Focus on the Family distorts ANOTHER study to denigrate same-sex families

[xchrom]

http://pamshouseblend.firedoglake.com/2012/01/09/focus-on-the-family-distorts-another-study-to-denigrate-same-sex-families/

I wish more attention was focused on how religious right groups and talking heads distort science to denigrate the lgbtq community.

There is a Pulitzer just waiting for the intrepid reporter who can break down this decades old story. At any rate, until that happens, it’s up to us bloggers to make these facts known.

And Think Progress just did:

Focus on the Family’s duplicity is not always obvious, but execution of their anti-gay rhetoric is becoming more transparent. In a post yesterday, FOTF’s director of Global Family Formation Studies Glenn T. Stanton boasted that a new study from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business proves that boys benefit behaviorally from having “a home with a mom and a dad”:

STANTON: This supports over three decades of consistent research showing that kids who grow up in a home with their married parents tend to do better in all measures of educational attainment than their peers being raised in single, divorced and cohabiting-parent homes. This is true from everything from grade-point average, behavioral issues, high school graduation and going on to graduate from college. Moms and dads both matter here, as well as the type of relationship between them.

But though FOTF is clearly trying to use this as evidence against same-sex marriage, the study did not prove anything “against” same-sex parents. The study in question (PDF here) did not, in fact, address same-sex parenting whatsoever, but instead compared children raised by married heterosexual parents to children raised by a single mother. It is one of many “fatherless” studies that conservative groups use to conflate not having a father/having one mother with having two mothers. Recall when Sen. Al Franken eviscerated FOTF’s Tom Minnery at a July Senate hearing for attempting to do the very same thing.

If anything, the Booth study supports arguments in favor of marriage equality, because it found that it was neither family structure nor biology that were the direct cause of differences in boys’ behavior, but environmental factors determined by levels of parental input. Stanton’s conclusions reflect nothing found in the actual research data — merely his discriminating ideology.

It should be known that scientific distortions is old hat for Stanton. In March 2008, he claimed that there’s a “clear consensus” among anthropologists that “A family is a unit that draws from the two types of humanity, male and female.”

However, those with expertise in such matters vehemently disagreed with this claim.

[HillWilliam]

1. I used to work at UofC

In the early 80s it was a veritable haven for LGBTs. I was totally comfortable being out. How far the institution has fallen to allow FOTF to get its nasty claws in.

FOTF needs to focus on their own damn families.

[William769]

2. They focus on our families so they don't have to focus on their own

Out of sight, out of mind.

[BeeBee]

3. Maybe I misunderstood....

but as far as I could tell by reading the article, nothing is said about FOTF "getting its claws" into the university. It says that FOTF took published study from UofC and misrepresented its conclusions; nothing about them having anything to do with the university.

[HillWilliam]

4. Ahh, then *I* misunderstood

Too much multitasking!

[RKP5637]

5. And much as one would expect from an acknowledged Hate Group, busy

spinning hatred with a touch of religion as a guise under which to hid there nefarious activities tax free.

[RetiredTrotskyite]

6. Not At All Surprised

FOtF lies and distorts as easily and automatically as the rest of us breathe.