Many people are familiar with Godwin’s Law.
“As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin’s Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups.
Not as many people are familiar with Poe’s Law.
Poe’s Law relates to fundamentalism, and the difficulty of identifying actual parodies of it. It suggests that, in general, it is hard to tell fake fundamentalism from the real thing, since they both sound equally ridiculous. The law also works in reverse: real fundamentalism can also be indistinguishable from parody fundamentalism. For example, some conservatives consider noted homophobe Fred Phelps to be so over-the-top that they think he’s a “deep cover liberal” trying to discredit more mainstream homophobes.
Well, I hereby announce Buffy’s Law:
Homophobes who quote Paul Cameron, or any source that cites Paul Cameron/The Family Research Institute, instantly lose all credibility in their attempt to demonize LGBT people.
Of course I’d never propose a law without an explanation so here’s the background. Paul Cameron uses his credentials as a psychologist to give his irrational homophobic bigotry an air of authenticity. The RRRW gleefully quotes his “research” far and wide as evidence that gay people are everything they’ve always claimed–promiscuous, disease ridden, incapable of committing, pedophiles, etc. But here’s what the RRRW (and Paul Cameron) aren’t telling people.
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On his curriculum vitae, he describes himself as a “Researcher/Clinician.” According to the web site of the Nebraska Department of HHS Regulation and Licensure, his license as a Psychologist has been “inactive” since 1995.
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In the mid-1980s, the gay press labeled Paul Cameron “the most dangerous antigay voice in the United States today.”2,3,4 Here are some important facts about him.
* On December 2, 1983, the American Psychological Association sent Paul Cameron a letter informing him that he had been dropped from membership. Early in 1984, all members of the American Psychological Association received official written notice that “Paul Cameron (Nebraska) was dropped from membership for a violation of the Preamble to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists” by the APA Board of Directors.5 Cameron has posted an elaborate argument about his expulsion from APA on his website, claiming that he resigned from APA before he was dropped from membership. Like most organizations, however, APA does not allow a member to resign when they are being investigated. And even if Cameron’s claims were accepted as true, it would be remarkable that the largest professional organization of psychologists in the United States (and other professional associations, as noted below) went to such lengths to disassociate itself from one individual.
* At its membership meeting on October 19, 1984, the Nebraska Psychological Association adopted a resolution stating that it “formally disassociates itself from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron in his writings and public statements on sexuality.”6
* In 1985, the American Sociological Association (ASA) adopted a resolution which asserted that “Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism” and noted that “Dr. Paul Cameron has repeatedly campaigned for the abrogation of the civil rights of lesbians and gay men, substantiating his call on the basis of his distorted interpretation of this research.”7 The resolution formally charged an ASA committee with the task of “critically evaluating and publicly responding to the work of Dr. Paul Cameron.”
At its August, 1986 meeting, the ASA officially accepted the committee’s report and passed the following resolution:
The American Sociological Association officially and publicly states that Paul Cameron is not a sociologist, and condemns his consistent misrepresentation of sociological research. Information on this action and a copy of the report by the Committee on the Status of Homosexuals in Sociology, “The Paul Cameron Case,” is to be published in Footnotes, and be sent to the officers of all regional and state sociological associations and to the Canadian Sociological Association with a request that they alert their members to Cameron’s frequent lecture and media appearances.”8
* In August, 1996, the Canadian Psychological Association adopted the following policy statement:
The Canadian Psychological Association takes the position that Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism and thus, it formally disassociates itself from the representation and interpretations of scientific literature in his writings and public statements on sexuality.
* Cameron’s credibility was also questioned outside of academia. In his written opinion in Baker v. Wade (1985), Judge Buchmeyer of the U.S. District Court of Dallas referred to “Cameron’s sworn statement that ‘homosexuals abuse children at a proportionately greater incident than do heterosexuals,’” and concluded that “Dr. Paul Cameron…has himself made misrepresentations to this Court” and that “There has been no fraud or misrepresentations except by Dr. Cameron” (p.536).9
In other words, Paul Cameron is simply a bigot with a PhD and an anti-gay agenda. He hasn’t an ounce of credibility to anybody other than other anti-gay crusaders such as himself.
Additionally, Cameron’s Family Research Institute has been designated an official hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center because they “go beyond mere disagreement with homosexuality by subjecting gays and lesbians to campaigns of personal vilification”.
So from now on when you hear anybody quote Paul Cameron, The Family Research Institute or anything that cites their “research” you can tell them they’ve already lost, and cite Buffy’s Law.
