We are constantly told that it is homophobic myth to say that homosexuals are more implicated in child sexual abuse than the population at large.
For example, the Southern Poverty Law Center, in "refuting" an article by Bryan Fischer, claims that it is a myth that "Homosexuals molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals"; among other things, we get the claim that pedophilia is a separate sexual orientation from homosexuality and heterosexuality since "most of whom will prey on children of either gender", which is odd because we find that girls are 2-4 times more likely to be sexually abused than boys, and that childhood sexual abusers are overwhelmingly male and that "women are more likely to abuse boys while men are more likely to abuse girls". Given that men have more access to boys than to girls, one would then expect these men to then overwhelmingly sexually abuse boys, since, as we are told, they are attracted to children - not males.
So I decided to look into the data.
The SPLC claims that Kurt Freund "concluded that homosexuals were not any more disposed to pedophilia than heterosexuals" in his 1989 Journal of Sex Research article, but they are either being mischievous or incompetent (quite possibly, both) - Freund et al's 1989 Journal of Sex Research article was Heterosexuality, Homosexuality, and Erotic Age Preference. It was about "Heterosexual and homosexual males who erotically preferred physically mature partners". While the paper itself does not even attempt to evaluate whether homosexuals are more or less disposed to pedophilia than heterosexuals, the literature review explicitly contradicts the SPLC's claims:
"An earlier study assessed the incidence of male sex offenders against female children vs. such offenders against male children (Freund, Heasman, Racansky, & Glancy, 1984). Approximately one-third of these individuals had victimized boys and two-thirds had victimized girls. This finding is consistent with the proportions reported in two earlier studies (Gebhard, Gagnon, Pomeroy, & Christenson, 1965; Mohr, Turner, & Jerry, 1974). Also, in a recent literature search (Cameron, 1985) which examined 17 more studies on sex offenders against children, the ratio of victimized female to male children was approximately 2:1. Interestingly, this ratio differs substantially from the ratio of gynephiles (men who erotically prefer physically mature females) to androphiles (men who erotically prefer physically mature males), which is at least 20 to 1 (Gebhard, 1972; Hirschfeld, 1920; Kinsey, Pomeroy, & Martin, 1948; Whitam, 1983)."
This part of the conclusion also contradicts the SPLC, concluding:
"Perhaps, the negative result of the present study supports an alternative hypothesis which focuses on homosexual pedophilia instead of androphilia, namely, that the development of pedophilia is more closely linked with homosexuality than with heterosexuality (Freund et al., 1984)."
A recent (2023) paper also refutes the claim that those who commit child sex abuse are not sexually interested in adults, only children (at least in men). In Pedophilia is associated with lower sexual interest in adults: Meta-analyses and a systematic review with men who had sexually offended against children, Schippers et al note that "people who have sexually offended against children (PSOC)... with pedophilia showed no sexual preference for children over adults" (the distinction between preference and interest is quite subtle). Perhaps one might still valiantly make a distinction between true pedophiles (those who are only sexually interested in children) and those who commit child sex abuse [similar to the gay vs men who have sex with men {MSM} distinction, even if the magnitude is much greater here], in order to claim that homosexuals aren't more likely to be involved in child sex abuse, but practically the distinction does not matter.
In any event, Freund, in a later 1992 paper, The proportions of heterosexual and homosexual pedophiles among sex offenders against children: an exploratory study, concluded after using phallometric test sensitivities that "the ratio of heterosexual to homosexual pedophiles was calculated to be approximately 11:1. This suggests that the resulting proportion of true pedophiles among persons with a homosexual erotic development is greater than that in persons who develop heterosexually". Note that this suggests that 91.7% of pedophiles/child sex offenders are homosexual.
Using these numbers, we can run some scenarios to explore whether homosexuals might be over-represented in child sex abuse. Of course, we need some base rates - if (for the sake of argument) 92% of the male population is homosexual, homosexual men would actually be *less* likely to abuse children sexually than non-homosexual men.
According to a range of estimates compiled by the Williams Institute at UCLA's School of Law, 0.7-2.5% of the population is gay/lesbian. Meanwhile, Michael Seto suggests that an upper limit to the proportion of the male population with pedophilia is 5% and a lower limit is 1%.
Based on these and Freund's numbers, we get the following (I have displayed intermediate workings in the interests of transparency):
In the various scenarios, gay men are 3-13 times more likely to be pedophiles than non-gay men.
Perhaps one could rerun the analysis by looking at MSM, instead of gay men, but MSM estimates are 0.03% to 6.5% of the population, so MSM would either be almost as over-represented or much more over-represented in the pedophile population compared to gay men.
Addendum:
Related:
Sexual Desire Among an Online Sample of Men Sexually Attracted to Children - "Sexual attraction to children occurs in roughly 3 to 9 percent of the population. However, most knowledge about such desires comes from forensic samples, and most studies fail to assess preferred sexual activity and sexual partner. A new multimodal assessment of sexual desire was used to investigate interest in consensual and nonconsensual sex with adults and children in an online sample of men sexually attracted to children (n = 101). Desires were compared across history of sex offending behavior and preferred gender of child victim. Men who have and have not acted on their sexual attractions to children reported similar levels of sexual desire. Men primarily attracted to girls reported greater desire for sex with adults than did men primarily attracted to boys. Results highlight the heterogeneity of men sexually attracted to children as well as possible distinctions across gender of children to whom they are primarily attracted."
