The Family Research Council and the Disappearing Studies on Homosexuality

While we are all anticipating an Obama Administration and while the religious right continues to compile inaccurate anecdotes about “gay persecutors,” something strange has taken place on the Family Research Council’s webpage.

Several “studies” about homosexuality are gone.

The following studies are no longer on the Family Research Council’s webpage - The Negative Effects of Homosexuality, Homosexuality and Child Abuse, and Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk.

If you click the following links (taken from here), you will see what I am talking about:

"Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse," Insight No. 247 (Washington, D.C.: Family Research Council), May 17, 2002 (online at: http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS02E3)

· "The Negative Health Effects of Homosexuality," Insight No. 232 (Washington, D.C.: Family Research Council), March 6, 2001 (online at: http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS01B1)

· "Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk," Insight No. 238 (Washington: Family Research Council) November 1, 2001 (online at: http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS01J3)

These studies were supposed to show the so-called “dangers of homosexuality.” All of the religious right talking points about lgbts are touched on including:

Gays molest children at a high rate,

Gays have a short life span,

Gays and lesbians don’t know how to be monogamous,

Gays and lesbians have high rate of domestic violence.

The author of these items, Timothy Dailey, is still employed with the Family Research Council and one of his areas of "expertise" is homosexuality. This is highly strange because according to his bio, Dailey’s Ph.D. and qualifications all fall under religion.

For the record, his studies about homosexuality were highly flawed.

In them, Dailey cited out-of-date data compiled in the early 1970s, distorted other studies (including the 1997 Canadian study concerning the “gay life span”), and relied on discredited work (i.e. discredited researcher Paul Cameron).

One of his papers in particular, Homosexuality and Child Abuse, got complaints from former director of the Sex Offender Program at the Connecticut Department of Corrections, A. Nicholas Groth.

In 2002, Groth said that Dailey distorted his work to claim that gays molest children at a higher rate than heterosexual men.

The irony is that this was the same error Paul Cameron made with Groth’s work in 1984. Groth complained then too.

I don’t know when Dailey's studies was removed, but they were on the webpage in 2006. It was at that time on my blog I noted how some of them included the following proviso:

Please note: this article is an archived item on Family Research Council's website; the information contained therein may be outdated.

At the time, I called it a "cover your ass disclaimer."

I called the Family Research Council last week in order to get some answers. A very nice woman who answered my call told me that I would have to speak Dailey to get more details.

I left two messages via email and have yet to receive an answer.

So the question is are we seeing some quiet acknowledgment by the Family Research Council that some of their “studies” on lgbts were flawed?

Since I haven't spoken to Dailey, I cannot give a definite answer.

But if this is the case, then I think the Family Research Council owes the lgbt community more than an covert abandonment of these studies.

I would like to have something a bit more public from the Family Research Council. These studies are present on other unaffiliated sites and have probably been used numerous times in attempts to beat back pro-gay legislation.

Also they have helped form inaccurate images put forth about lgbts by the religious right.

In light of how we lgbts have been unfairly called terrorists for our reaction over the Proposition 8 vote, anything less than a full and public acknowledgement is unacceptable.

Anything less than a full and public acknowledgement would be a classic case of throwing rocks and then pleading innocence when those hit by the rocks react.

Family Research Council anti-lgbt hysteria helped cover up NC law's attack on employment, wages

FRC head Tony Perkins

In a statement on its webpage, the Family Research Council celebrated the passage of Mississippi's very broad religious liberty (anti-lgbt law) and NC's recently passed one:

Thanks to Governor Phil Bryant (R), facts -- not fear -- won out in Mississippi! Earlier today, Bryant signed the "Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act" into law over the threats from corporate America and LGBT activists. After the Left's tantrum over North Carolina, where leaders denied men access to girls' restrooms and showers, most people started to see the liberal agenda for the extremism it is. Now, with the enactment of H.B. 1523, Mississippi is responding by passing religious liberty legislation that should be a model for every state.

Despite Big Business bullies, a media misinformation campaign, and liberal scaremongers, Governor Bryant helped to fan the flames of a national pushback to the Left's intolerance on the issue of marriage. Under this law, churches aren't the only ones protected from government punishment for their beliefs -- so are businesses, wedding vendors, and even public officials. While the threats from corporate America continue to roll in to North Carolina and Mississippi, the reality is that after Houston voters killed the city's hugely unpopular bathroom bill in November, the momentum has been on the side of common sense.

Thanks to his tremendous courage, Governor Bryant -- like Governor Pat McCrory (R-N.C.) -- has cemented his legacy as one of freedom. In the face of some of the stiffest pressure of his career, he stood strong for the rights of his state to live and work according to their faith. And while Mississippi -- like North Carolina -- will have to weather a temporary storm, in the end, both governors will be rewarded with their voters' support and a legacy of courage. Years from now, no one will remember if a sporting event was held in a particular city -- but those communities would be reminded daily in a thousand ways if their freedom to believe was lost because of the political cowardice of political leaders.

Meanwhile, PayPal may be the Left's friend, but it's no pal of North Carolina's! The money transfer service announced this morning that it's canceling the company's Charlotte expansion because the state won't force young girls to share bathrooms and showers with grown men.

FRC not only glosses over the severity of the Mississippi law, but it also continues  the lie about how NC's law keeps young girls from sharing bathrooms and showers with grown men. That's how FRC has continuously framed NC's law. Public safety. Protecting girls and women in showers and bathrooms. And regardless how many times that lie has been refuted, FRC continues to trot it out in a annoyingly tone deaf fashion.

Tony Perkins thinks America will 'discard' judges' rulings for marriage equality

It's like I said before, in lieu of providing proof of their arguments in court cases (such as the recent marriage equality victories in Pennsylvania and Oregon), anti-gay organization leaders such as Family Research Council president Tony Perkins are whining about "activists judges."

What I didn't count on is how folks like Perkins would take the visage of dotty old men shaking their fists at the sun while talking about open rebellion against the courts:

Tony Perkins

Like a dozen black-robed activists before him, Judge Michael McShane argued, "Because Oregon's marriage laws discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without a rational relationship to any legitimate government interest, the laws violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution." The state's failure to defend its own constitution, and the failure of an openly homosexual judge to recuse himself, demonstrate what an overreach this decision was. The deluge of rulings hit Pennsylvania next, where Judge John Jones wrote one of the harshest opinions yet, insisting that laws affirming natural marriage should be discarded "into the ash heap of history."

While both judges cited the Supreme Court's June decisions as a rational basis to destroy marriage, the high court said nothing that would give a federal judge the right to redefine marriage. In an interesting twist, both rulings came down within hours of Politico's new polling -- which showed that a clear majority of likely voters in swing states (52-48%) are digging in on their support of natural marriage.

Obviously, the Left's strategy of forcing this agenda through the courts is backfiring -- and it's only a matter of time before the country begins to discard the opinions of unelected judges on the same ash heap where Jones tried to send marriage. Just as the country has never accepted the Supreme Court's declaration of a "right" to destroy unborn human life in Roe v. Wade, we will never accept the Court's assertion of a "right" to change the definition of our most fundamental social institution. The courts can ignore natural law, or even suppress it, but they will never succeed in subduing it.

So according to Perkins, based on a poll which has nothing to do with marriage equality, court rulings are backfiring. In addition,  states should ignore the opinions of judges because they aren't elected anyway.