STEVE ROTHAUS
Just before the new year, Miami-Dade police officer Dieter Gurbatow killed himself in Cooper City after being arrested on pornography and solicitation charges. Caught in an Internet police sting, Gurbatow -- 49 and engaged to a woman -- was accused of trying to arrange sex with a 14-year-old boy.
The same day Gurbatow died, former Boca Raton Rabbi Jerrold Levy, 59, got 6 ˝ years in federal prison for having sex with a 14-year-old boy he met online.
At his sentencing on Dec. 28, Levy, -- married with grown children -- tearfully told the judge:
``For the first time in 45 years, I am free from being a gay man in the closet. I no longer have to live a double life and although I am incarcerated, I am a free man.''
But although Levy self-identified in court as a gay man, many see great harm in linking his homosexuality to pedophilia.
''It's important for people to know that being gay has nothing to do with pedophilia,'' said Dr. Larry Harmon, a Miami-Dade psychologist whose practice specializes in sexual orientation issues. ``Being gay is a sexual orientation. Pedophilia is a psychological disorder.''
Dr. Michael Rappaport, a Miami psychologist who is treating Levy in prison, said there is a major difference between homosexuality and pedophilia:
''Pedophiles want to have sex with little children. Homosexuals want to have sex with other men,'' he said.
``Pedophiles get insulted if you suggest they are gay.''
Rappaport, a heterosexual doctor with many gay clients, says, ``There is a prejudice that gay males are out there seducing straight boys. That pedophiles are gay men. That's so unfair to the gay community.''
Gregory M. Herek, a psychology professor at University of California/Davis, said many pedophiles are neither homosexual nor heterosexual.
''They have no adult sexual attraction. It's clearer to refer to it as male-male or female-female sex,'' said Herek, who has extensively studied and written about sexual orientation issues, including child molestation.
The ratio of gay-straight child molesters reflects the population in general and sexual orientation is irrelevant, Herek said.
''There are gay child molesters, just as there are heterosexual child molesters,'' he said. ``Just as there are gay redheads and heterosexual redheads.''
Still, many people think that gay people are child molesters.
Herek conducted a 1999 national telephone survey in which respondents were asked what proportion of gay people would molest children. ''Almost 20 percent of [heterosexual] male respondents . . . thought [gay men] were likely to molest children,'' Herek said. Ten percent of heterosexual women believed the same thing, he said.
Conservative anti-gay groups often feed this fear, said Herek, who has written about Anita Bryant's 1977 campaign to repeal Miami-Dade County's original gay-rights ordinance.
From Herek's website, http://psychology.ucdavis.edurainbow/index.html: 'Gay people are often portrayed as a threat to children. When Anita Bryant campaigned successfully in 1977 . . . she named her organization `Save Our Children,' and warned that 'a particularly deviant-minded [gay] teacher could sexually molest children.' ''
Herek expects the same propaganda will be used this year by Take Back Miami-Dade, the group seeking to rescind Dade's current gay-rights law. A vote is set for Sept. 10.
For a much-publicized debate last month with Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, Take Back communications director Eladio José Armesto brought his young son, Alejandro.
''What we saw back in Dade County in the '70s, and what we may see again in the fall, this confusion gets exploited,'' Herek said.
Outlooks runs the second and fourth Thursday of the month. To contact Steve Rothaus, call 305-376-3770, or send him faxes at 305-376-5287. Notices can be mailed to: Steve Rothaus, 1 Herald Plaza, Fifth Floor, Miami, FL 33132. The column is online at http://miami.com/gay