What Dr. Laura’s Column That Led to Ted Strickland’s 1999 “Present” Vote Tells Us about Ted

NixGuy has found the column, and has posted it at his site for posterity.

It started with a talk-show host’s interview in Philadelphia’s with one of the authors of the 1999 “research” study in question, the study which reached these conclusions, as Dr. Laura Schlessinger noted in that column (”Evil Among Us”):

In short: The three researchers claim that child sexual abuse does not necessarily cause intense, lasting harm - and go on to suggest that when there is a “willing” sexual encounter between an adult and a child, it be given the “value-neutral” term “adult-child sex”!

I refer to the study as “research” because no original work was done; instead, results of previous studies, many of which had never been published, were aggregated and used as a basis for the authors’ conclusions.

After the talk-show host brought the matter to Dr. Laura’s attention, and, after extensive investigation by her, she brought up the matter on her radio show and published “Evil Among Us.”

Ultimately, the article and the grass-roots firestorm it created led a horrified Congress to pass a resolution condemning the “research,” and the American Psychological Association (APA) for publishing it (the APA withdrew the “research”). In the House, 355 members supported the resolution, and none opposed it. 13 members voted “present,” including 2006 Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Ted Strickland.

In a one-minute floor speech 15 days after the vote on the resolution, a speech I have already criticized intensely, Ted Strickland condemned his colleagues’ vote, telling them:

We recently voted to condemn a scientific study and an organization, an organization that has done as much as any organization in this country to fight child abuse.

I wonder how many of us read the study before we were willing to vote to say that the methodology was flawed. I wonder how many of us were technically competent to make that decision.

I believe that we ought to observe the Ten Commandments. One of those Commandments says, you ought not to bear false witness against your neighbor.

When we say things about an organization or about an individual scientist that are untrue or unsubstantiated, in my judgment, we have violated that Commandment.

We ought to have the decency not to vote to condemn something until we know what it is we are voting to condemn.

You can’t help but come away from what Dr. Laura noted about the “research” study, corroborated extensively by others in a position to comment, and its clear relationship to the ongoing attempt to normalize a practice seen as abhorrent virtually since the dawn of civilization, and wonder not only at the previously noted arrogance and condescension contained in Strickland’s one-minute speech, but at its incredible naivete.

Consider what experts in the same profession as the authors of the APA-published “research,” and perhaps even members of the same organization Ted Strickland told his colleagues they had no right to criticize, had to say to Dr. Laura about how the “research” study was assembled, and the potential impact of letting its postions go unchallenged:

Later, Joe Nicolosi (link to the Officers’ page of Nicolosi’s organization added by me — Ed.) sent me a memo that makes some very salient additional points:

“1. The study used a college-age sample, which implies that most subjects were likely single. Would the results of this study have been different if they had been conducted with these same subjects ten years later? Would those subjects have been more prone to divorce, alcoholism, and child abuse? Would their spouses agree that they were well adjusted, sexually and emotionally? We doubt it.

“2. The authors of the study try to make a case for separating ‘wrongfulness’ (social-moral norms) from ‘harmfulness’ (psychological damage). We believe that social norms of wrongfulness are not arbitrary, but they evolved out of the great religious philosophers’ time-honored observations of ‘harmfulness’-i.e., their finding of psychological damage to the person and society.

“3. The study makes a distinction between forced and consensual child-adult or adult-teen sex. What minor-age child can make an informed decision to consent to sex? ”

++++++++++++++++

Dr. (Gerard) van den Aardweg has a Ph.D. in psychology, did his dissertation on homosexuality, has been in private practice for many years, and has written several books and articles on homosexuality, pedophilia, neuroses and family issues.

….. “These tests are sample questionnaires or short interview questions. At best, they can give a very rude indication of subjectively perceived discomfort. But in very many cases they not even do that. Harm is much more than ‘I do or do not feel okay,’ or ‘I didn’t like that experience.’ Harm after child sexual abuse is often an increased distress with respect to adults; a distorted and unhealthy view of sexuality; a distorted view of their own or the opposite sex. It can be subsequent sexual abnormalities.

It can be marriage and other relational problems later in life; problems functioning as a parent; sometimes later promiscuity; and in many cases, inferiority complexes, because children who have been misused often feel worthless.

“In short, what these psychologists offer us here is an insult to any really credible scientist of true scientific thinking. It is bogus psychology.”

