On this lazy Sunday, I am reposting what I feel is an important piece regarding detailing main religious claims about the lgbt community.
In this so-called cultural war over lgbt equality, the one of the biggest problems facing the lgbt community is a certain degree of intellectual laziness.
Allow me to explain:
Chinese general Sun Tzu in
The Art of War once said:
It is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles . . .
With that thought in mind, I have tried to educate myself and others on the manipulations of the religious right.
You see it's not enough to call them "homophobes" or "haters" anymore than it is not enough for a prosecutor in a trial to point at a defendant and call him guilty.
There must be some proof of the charges.
I have a theory that in this so-called cultural battle, our fight isn't totally with those who have a personal religious belief that homosexuality is a sin. It's not an idea that I prescribe to but I am of the opinion that people with differing beliefs can co-exist up to a point.
Granted there are some people who are rabidly anti-gay, but this piece isn't about them.
My theory and all of my focus have been on the religious right organizations who manipulate people's religious beliefs and personal fears to make the lgbt community the boogeymen or the "big nasty other" in American society.
I've talked
in the past about their distortion techniques.
Earlier, I talked about discredited researcher Paul Cameron and his relation to the religious right as to how these groups continue to use his bad data.
Today, I want to show how these groups have their own ways of distorting credible research.
I have read countless religious right papers and studies and have discovered that in many if not all of them, many of the same studies are being distorted.
It’s as if the Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, the American Family Association and other affiliate groups have some type of file cabinet with an assortment of legitimate studies that they can pull out and distort. I want to show you just a few. Some you have already seen these before but a refresher course never hurts anyone:
Distortion - Lgbt homes are not ideal homes to raise children because gay supportive researcher Judith Stacey said so in her study:
“A study conducted by Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz, sociologists at the University of Southern California, revealed that children raised by homosexual couples ‘seem to grow up to be more open to homoerotic relationships.’ The study showed that 12 percent of girls raised in lesbian homes became active lesbians themselves—increasing the likelihood of lesbianism by more than 400 percent.” - Fast Facts, Gay Adoption, Coral Ridge Ministries
Researcher Judith Stacey thinks that children do well in homosexual homes. She says her study found that girls brought up by lesbians show greater interest in masculine activities and dress and seek non-traditional female jobs. Boys in lesbian homes are more feminine and more nurturing. Children in these homes also become sexually active with same-sex partners. - Children In Homosexual Homes Become Sexually Confused, Traditional Values Coalition
Truth - Judith Stacey had gone on record numerous times decrying how her research in lgbt homes have been distorted. According to
respectmyresearch.org:
. . . Stacey and Biblarz noted preliminary evidence of some “modest and interesting” differences between children raised by heterosexual parents and children raised by lesbian and gay parents, but they affirmed that “parental sexual orientation has no measurable effect on the quality of parent-child relationships or on children’s mental health or adjustment.”
In addition, via this
link, she calls Focus on the Family to the carpet for distorting her work.
Distortion - Lesbian and gay relationships are generally violent Part 1:
A study in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence examined conflict and violence in lesbian relationships. The researchers found that 90 percent of the lesbians surveyed had been recipients of one or more acts of verbal aggression from their intimate partners during the year prior to this study, with 31 percent reporting one or more incidents of physical abuse.” - Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples, Family Research Council
There is a higher rate of violence in lesbian and homosexual relationships than in married, heterosexual relationships. A study in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence examined conflict and violence in lesbian relationships. The researchers found that 90% of the lesbians surveyed had been recipients of one or more acts of verbal aggression from their intimate partners during the year prior to this study, with 31% reporting one or more incidents of physical abuse. - Same-Sex Parenting is Harmful to Children Says REAL Women of Canada, Lifesite News
Truth - According to the
Journal of Interpersonal Violence’s own
web page:
The Journal of Interpersonal Violence offers the most up-to-date information on domestic violence, rape, child sexual abuse and other violent crimes . . . Focusing on both victims and perpetrators, the journal examines theoretical links between all types of interpersonal violence, exploring the similarities and differences between these types of crimes.
In other words, the
Journal of Interpersonal Violence tracks domestic violence, as well as other violent crimes.
Those surveyed in journal articles are the victims of violence, verbal or otherwise, because this is what the journal is designed to track.
However, what religious right groups are doing here is the equivalent of taking a study of domestic violence in the African-American community published in the
Journal of Interpersonal Violence and using it to allege that black relationships are indicative of violent behavior.
