Douglas Murray, a gay author, gets the facts wrong about gay money – and refuses to admit it
Douglas Murray’s The Madness of Crowds (Bloomsbury, 2019) is getting a lot of press in non-progressive circles. He’s appeared on two podcasts I’ve listened to repeating this claim in his book (p. 242):
What if people aren’t oppressed?
Perhaps instead of seeking out oppression and seeing oppression everywhere, we could start to exit the maze by noting the various “victim groups” that aren’t oppressed or are even advantaged. For instance, studies have shown that gay men and lesbian women consistently earn more on average than their heterosexual counterparts. There are a variety of possible reasons, not least the fact that most of them won’t have children and can put in the extra hours at the office[,] which benefits both them and their employer. Is this a gay advantage?
False. (Except for lesbians. But lesbians aren’t his point here.)
Cited research states the opposite of what Murray claims
Murray cites Marieka Klawitter 2014: “Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Sexual Orientation on Earnings.” I printed out that paper (again) and read it (again).
Klawitter’s paper (PDF) itself conclusively disproves Murray’s claim. Murray reports that this paper says the exact opposite of what it really says. I assume Murray never read the paper.
Excerpting Klawitter 2014 (copy-edited here):
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Recent studies have found that, before controlling for any explanatory factors, lesbians earn significantly more than do heterosexual women and gay men earn less than heterosexual men.
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Beginning with Badgett (1995), almost all studies have found that gay men earn less than heterosexual men after controlling for other characteristics[.]
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For men, Klawitter (1998) found that men in same-sex couples earned 30% less than similar married men, whereas several authors found no significant earnings differences by sexual orientation and point estimates near zero[.]
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Table 1 shows that the studies found, on average, that gay men earned 11% less than did heterosexual men[,] although the estimates ranged from 30% less to no difference.
Studies, on average, found that lesbians earned 9% more than heterosexual women[,] and the range across studies was much wider than for men – from 25% less to 43% more.
So let’s look at Klawitter’s Table 1:
| Men | Women | |
|---|---|---|
| Number of studies | 34 | 29 |
| Average | –11% | 9% |
| Standard error | 2% | 2% |
| Range | –30% to 0% | –25% to +43% |
The reasons for gay men’s lower incomes and earnings not only are well known and are documented on this Web site, they are partly explained in Klawitter’s paper itself: Gay males have higher average levels of education, but work fewer hours and choose female-dominated professions that pay lower.
Let’s recap
- Douglas K. Murray, and everybody with a net connection, had access to a convenient and readily understood explanation of the truth about gay and lesbian incomes and earnings. You’re reading it now. Murray and his editors could have consulted these pages at any time.
- Murray so thoroughly misrepresented a scientist’s work that he stated the opposite of what that scientist reported.
- That work itself was a review paper of dozens of other studies; just reading that paper would have disabused Murray of the notion that gay males earn more than straight males. He claimed that anyway.
- Bloomsbury did not bother fact-checking Murray’s ass and published a falsehood.
- Murray has dined out on this falsehood in more than one interview.
Let’s add another item: When Naomi Wolf gets a consequential fact wrong about homosexuality, she is excoriated in the media and her book almost gets pulped. It’s a scandal. When gay author Douglas K. Murray does the same, he gets away with murder.
Who couldn’t be bothered to respond to queries on this issue?
Well, obviously Douglas Murray is too important to acknowledge any error, least of all one of this magnitude. I used Murray’s contact form to alert him of this issue about two weeks ago. Insanely, that form demands that one accept future spam E‑mail just to send a message. But send it I did. Murray ignored me. (Even more oddly, he was in Canada as I wrote this.)
Everyone associated with The Madness of Crowds at publisher Bloomsbury refused to comment, all the way up to its CEO:
- Agent Matthew Hamilton
- Editors Robin Baird-Smith and Jamie Birkett
- CEO Nigel Newton
(Marieka Klawitter wouldn’t comment, either, after two queries.)
Posted: 2019.11.24