The recent outcry over the TSA giving two equally offensive options to travellers — a revealing full body scan or a full body intrusive groping — will inevitably result in an outcry and backlash from flight crews and frequent flyers. I think there might be an interesting lawsuit in the making, too. The TSA claims the groping is done by agents of the same gender of the person being searched. Will they also certify that 100% of those doing the pat-downs are heterosexual? I mean, it seems that the logical reason for assigning agents of the same gender as the person being searched is to avoid claims of sexual assault by TSA agents… they don't want it to appear that, for example, a male TSA agent is feeling up a pretty young woman. Can they, will they, therefore certify that the FEMALE TSA agent is not a lesbian enjoying the process a bit too much? The conundrum is that they are probably legally forbidden from disclosing the sexual preference of a TSA agent, or even asking about it, so… Class action lawsuit(s) ahead? In the words of a great conservo-American, "You betcha."
11.13.2010
11.03.2010
A missionary in a foreign culture
Allow me to introduce myself. I am a missionary in a foreign culture.
Oh, I don't mean Hawaii as a location so much. We came to these islands about 30 years ago, burned out bridges to Alabama and adopted this place as home. I love it here. I don't mean I love the sun, sand and surf (those are nice extras) -- I mean I love the people of Hawaii and the place. I have failed and succeeded here, reared our children here, developed deep life-long friendships here and have invested our lives here. This is home, and these people are my people.
But the culture is still, in many ways, very foreign to me, and the election results last night pointed it out once again.
This week in my Fuller Seminary class we are dealing with living as if we are missionaries in a foreign place, and in our REUNION Church Leadership Meeting last night we talked about what that might look like in real terms, to live our lives as if we are missionaries in whatever context we work. We are looking for the natural bridges between those in the church and those in the community in which the church exists, the way an American Missionary to Nepal might do.
2 hours after that meeting I found myself experiencing a teachable moment when the election results from Hawaii came in. The young, attractive, nice guy, born-again Catholic, family-values, church-friendly, former judge, Lt. Governor, Republican candidate for Governor, Duke Aiona, was defeated by 17% by a 72-year-old, ultra-liberal, forner campus radical who favors same-sex marriage, abortion on demand and pretty much every position I find anathema. There are enough evangelical Christian voters in Hawaii to have easily elected Aiona, which tells me that many of them cast a vote for Neil Abercrombie because he has a (D) after his name, despite his moral views that hey might find repugnant. They voted on financial issues (citing the school furloughs) which are temporary, rather than on moral issues, which are eternal. That absolutely astounds me, and reminds me that in this culture I am a stranger, an alien, a foreigner… a missionary.
1st Peter 2:11 (NLT) reminds me, once again that we are merely "temporary residents and foreigners" -- missionaries in a foreign culture.
11.02.2010
11.01.2010
Is It True That “1 in 10 Teens Has Had a Same-Sex Partner”? – Kevin DeYoung
Be suspicious of statistics, especially those that seem too good or too bad or too surprising to be true.
You may have seen this amazing news headline: 1 in 10 Teens Has Had a Same-Sex Partner. The story on AOL Health begins this way:
Nearly one in ten teens has had a same-sex partner — double what previous research has shown, according to a surprising new study.
The latest findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, reveal that 9.3 percent of teenagers say they have had at least one partner who is the same sex as they are.
That’s about twice as many as indicated in a 2002 study of Massachusetts and Vermont teens showing 5 to 6 percent of teenagers had had same-sex partners.
“I don’t know that it means there’s an increase in prevalence,” said Massachusetts psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Carlat, AOL Health’s mental health expert. “As homosexuality has become more and more accepted in society, people are more willing to acknowledge their sexuality than they used to be.”
Wow! Who knew? 1 in 10 American teenagers has had a same-sex partner?! That’s really terrible/terrific (depending on your point of view). What a revelation!
The only problem with this revelation is that it’s false. If the reporter for AOL had taken time to read just the abstract for the Pediatrics article she may have seen the heading “CONCLUSIONS” (in all caps) and noted this summary:
Of sexually active adolescents, 9.3% reported a same-sex partner, a higher estimate than other published rates.
AOL speaks of 1 in 10 teens; the original article concludes 9.3% of sexually active adolescents reported a same-sex partner. There’s a big difference. The survey analyzed data from 17,220 teenagers. Of those, 7,261 (or 42%) reported having had sex. So according this study 58% of teens are not having sex with anyone and 9.3% of those have, had same-sex partners, or 3.9% of the total sample.
There are other reasons to be suspicious of the headline. For starters, as AOL reports later in the article: “The new research analyzed data from 17,220 teenagers in New York City who filled out public health surveys” (emphasis mine). The whole Pediatric article is not available online so I can’t comment on the ins and outs of the methodology. But I have to believe that a study dealing with “teens in New York City who fill out public health surveys” is going to yield some different results than, say, teens in Dallas or Atlanta or Sioux Falls.
And then there’s the disturbing information, which the AOL article also reports, that “About a third of teen boys who had bisexual experiences said they’d had forced sex, compared to 6 percent of boys who reported having only heterosexual experiences.” Later the article says that 36% of girls with bisexual experiences and 35% of boys with bisexual experiences endured some kind of “dating violence” in the past year. So, at the very least, a good chunk of the teens with a “same-sex partner” were forced into this experience. Indeed, the journal abstract concludes: “Adolescents with both-sex partners reported a marked prevalence of dating violence and forced sex.”
The lesson in all this is, once again, to be wary of dubious data. It is not true that 1 in 10 teens have had a same-sex partner. What’s true is that around 4% of teens in New York who filled out a public health survey reported a same-sex experience, and that a not insignificant number of those experiences were forced in some way.
Don’t believe everything you hear.
Be careful how you read and interpret statistics, especially in popular media; sometimes there is a reporting agenda, and more often there is just sloppy reporting or the inability of the reporter to ask the hard questions
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)