Lawmakers in the state of Texas are currently debating whether or not to ban gay couples from adopting foster children. And giving the pro-ban side ammunition in this debate is a study that claims to show that homosexual couples are vastly more likely to sexually molest the children in their care than are heterosexual couples.
One small problem: The study's supposed "findings" are utter crap.
Story here:
Last week, the Texas House of Representatives passed a child-services bill with an amendment that would make Texas the first state in the nation to prevent same-sex couples from becoming foster parents. The state Senate passed a conflicting bill without that measure, and the two bodies are debating how to proceed.
The proposed ban attracted national media attention, and several "pro-family" groups seeking to drum up support for the bill have been circulating some troubling stats about gay parents. Among the most striking, stated during a CNN program: children in foster homes with same-sex parents are 11 times as likely to be sexually abused as those with heterosexual parents.
To get on CNN, that number snaked through a twisting path, from a little-noticed Illinois study published by an antigay scientist/activist in a psychological journal, to several conservative Web sites, to, finally, the attention of a Texas activist who presented her misinterpretation of the study on national television, essentially unchallenged. It's a textbook example of how flawed numbers can gain national attention if advocates work hard enough — especially when there aren't widely-known conflicting estimates.
I'll start at the end of the number's path and try to unravel it to the source. Cathie Adams, president of the Dallas-based Texas Eagle Forum advocacy group, appeared April 21 on CNN in a debate segment about the proposed Texas law. Her designated sparring partner was Randall Ellis, executive director of the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas. "We also have got to look at research that does show that children in same-sex couple homes are 11 times more likely to be abused sexually," Ms. Adams said during the live segment. "And I think that that is not an issue that can be ignored. It is a proven fact and that was a research study done in the state of Illinois that has not, as the state of Texas has not, even asked that question."
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Mike in Texas
Thanks for bringing that article up.
For those not familiar with Paul Cameron's long history of fraud, there's a lot more information here.
http://www.ralliance.org/Cameron.html
2 - Dawn
I think the entire foster care system is in serious need of overhauling. There are plenty of people who would make excellent foster parents, but this whole payment system is what draws out scumbags and abuse to already abused and emotionally distressed children.
I have always advocated (and my mother agrees having spent plenty of time in the system as a child) that what needs to be done is create a state monitored "orphanage" where children are cared for by professionals who are paid to teach, love and protect the children in their care.
It is possible and would go a long way to eliminate the abuse so many children face in the foster care system.
And those people could just as easily be gay individuals or hetero. Anyone who is willing to show the patience and love needed to care for someone's elses children should be given the equal chance of doing so - because it's not an easy job, but certainly a worthwhile one.
3 - bhw
The biggest shame of what's happening in TX is that gay couples have already been a part of the foster care system there, some of them for years. This change in TX isn't happening because of some newly discovered problem with those gay couples -- it's simply a push by the homophobic community in TX to change the law for no apparent reason except that *they* don't like gay couples being near children.
It doesn't matter that their foster system needs these couples and has been successfully relying upon them for years. What matters is that they're GAY. And that's it.
Thanks for pointing out the misinformation being spouted, RJ.
4 - Dave Nalle
I saw a clip of the crazy woman who's promoting this pogrom on a news show where the interviewer just nailed her dead on the Cameron 'study'. I can't imagine worse methodology. With his methods I could probably prove that heterosexual couples are using children in satanic rituals.
Dave
5 - Steve S
Thanks, RJ, for pointing out the obvious.
I pointed out recently that these attacks on my community from the Right, has disasterous consequences. I tried to document that there is a correlation between conservative leaders aligning with extremists and the increasing oppression that my community must live under.
It all gets dismissed as me being a paranoid liberal attacking conservatives and Christianity, but I am a baptized Christian myself. And it's maddening because nobody clearly read the post, and if they did, they would have seen that I did not attack Christianity or it's ideology, and I did not attack the conservative movement. It wasn't about attacking the privitization of Social Security or if we should have invaded Iraq. And it was NOT about the moderate conservative CHristian. It was about extremism and it got dismissed by those who did read it as paranoia. But when people disseminate misinformation, such as that which you pointed out, RJ, there are consequences that my community must live under. Throughout American history (and probably world history) there has always been a direct correlation between where the conservative/liberal pendulum swings in this country and our own safety.
