July 28, 2012 11:13am by David Farrar

Colin Craig – being gay is a choice due to child abuse

Mr Craig told 3 News that people choose to be gay rather than being born that way, many as a result of being abused as children.

What an astonishing statement. I’m not sure what is more ignorant or offensive. The belief that people choose to be gay. When did Mr Craig choose to be heterosexual I wonder?

But even worse, his assertion that people choose to be gay because they were abused as a child. This is the sort of nut job statements I might expect in West Virginia, not New Zealand.

He says he has seen the impact same-sex parents have on their children but when asked if he knew any same-sex couples with children, he was cagey in his response.

“I actually do know of a couple, I don’t know them well. I wouldn’t say they were friends of mine.”

I’m sure he wouldn’t. Oh yuck, we can’t make friends with those gay people who were abused as children. They might infect us.

Another one his arguments – according to research he couldn’t remember – is that gay men have a lower life-expectancy than non-gay men.

“Does that matter? I think it does if you think of the kids they raise,” he says.

Good God. I didn’t think he could get worse. Using Colin Craig logic, then no Maori parents should be allowed to have children, as Maori life expectancy is lower than non-Maori.

As for the research Craig cites unnamed, it is probably the research by Paul Cameron that was so deeply flawed he got ejected from three professional bodies over it. An analysis is here, but the short version is he formed his conclusions based on obituary notices in gay newspapers, which is so far from a scientific sample as to not be funny.

He was so sure that homosexuality was a choice, he bet his own sexuality on it.

“Do you think you could choose to be gay if that is the case?,” he was asked.

“Sure. Sure I could,” he responded.

“You could choose to be gay?,” he was asked again.

“Yea, if I wanted to,’ he replied.

This fits with my theories about repression!

Let me say I could never ever be gay. Quite simply there is not one fibre of my body that wants to be intimate with men. I can’t change that – I am hopelessly addicted to falling for women. Likewise though, many (not all) gay men and women just do not find the opposite sex in any way attractive. It is not a choice. That is just the way they are.

Colin Craig may be mixing up sex with desire. He may be saying that he could have sex with a man. But sexual orientation is about attraction.