D.C. Pastor Again Assails Lesbianism

"There is clearly evidence that more and more youth of all ethnicities are coming out and declaring their sexuality. But that's across the board," Savin-Williams said. "I don't think it's happening any more in the black community than in any other community."

As homosexuality among their peers becomes more visible, "you will have more kids experimenting who may not be quote-unquote really gay," added Lisa M. Diamond, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Utah who studies the development of sexual identity in young adults. "But folks who try it and are not actually gay don't tend to continue with it. They go back to dating the opposite sex."

Diamond said the notion that lesbianism is widespread among 10- and 11-year-olds "flies in the face of all the data ever collected."

Counselors who work in D.C. public schools said they are unaware of any rapid rise in the number of lesbians on school campuses. Nor had anyone heard of girls being herded into a gym and asked to reveal the nature of their sexual liaisons.

"No such event has taken place in D.C. public schools," said system spokeswoman Alexis Moore.

Wilson declined yesterday to provide specifics about that incident or other claims in his Web posting.

School board President Peggy Cooper Cafritz said some D.C. schools have reported that gangs of gay girls sometimes get into fights and otherwise "rebelliously strike out" at a society that ignores and alienates them. But that's a far cry, she said, from Wilson's assertion that gay gangs are recruiting girls to be lesbians.

"What he's talking about, I think, is pretty ignorant. I think it's based in ignorance," Cooper Cafritz said. "I don't think there's a rampant epidemic of lesbianism undermining heterosexual black society."