Today even in the liberal bay area, acts of bias (ranging from verbal harassment to murder) are up against gay people. source
Nice thing to wake up to, with your morning coffee, huh? But that's not all the headlines I get to see this a.m. There are threats against teachers in Marin county.
And I've documented many other instances, in the other thread.
The fact is that in 96 percent of U.S. counties, at least one child is being raised by a gay or lesbian couple, according to Census figures analyzed by UCLA researcher Gary Gates. source- Children with gay parents talk about their families.
It's sad because to many people the thought of a theocracy or of oppression is of government mandated laws that attack people. But no, that isn't what is needed to live in fear for your safety. And it's also sad that so many people can't see that a person can live in a house and be free to live their life without oppression, fear and tyranny of the majority, and that person can live RIGHT NEXT DOOR to a family who IS oppressed, who receives death threats, and who lives in fear for their safety FROM the majority. Shit, sometimes I wonder why I bother, it can seem like nobody gets it, nobody cares sometimes.
After all, on that other thread, when I documented WITH FACT that pandering to extremists costs lives, the only honest response I got to that was "I'm willing to be tolerant of some pandering to Christian extremists for political purposes without damning those who do it". Oh well, I guess since they are gay and lesbian lives, or lives of illegal immigrants, then it's okay. What else am I to conclude?
Anyway, thanks RJ, for pointing out the obvious.
6 - Dave Nalle
The reason it seems like no one gets it, Steve, is that most of us live in communities where we don't see the same persecution which you do. Frankly, I find it bizarre that you encounter so much persecution. Same sex parents are a dime a dozen here in Austin and no one raises an eyebrow and you never hear about death threats. I suspect that the same is true of any big city. People either don't care or mind their own business. That doesn't mean that we think your experiences of persecution aren't real, but not sharing those experiences or even observing them in our local communities we find it hard to relate. It's even hard to project ourselves into your situation with our imaginations because that kind of persecution defies all reasonable logic.
Dave
7 - Steve S
Frankly, I find it bizarre that you encounter so much persecution.
But that is the primary difference, I guess between my liberal humanitarianism and your elistist pig philosophy. It isn't about ME. It's about my community. When it comes to social agendas, I'm not in it just for selfish myself. Because I personally have not received a death threat in 20 years, that negates the crisis?
There's no less than 30 active hate groups in Texas, and it seems that in Austin, Texas sexual orientation is not covered in hate crime reporting anyway.
I'm glad for you though, that in your world everything is peachy. I'm sure everybody is sharing everything with you, anyway. I bet they realize they get a lot of ground covered in doing so, Dave.
8 - Steve S
should have written 'my selfish self'.
9 - Steve S
oops. that first link, links to here! It should link to here instead.
10 - Temple Stark
That's just unmitigated ridiculousness. Those same sex parents in Austin (the unholy site of Betterthantherestofus) have just been told they can't adopt or take in foster children. I think if you talked to some of them I think you might start "getting it."
And I think today they just got a whole new level of "what's next for me?" stress that they didn't need.
And RJ - good on ya for going against the grain. Surprised the hell out of me. I thought it was a post by SteveS until the tenor of the comments "confused" me.
11 - Shark
I know pickin' on Texas as the capital of racist, homophobic, right-wing Christoid fanatics is like shootin' fish in a barrel, but sometimes, ya gotta put some whupass on the stereotypes.
12 - Shark
*And don't forget:
for every DaveNalle, there is a Shark.
[insert liberal, kinda unamerican smiley face here]
13 - Temple Stark
No - Texas is an amazing place if for nothing else but the sheer beauty of the non-city areas. No place that big can be any one thing.
14 - Steve S
just for clarification, I am constantly linking to sources in most everything I say. So I don't see how people can not see what I see, unless they gloss over my comments/posts with already preconceived notions and have an automatic dismissal response already subconsciously formulating in their minds.
I was not trying to portray Austin as worse than anywhere else, but rather just like everywhere else. No, Dave, I am not afraid to go out in public with my daughter, nor am I afraid to introduce my partner as my partner. Most gay people aren't, but there is also a higher rate of agoraphobia in my community than elsewhere.
(to be fair - actual sentence says 'more prevalent', but doesn't clarify against what).
You dismiss reports of hate crimes being on the rise, just because nobody's shared with you?
15 - Shark
TempleS: "Texas is an amazing place if for nothing else but the sheer beauty of the non-city areas."
