The bioethically-oriented religious right has a strange history of inventing imaginary disorders with which to accuse or disparage people whose lives or behavior they disapprove of – or to scare others out of behavior they might choose if left to their own devices. Examples include the pretended “post-abortion trauma syndrome”, as well as the repeatedly-disproven “link” between abortion and breast cancer. There is also the bizarrely counter-factual harping on the dangers of contraception and abortion, never presented in comparative context, which would demonstrate them both to be vastly safer than an unwanted pregnancy. And there is a lot of weird nonsense heard about pornography, masturbation, television shows, magazine covers, and whatever other source of titillation pushes the right’s always-armed sex-panic buttons.

Beyond abortion and women’s sexuality, though, without doubt the one issue that prompts more purely delusional pseudo-scientific spewing is the question of homosexuality – its source, its practice, and its consequences. “Answers” to the befuddling question what “causes” homosexuality are legion. It will surprise no one to discover that James Dobson, purveyor of so much amusing right-wing bloviating, has discovered yet another such theory – one he claims is “being discussed in the child development clinics and in the universities throughout the country and around the world”, none of which seem to have heard of it.

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