Friday, November 04, 2011

Family Research Council has a quiz for you

Information is from Family Research Council's team of "Capitol Hill experts" 

1. Due to religious exemptions, same-sex “marriage” would not harm the rights of parents, schools, churches, or religious ministries.

TrueFalse

2. Science indicates that homosexuality is likely inborn and unchangeable.

TrueFalse

3. Homosexual activists have grossly overstated the number of homosexuals in the population as being 10%, when surveys actually show it is only half that number, at about 5%!

TrueFalse

4. Members of Congress from both parties support a pro-homosexual law that could force Christians to remove family photos from their workplace.

TrueFalse

5. The proposed federal ENDA law would force all employers to hire transsexuals, cross-dressers, and “drag queens” and “drag kings” for any job—including customer service jobs and ones with children, such as teachers and day care workers.

TrueFalse


Now if you really loved that quiz, you can send for a copy of the Family Research Council's ridiculously inaccurate booklet, The Top Ten Harms of Same-Sex Marriage.
Written by FRC spokesman and resident junk science specialist Peter Sprigg, this booklet containing the following errors:

1. distorts the work of Harvard professor Dr. Kyle Pruett and Judith Stacey. Both have complained on more than one occasion about how folks like Sprigg distort their work.

2. In page 10 and 11 of the pamphlet, Sprigg cites a study done by Maria Xiridou as proof that marriage will not stop alleged promiscuity amongst gay couples.

However, none of the couples in Xiridou's study were married. Her study did not look at gay marriage but was designed 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."
 
For this study, Dr. Xiridou received her information from the Amsterdam Cohort Study of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and AIDS Among Homosexual Men. To gain this information, researchers studied 1,800 gay men between the years of 1984- 2000.

Same sex marriage was legalized in the Netherlands in 2001, thus making the information irrelevant to points about gay marriage. Information for the Amsterdam Cohort Study is found here.

Furthermore, lesbians were not included in the study

3. Sprigg recounts the story of Massachusetts parent David Parker who was arrested for trespassing for not leaving his son's school after a meeting with school officials. Parker claimed that the school would not "allow him to opt his child out of discussions about homosexuality."  Supposedly the school was breaking state law that said parents have a right to opt out their child when it comes to discussions of human sexuality.

Of course Sprigg inaccurately condensed the story. The school had already assured Parker that discussions of human sexuality were not a part of his child's curriculum, but - and they checked with district policy on this - discussions about differing families was not a human sexuality issue AND  since several students in the school came from same sex households, they couldn't control these students talking amongst themselves about their families.

Sprigg also omitted the fact that the entire Parker controversy was conjured up by Parker and a Massachusetts anti-gay group Mass Resistance, i.e. Parker's goal was to be arrested in order to create  controversy.

By the way, Mass Resistance is also designated as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

I'm sure Sprigg and FRC are aware of these errors, but what's a few distortions when you are fighting in God's name?



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4 comments:

Karen said...

Maybe I just haven't had enough coffee yet, but aren't questions 1 & 2 true? Same sex marriage does not harm the rights of the groups listed (or any one else) and sexual orientaion is inborn and unchangeable.

JT said...

I'm still shaking my head at the one that says a pro-homosexual law that would make Christians remove pictures of their families from their work area. Huh?????

ColdCountry said...

I was wondering the same thing, Karen. Perhaps we mis-read them?

Anonymous said...

I've actually had the privilege of demonstrating against Mass Resistance when former Asshole, I mean Governor of RI Donald Carcieri did a dog and pony show before the group.