Current "non-city areas" as one speeds along the ubiquitous 20 lane concrete interstate looking out the window:
Lowes...
Home Depot...
100 acre Storage Facility...
Chilis...
15 Thearter Mega-Plex...
Starbucks...
200 acre Parking Lot...
Asthma Clinic...
Lowes...
Home Depot...
100 acre Storage Facility...
Chilis...
15 Thearter Mega-Plex...
Starbucks...
200 acre Parking Lot...
Asthma Clinic...
Lowes...
Home Depot...
100 acre Storage Facility...
Chilis...
15 Thearter Mega-Plex...
Starbucks...
200 acre Parking Lot...
Asthma Clinic...
Lowes...
Home Depot...
100 acre Storage Facility...
Chilis...
15 Thearter Mega-Plex...
Starbucks...
200 acre Parking Lot...
Asthma Clinic...
Lowes...
Home Depot...
100 acre Storage Facility...
Chilis...
15 Thearter Mega-Plex...
Starbucks...
200 acre Parking Lot...
Asthma Clinic...
Lowes...
Home Depot...
100 acre Storage Facility...
Chilis...
15 Thearter Mega-Plex...
Starbucks...
200 acre Parking Lot...
Asthma Clinic...
Lowes...
Home Depot...
100 acre Storage Facility...
Chilis...
15 Thearter Mega-Plex...
Starbucks...
200 acre Parking Lot...
Asthma Clinic...
(rinse and repeat)
16 - Steve S
what's with all the asthma clinics? Have mega corporations and an over-proliferation of vehicles destroyed the air there too?
17 - Dave Nalle
No Steve, Asthma is the new answer to every health and mental and emotional problem kids and also many grown-ups have. If there's anything wrong with them, if they misbehave, if they aren't perfectly happy, the answer is now asthma. It's the ADD of the new millenium.
To your earlier post bashing Austin. You clearly have NO idea what you're talking about. What the loony baptists in the state legislature do and what the attitudes are here in Austin are radically different. Austin is arguably one of the 3 most liberal cities in the US. Intolerance just doesn't fly here at all, in fact things are trending way too much in the other direction. City government is going out of its way to literally invent new issues to feel guilty about and new imagined wrongs to address.
The overall trend in the nation towards liberalization of attitudes towards homosexuality is undeniable, despite the fact that some anti-gay yahoos got elected to public office while no one was paying attention because it seemed so improbable. The ship will right itself soon enough.
>>You dismiss reports of hate crimes being on the rise, just because nobody's shared with you?<<
The reason more hate crimes are being reported is that 20 years ago there was no such thing as a hate crime to report. The crimes were still there, but no one was aware that there could be such a thing as a hate crime to be reported as something different from a regular crime. Back then crime was crime and it was generally pretty hateful. Now we have a heightened sensitivity to so-called hate crime, so it gets reported and recorded as such when it never did before. It's similar to the phenomenon with abducted children. More children aren't being abducted today statistically, but enormously more abductions are making the national news so everyone thinks it's happening more.
>>But that is the primary difference, I guess between my liberal humanitarianism and your elistist pig philosophy. It isn't about ME. It's about my community. When it comes to social agendas, I'm not in it just for selfish myself.<<
I'm not in it just for myself either. I see myself as an everyman, and if something makes my life better then it ought to do the same for anyone in even vaguely similar circumstances - like living in America.
>> Because I personally have not received a death threat in 20 years, that negates the crisis?<<
It suggests that the crisis is less of a crisis than it was, yes. I must be spoiled from living in too tolerant an environment. I suspect that when you have a strong gay community these things are less common, and I do tend to extrapolate from my own experience. My so-called 'elitist pig' attitude is to assume that since none of the gay people I know are being persecuted it's not happening as much elsewhere either. I know that's not entirely true, but it does suggest that things are a bit better today than they were 20 or 30 years ago when I did see persecution around me.
Even you admit that things have gotten better, but you're part of the 'glass half empty' school, like so many leftists, so it will not only never be good enough, it's not even better enough to be considered progress.
Dave
18 - Steve S
No Dave, I think we have come so far, so fast since stonewall. I think that because it was so fast, this is partly to blame for this paranoia of the right, of losing their religious beliefs, so they are pushing back against our progresses. It's not that I see we haven't made gains, we have, it's that I see that the gains we have made since stonewall having been eroding since Bush became President, because of the Religious Right activity that became more pronounced at that time.
