Godly "Christians" Continue to Use Lies and False Research Against Gays

Christofascists continue to lie about gay parenting

As America ponders how and why a young Muslim couple could have been motivated to go on a shooting rampage, godly Christians continue to use false "research" and "science" to try to justify their ongoing religious based jihad against LGBT citizens. Poisonous, twisted religious belief in both case justify violence and deliberate lies and denigration of others.  Both apparent reactions against modernity and religious tolerance.  Both stemming from "holy books" that laud murder and mayhem and genocide.  In addition to a massive gun confiscation program, perhaps we need copies of the Bible and Koran to be collected and burned.  Both books are the source of much hate and evil.  But back to the Christofascist lie campaign against gays.  Despite the fact that EVERY legitimate medical and mental health association in America have concluded that gay parenting is just as healthy and supportive of child rearing as heterosexual parenting, the Christofascist persist in claims that gay parents are bad for children.  A column in the Los Angeles Times looks at the knowingly false campaign of deliberate lies.  Here are excerpts:

Now that the Supreme Court has found a constitutional right to marry for same-sex couples, it seems logical that the parallel national debate over same-sex parenting might also be over. After all, the two issues were proxies for each other. Social conservatives had argued that marriage equality would increase the number of motherless or fatherless households, a climate they argued was bad for kids. Once gay and lesbian couples could marry — strengthening their parental ties — their opponents would seem to have less room to challenge their right to be parents.

Yet the battle continues. In Utah last month, a judge ordered a baby girl removed from her foster home because the couple parenting her were lesbians. (He later rescinded the order and passed the case to another judge.) In Kansas, conservative state senators are pushing a bill to pay straight — but not gay — couples to be foster parents. In Texas and Alabama, state authorities are refusing to allow or recognize some adoptions by gays and lesbians. And in Nebraska and Mississippi, advocates were forced to mount court challenges to undo laws restricting the ability of same-sex couples to adopt or foster.

One of the primary justifications invoked for limiting gay parental rights is “science.” . . . . But a closer look shows that what is being cited as “science” in these situations is anything but. In fact, flawed scholarship is being used as a smokescreen to create the illusion of legitimate debate where none exists.

We have identified 77 studies that address the well-being of children with gay or lesbian parents. Seventy-three of them find that such children face no disadvantages from having gay or lesbian parents. The studies used a wide range of methodologies, many relying on small sampling pools but some on nationally representative data. The aggregate result is an overwhelming scholarly consensus that having a gay parent causes no harm, one reason that every major professional organization that deals with child welfare opposes discriminating against LGBT families.

As to the outlier studies, all share the same fatal flaw. At most a handful of the children who were studied were actually raised by same-sex parents; . . . . So in the end, the outlier studies don't tell us anything about same-sex parenting; they just tell us what's long been known: Family stress and disruption are bad for kids, while stable ties are good for them.

In 2014, the outlier research was presented in court in defense of Michigan's ban on same-sex marriage. Federal Judge Bernard A. Friedman wasn't buying it. He singled out Mark Regnerus, a sociologist from the University of Texas and one of the outlier researchers, for a scalding rebuke. Evidence had been presented that Regnerus' research was not only underwritten by a group opposed to same-sex marriage, but that close collaboration between funder and researcher had undercut its scholarly independence: “The funder clearly wanted a
specific result and Regnerus obliged,” wrote Friedman in overturning the Michigan ban . . . .

[T]he authors of the outlier studies are substituting ideological beliefs for scientific accuracy . . . 

When a judge in Utah or legislators in Kansas ignore solid scholarship and cite flawed research instead, it's nothing but a rear-guard attack, a quest to block or roll back LGBT progress. For some conservatives, the end of the debate just creates more reason to fight, even if it means weakening ties between parents and their children.