Paul Cameron is a psychologist who claims homosexual people are a danger to public health and the social fabric of America. His studies explicitly argue that homosexuality is a disturbing psychological illness. Cameron often makes links between homosexuality and child abuse, pedophilia, a shorter life expectancy, poor parenting skills, drug abuse, and violent crimes.
Cameron has said that allowing gay men to serve in the armed forces would degrade military capability by destroying group unity. “You’ll have them having sex in the barracks. It’ll be legal! That’s what homosexuals do. They have sex here, there, and everywhere,” he claimed. Anti-LGBT materials repeat his claims so often that they regularly appear without his name attached, as if they were actual facts.
A number of social science organizations, like the American Sociological Association, have issued statements against Cameron’s bogus studies. In general, they refer to his anti-homosexual bias and his misrepresentation of scientific research. A quick reading of his research reveals unsubstantiated claims and twisted statistics. For instance, Cameron’s thesis that gay people die early because of their depraved sexual lives was criticized for its poor methodology. Cameron only consulted obituaries, and had an insufficient sample. His statistical analysis, as one critic wrote, had “internal inconsistencies.”
Cameron established a group called the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality, currently known as the Family Research Institute. One article on the website is titled, “Gays in Military: Traitors in Military.” Cameron has said on the website, “Homosexuals are no more than non-productive ‘sexual bums.’ They are recruiting others, forming communities, beginning to mock and undermine the old pieties of loyalty of family, country, and God.”
Cameron credits birth control with the destruction of the traditional family. And since he views traditional families as the building blocks of civilization, birth control is a threat to America. He argues that homosexuality and birth control will cause extremely low birth rates. The birth rate will be so low that Western civilization will be destroyed.
In regards to the infamous anti-LGBT Ugandan bill introduced in 2009 that would criminalize homosexuality and punish homosexual acts with life imprisonment or death (reintroduced in 2012 and currently awaiting a vote), Cameron said, “In summary, Western politicians–let alone Western Christians–have no business criticizing Ugandans for proposing this bill. Many of its provisions would be welcome restorations to our own penal code.”