Homosexuals more likely to break the law? The Longitudinal Study of Violence Against Women asked college students about sexual orientation. A criminality scale was constructed for males, but girls were only asked if they had gotten into a physical fight.
Criminality scale
Straight men 1.67 (N = 519)
Gay men and bisexual men 1.84 (N = 39)
Percent in a physical fight in past year
Straight women 7.2 (N = 1,172)
Lesbians and bisexual women 14.4 (N = 28)
The high lesbian rate isn't surprising--I'm reminded of the hooligan dykes in A Confederacy of Dunces--but the higher mean for homosexuals is strange. Crime requires aggressiveness and nerve. We have seen in prior analyses a pattern of dysfunction among homosexuals, bisexuals, and lesbians: their higher rates of early sexual contact, family violence, and drug use. Any explanations?
Are gun owners mentally ill?
Some anti-gun people think owning a gun is a sign of some kind of mental abnormality. According to General Social Survey data, gun owners ...
Are they fighting other GBL's, or engaging in fights with straights?
ReplyDeleteIve read that lesbian relationships have a higher incidence of violence within them from the "butch" of the pair towards the "femme" of the pair, but haven't delved into that enough to really know.
I do know, from my relationship with law enforcement, that gay murders are notoriously grisly.
Maybe gay men do more drugs and girly crimes like shoplifting. Or maybe they get charged for their escapades in public bathrooms.
ReplyDelete"Are they fighting other GBL's, or engaging in fights with straights?"
ReplyDeleteFights with anyone.
Any explanations?
ReplyDeleteLOL, seriously?
How about being rejected by your family, friends, community, and religious leaders? Being bullied as a kid? Being taught that your very nature is sinful and deviant and wrong?
No, I can't see any reason why homosexuals would be more likely to engage in dangerous and illegal behaviors. Most kids raised in a constant environment of shame and rejection turn into such wonderful well-rounded, law-abiding citizens! /sarcasm
I think most gay guys who get into fistfights get into fistfights with other gay guys, usually guys they're involved with.
ReplyDeleteMen whose parents had any sort of class whatsoever were taught from a very young age not to hit women. So emotional fights in heterosexual relationships are somewhat less likely to spill over into violence.
Really, if a relationship is falling apart or already dead, why not pop the guy one if he's acting like an ass?
If the scale consists only of the average raw number of crimes per person, then the differences between heterosexual and homosexual males are too smal to warrant attention, and they can, conversely, turn out to be the opposite in other comparison samples with equally low number of homosexuals.
ReplyDeleteControlled studies of heterosexual and homosexual men show a trend for the latter group to be less physically violent, whilst not differing from straights in rates of verbal and other non-physical kinds of social aggression.
About the disparities between lesbians and heterosexual women, they don't surprise me. Lesbians are almost twice as likely to abuse their partners as straight women (though they are not as violent as homo or heterosexual men, who are three times more prone to such behavior).
Does the criminality scale include illegal drug use? Some HIV-denialists claim AIDS is actually caused by drug-use.
ReplyDelete