GAY TRUTH

A controversial new study argues that a host of research on gay, lesbian and bisexual teenagers could be based on faulty data because of confused teens and “jokesters” who later said they were straight. The report focuses on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health , a survey that followed a nationally representative group of tens of thousands of teens into adulthood. Add Health, as it is known, is considered one of the most important sources of data on the lives of young people, including those who are gay, lesbian and bisexual. What caught the attention of Ritch Savin-Williams , a professor at Cornell University , was the fact that more than 70% of the teens who said they had ever had a “romantic attraction” to someone of the same sex later told researchers that they were straight. That struck Savin-Williams as odd, since teens usually come out of the closet, not the other way around, he said. In his analysis published last month in the Archives of Sexual Behavior , Savi...

ITHACA, NY ,  - Questions are being raised about the validity of research on teenagers with same-sex attractions after a Cornell University professor found that more than 70 percent of teens who said they had ever had a same-sex “romantic attraction” later told researchers that they were unreservedly heterosexual . The study, published last month in the  Archives of Sexual Behavior , analyzed data from the  National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health , also known as Add Health, which conducted four waves of surveys on teens as they matured into adulthood from 1994 to 2008. Study author Ritch Savin-Williams , director of Cornell's Sex and Gender Lab, said that some of the "inconsistent" data may have been caused by confusion over the questions in Add Health, which could have led some teens to incorrectly say they were homosexuals. But Savin-Williams highlighted "the existence of mischievous adolescents who played a ‘jokester’ role" "In t...

Teens who self-identify as homosexual are five times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to attempt suicide, according to a study released last week. The study, published in the journal Pediatrics online on April 18, was conducted in order to determine whether living in a gay friendly social environment affected the risk of a teen identifying as homosexual committing suicide . It found that teens in “unsupportive” social environments were 20 percent more at risk of attempting suicide than those in “supportive” environments. “This study documents an association between an objective measure of the social environment and suicide attempts among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth,” concludes the study abstract, adding that the results “have important implications for the development of policies and interventions to reduce sexual orientation–related disparities in suicide attempts.” But Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council pointed out that the takeaway finding from...