Thursday, August 21, 2008

Is the Family Research Council distorting another study?

From the Family Research Council's 25 Pro-Family Goals For The Nation:

In addition to deliberately creating and affirming motherless or fatherless families, other harms would result from same-sex “marriage.” Homosexuals are less likely to enter long-term partnerships, less likely to be sexually faithful, and less likely to remain committed for a lifetime. Commitment, sexual fidelity, and lifelong marriage would all decline if the behavior of homosexuals is incorporated into society’s concept of marriage. Demands for legalization of polygamy would grow. Religious liberty and freedom of speech would also suffer, since opposition to same-sex “marriage” would be treated as the equivalent of racial bigotry."

I have just emailed the Family Research Council asking where did they receive this information regarding gay marriage. I have an idea as to what study they got this information from. And if it's what I think, then the Family Research Council will have a lot of explaining to do.

My guess is that they used a study completed in the Netherlands by one Dr. Maria Xiridou. If this is the case, they took the study out of context big time.

You see, the 2003 published study's objective was “to access the relative contribution of steady and casual partnerships to the incidence of HIV infection among homosexual men in Amsterdam and to determine the effect of increasing sexually risky behaviours among both types of partnerships in the era of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART).”

The study only looked at casual relationships amongst gay men and was completed before same-sex marriage was legalized in the Netherlands.

There are other facts about Dr. Xiridou's study that speaks to how it cannot be used to gauge monogamy amongst lgbts in general. But I won't bring that up until I get an answer from the Family Research Council

If I don't get an answer back via email, then I will be calling their 1-800 number.

I will keep you all posted.