Repost: Dissecting a One News Now article (smacking down religious right lies on gay adoption)

This is one of my favorite posts. In Marh of this year, I was able to dissect the words of Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber and show that neither him nor anyone else in religious right groups have a clue when it comes to gay adoption and gay parenting in general.

When put up against the experts in the field of childcare, their silly hysterical arguments fizzle:

Liberty Counsel's Matt Barber is angry that Florida State Senator Nan Rich has filed a bill repealing the 1977 law banning gay adoption in the state. Rich filed a a second bill to give judges the authority to determine adoptions based exclusively on the best interest of the child.

One News Now gives Barber room to vent without the courtesy of presenting the other side. So I thought I would add the other side from another article which took a more objective view of children raised by gay parents:

Matt Barber:

"The actions here by Senator Nan Rich are clearly without merit, and she has the audacity to say that she is considering what is in the best interest of children. Well that defies logic, reason, and science."

Post-Gazette article:

A number of professional medical organizations -- including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Psychiatric Association -- have issued statements claiming that a parent's sexual orientation is irrelevant to his or her ability to raise a child.

For the most part, the organizations are relying on a relatively small but conclusive body of research -- approximately 67 studies -- looking at children of gay parents and compiled by the American Psychological Association. In study after study, children in same-sex parent families turned out the same, for better or for worse, as children in heterosexual families.

Moreover, a 2001 meta-analysis of those studies found that the sexual orientation of a parent is irrelevant to the development of a child's mental health and social development and to the quality of a parent-child relationship.

Matt Barber:

"Frankly the studies have shown clearly that it is in the best interest of children to have a mother and a father."

Post-Gazette article:

The problem with the research cited . . . is that it compares children of heterosexual couples only with those of single parents and not with children of same-sex parent families, said Gary Gates, a senior research fellow at the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and an expert on census data involving gay and lesbian households.

"There are virtually no studies that make a direct comparison with same-sex parents," he said, noting census data show one in four same-sex couples are raising a child under the age of 18.

Editor's note - Gates was speaking about research cited by James Dobson. However, Dobson was making the same claims as Barber - "the majority of more than 30 years of social-science evidence indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father."

The lesson here is clear - Barber doesn't know what the hell he is talking about. But that's business as usual with him.