The Conservatives’ Gay Kids
posted by Jason Mazzone
With the Federal Marriage Amendment coming before the Senate this month, it’s a good time to ask: why do so many conservatives have gay offspring? To name just a few: Phyllis Schlafly (son, John), Dick & Lynne Cheney (Mary), Randall Terry (Jamiel), Sonny Bono (Chastity), Alan Keyes (Maya) and Pete Knight (David). Meanwhile, those liberal Kennedys of Massachusetts appear to have no gay children of record. Is there something about the Republican lifestyle that leads to homosexuality?
June 3, 2006 at 3:33 pm
Posted in: Current Events
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Responses (7)
Junior - June 3, 2006 at 5:27 pm
Don’t forget Charles Socarides, the psychiatrist kicked out of the American Psychological Association for continuing to maintain that homosexuality is a form of mental illness. His son, Richard Socarides, was a high-ranking aid in the Clinton White House.
The Roosevelts seem pretty straight as well.
Dylan - June 3, 2006 at 9:12 pm
Average family size? The best (only?) predictor identified for being gay is how many older brothers one has. Since conservatives probably have more children on average, you’d think… Of course, most of the examples above are lesbians, and I don’t know if there’s any similar predictive effect for them.
Adam - June 4, 2006 at 12:56 pm
Phyllis’ son is named Roger, not John. He’s a well-regarded cryptographer. Or maybe she has several sons?
timnino - June 5, 2006 at 2:09 pm
I wonder why the selective use of comment selection on this site today??
Yesterday there were no less than 10 comments on this blog post; today a mere three.. Wondrous, I say!!!
Eh Nonymous - June 6, 2006 at 12:35 pm
Junior: by Roosevelts, are you specifically thinking of Eleanor here?
I suspect it’s a matter of schadenfraude, and the particular joys of picking out hypocrisy. When someone inveighs against the bad parenting or bad genes or bad choices that lead to a certain lifestyle, it’s convenient to point out that they have convicted themselves of bad parenting, or having “bad” genes, or allowing/ encouraging/ tolerating “bad” choices by their descendants.
Also, GOPers are (rest of comment self-censored, to preserve a more perfect union).
Kaimi - June 11, 2006 at 2:18 am
I’ve seen this argument made before, Jason, but I’ve never really found it convincing.
First, I’m not sure that the data sets are similar. Conservatives probably have more kids, so there’s a greater likelihood that some gay kids will come from those families. If every conservative has four kids and every liberal has two, then ceteris paribus, we’d expect to see twice as many gay kids from conservative families, right? (Assuming that sexual orientation is a born trait).
Second, and more importantly, this level of prevalence seems normal.
The numbers that I’ve seen suggest that around 5% of the population is gay. (I’ve seen estimates as low as 2 or 3% and as high as 10%). Why do the people on your list have gay kids? Because 5% of the population is gay, and that 5% is going to fall on conservatives as well as liberals.
The apparently arbitrary nature of the list you’ve got just confirms to me that it merely illustrates where the 5% fell. If one assembled a list of top conservatives, blind, it would look really different than this list. It would go Bush-Cheney-McCain-Hastert-Frist-Scalia-Specter-Rove etc. In contrast, this list includes people like Bono and Knight, people who would never make anyone’s cut of influential conservatives. (Where does Bono fall on the list of important conservatives — number 550?)
So yeah, it’s no surprise that if you take 500 or a thousand conservative politicians, some of them will have gay kids. It would be a statistical shock if they didn’t.
Mark - August 28, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Robin Lawford and Steven Smith, both Kennedy offspring are gay. So, your slam against Republicans is inaccurate and inappropriate. However, just to give you some credit, Gerald Ford’s son is gay
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