+++++++++++++++

Now here’s a further discussion that Dr. van den Aardweg and I had on the telephone:

Dr. van den Aardweg: I think the sexual reform movements of the Western world have as one of their goals to liberate sexuality in all its forms. And so there is a silent - not so silent here in Holland -cooperation of the sexual reform organizations with the cause of the militant pedophiles. Here it is very clear. For example, our Dutch Association for Sexual Reform has special meetings for pedophiles every week in most Dutch cities.

Dr. Laura: This is scary. In this country, such groups gain power and authority by attacking the opposition as phobic, intolerant of diversity, bigoted and mean.

VDA: You will do a wonderful thing if you make people aware of this, and say to them, “Don’t let yourself be intimidated. Don’t doubt your own common-sense judgment of these things’ ” Because people are overruled and overwhelmed with all kinds of pseudo-science. They think, “Who am I? Perhaps I’m wrong, I’m old-fashioned, I’m a victim of my Western culture.” But they have to be supported as to their own convictions.

DL: So the point of liberating the sexual mores in general is, ultimately, to have access to kids.

VDA: Yes.

* * * * *

So now we come back, not to Ted Strickland’s “Present” vote, but to his one-minute speech:

• Strickland is a degreed psychologist who presumably read the study (he’d better have, since he questioned how many of his colleagues had NOT), yet he either failed to recognize the “bogus psychology” contained therein, or didn’t care that it was bogus.
• He criticized his colleagues as being “not technically competent” to say that the “research” study’s methodology was flawed, though it demonstrably and objectively was. Again, Strickland either didn’t recognize the flaws himself, or didn’t care about them and went ahead with his rant anyway, when he rebuked his colleagues for “say(ing) things about an organization or about an individual scientist that are untrue or unsubstantiated,” and in the process told 355 of them that they had violated the Eighth Commandment.
• He was clearly either unaware or was unconcerned about the potential impact the publication of the “research” study in a professional journal without challenge would have on attempts to normalize child sexual abuse, or at least to coddle instead of punish abusers, in the courts and in legislatures. Perhaps he was unconcerned because he was, (and perhaps still is) unaware of the potential strength of the normalization movement; that would make him surprisingly ignorant of what some of his professional colleagues in the psych community, sometimes in league with the abusers themselves, were (and to an extent, still are) up to. Or, perhaps, he is quite aware of the normalization movement’s potential and either doesn’t mind, or is apathetic, about whether society evolves in that direction (Note: That is VERY different from saying that Ted Strickland supports it, which I personally do not have any reason to believe is the case.). Out of touch, or laissez faire, take your pick.

Strickland’s vote and his one-minute speech call into question his awareness and/or concern about “the evil among us” in this world, and his willingness to do anything about evil even when it is recognized.

As I have stated previously:

Nobody can fairly say that Ted Strickland supports pedophilia, but no one can deny that Ted Strickland’s 1999 “Present” vote on H CON RES 107, and especially his subsequent reaction to Congress’s unanimous support of it, provided aid and comfort to those who do. The only debate is over how much.

Allowing a person who is so clearly arrogant and condescending, yet so naive and/or indifferent to what’s really happening in the real world, to ascend into the Governor’s office in a state of 11 million people is a very big risk voters in the Buckeye should not take. With the presence of two other acceptable candidates on the ballot, it is also a risk they do not need to take.

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NOTE: Readers new to this blog should be aware that the Ted Strickland BizzyBlog Dealbreakers have ended the discussion about Ted Strickland’s eligibility to even be considered for public office. Ted Strickland’s Voter Deception concerning his out-of-district residency and his Financially Shortchanging His District of needed income tax and other revenues have seen to that.

But, if you don’t mind having someone as governor who has withheld the truth from his constituents for over three years, and who has, as a result, deceived voters in at least three elections and denied “his” district the benefits of his income and other taxes, the above might assist you in deciding whether Ted Strickland has the mature judgment and termperament required to effectively carry out the duties of a governor.

NOTE 2: The professional evaluations and criticisms of the study’s methodology by the experts Dr. Laura cited are valid (or, conceivably invalid, if someone can demonstrate it), regardless of the positions these gentlemen hold on homosexuality, so don’t even go there. If you want to come in and say the “research” study was fine and prove it, be my guest. You’ll “only” be contradicting the APA, which withdrew it.