Ugly American

In a post dated April 17, 2006 Shelley the Republican illustrates why Americans are perceived as ignorant buffoons by the international community. From a series of pictures depicting a gentleman in a pink jacket, short skirt and stiletto boots working as a deliveryman, Shelley gleaned that the entire European population is homosexual, sado-masochistic, and child-abusing. These are the statistics she claims support her theory that Europe has become a debased, immoral place:

-Percentage of European children suffering in or from gay marriages: 30
-Percentage of European marriages being divoced as a result of leather or rubber fetishes: 25
-Percentage of Europeans wearing rubber or leather underwear: 29
-Percentage of Europeans that had sex with the same gender: 47

Her statistics come from web.de. This site is not only in German, but a search engine such as Yahoo or Google. Although she does provide a link to DPD, the company the subject of the photographs purportedly works for, she does not provide a link to the original source of the statistics used to make her case. I find this highly suspicious, as she provides no way for one such as myself to study those statistics and make my own evaluation.

Although I heartily disagree with Shelley, as an American I defend her right to say it; however, what I cannot swallow is her passing along as fact numbers that seem absolutely fabricated and denying access to the original source. An opinion is not a fact, and it is irresponsible and unacceptable to portray it as fact. The wording of particular statements, such as "Percentage of European children suffering in or from gay marriages," sounds biased to me. It also seems like an unrealistic number. Thirty percent of all children in the EU could not possibly be in the custody of legally married same-sex couples. Each couple would have to have about 100 kids under their care for that number to even come close to reflecting reality. As a further illustration of the one-sidedness of her arguments, she does not offer the other side of the debate. N% of gay parents abuse their children as opposed to n% of heterosexual parents, for example. I dare say parental abuse from heterosexual parents has a much longer recorded history than that by homosexual parents, making it very difficult to even base an argument on those grounds.

Shelley has the right to voice her opinion on her blog, albeit uninformed, biased, and woefully overgeneralized. What is unacceptable is the guise of opinion as fact. Unfortunately, this is a sad picture of Americans for the world to see. Seemingly closed to intelligent debate, and extrapolating on images of one individual, who for all we know lost a drunken bet at a bar with his buddies, she seemingly invents statistics without giving her readers the benefit of knowing where she gathered her information. It is an unfortunate and irresponsible use of our freedom of expression, and what we call the "ugly American."