children” are the weapon-at-hand for the right in this discussion, where the aim is to prevent legal marriage for same-sex couples by any method that will work.
posted by Winston Leyland on
These are all speculations, no solid evidence
Winston Leyland, editor.
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