So your analysis of the hate crime rising, is that the reporting is getting better, more law enforcement are starting to track it and data is being perfected so that it's giving a more accurate representation, rather than just rising. So by your analysis, the number of hate crimes is already sky high, just unreported. That could very well be true, and if so is far more shocking and damning than the claim I made. But for you it makes the situation better, not even more urgent?
I consider we have made great progress, Dave. I'm gonna make sure we keep it.
19 - Steve S
We all gotta try and put yourself in the shoes of another sometime. Imagine you were sitting at the dinner table with your wife and kids and on the tv in the background there was someone saying that all Austin Texas men who work from home are perverts who are prone to molest their children. But also imagine that it's not just a lone wacko statement that goes unchallenged, but that the sentiment is played over and over again in numerous topics and that you know millions of Americans buy into it, because they are prone to agree with it anyway. It's not always easy to disregard that there are ripple effects we all have to live with, in regards to this. And it's not American to have to live with such trash passing for news anymore.
20 - Steve S
should be: and put ourselves.
21 - Dave Nalle
>>No Dave, I think we have come so far, so fast since stonewall. I think that because it was so fast, this is partly to blame for this paranoia of the right, of losing their religious beliefs, so they are pushing back against our progresses. It's not that I see we haven't made gains, we have, it's that I see that the gains we have made since stonewall having been eroding since Bush became President, because of the Religious Right activity that became more pronounced at that time.<<
I agree that you've aggravated the religious right, but then they deserve to be aggravates - at the very least. I don't think that their attempt to strike back will work in the long run. Just like the Schiavo case it will backfire on them and lead to an even more rapid errosion of their support. People are too sensible to fall for the rhetoric of hate en-masse for any long term.
>>So your analysis of the hate crime rising, is that the reporting is getting better, more law enforcement are starting to track it and data is being perfected so that it's giving a more accurate representation, rather than just rising.<<
Accurate enough. And I think I could prove this pretty easily statistically.
>> So by your analysis, the number of hate crimes is already sky high, just unreported. That could very well be true, and if so is far more shocking and damning than the claim I made. But for you it makes the situation better, not even more urgent?<<
Actually, my full scenario is that the number of 'hate crimes' is declining gradually and has been for a long time, but the reporting/awareness of such crimes is increasing faster than the actual instance of them is declining. One example is worth a thousand words. Think about lynchings - the quintessential hate crime. Back in the 50s they were a relatively common occurance, but they died out more or completely by the 70s. Then the James Byrd case came along and got more publicity then every lynching in the 50s and 60s put together. The public perception was that hate crimes were out of control, but the reality was that it was a freak event, which ran directly counter to the actual societal trend. It was this atypical event which launched the current concern with hate crimes, but the reality is that the Byrd case stood out not because it was typical of a body of hate crimes at the time, but because it was unique and atypical. If hate crimes were a regular occurance in the 1990s, then Byrd's death would have gone relatively unnoticed.
Dave
22 - Steve S
What about the whole HIV/tears thing that Frist is tied up in? It's all just about misinformation anymore, from the fundies. And they are currently running the Republican party, Washington and the nation. My fear is, why aren't more people concerned?
23 - Dave Nalle
Hey, Frist is a doctor, surely he's right about HIV and tears? After all, doctors are never wrong, right?
This silly misinformation is just a sign of desperation if you ask me. And it's certainly nothing new.
Plus, the HIV/Tears thing works to your advantage - now you have to be nice to gays or they might cry and give you AIDS.
Forgive my lighthearted take on it, but I find it all somewhat ridiculous.
Dave
24 - Steve S
If hate crimes were a regular occurance in the 1990s,
In 2001 there were 9,730 hate crimes reported by the F. B. I. in its Uniform Crime Reportsource
so if hate crimes are decreasing, there were what, 20,000 hate crimes a year in the 90's? No offense, I can see how this isn't a concern to a white heterosexual suburban American male, I'd like those odds too.
25 - SFC SKI
Shark, you must not live far enough west:
truckstop
....
cow
....
....
oil well
...
...
...
'nother truckstop
...
...
...
...
(wake up)
...
turn in road
...
civilization (of a sort)
multiplex
fast food joints
and so on