Earlier today, I mentioned how Speaker of the House John Boehner's hired team of lawyers was using bad research to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court.
I zeroed in on a poor study, No Difference?: An Analysis of Same-Sex Parenting. which was a part of the team's documentation. This study, written by George Dent, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, contained many errors, including citing the work of discredited researchers such as Paul Cameron and George Rekers.
I also made note that the Dent's study also cited work from the American College of Pediatricians, a group designed to pass along anti-gay junk science as fact.
In fact, I said the following about Dent's citation of ACP material:
It is here that I want to go into more detail.
As I said before, not only does Dent cite the study cited by ACP, but he also pulls out material from the study and cites it in other parts of his own study, thereby becoming guilty of the same errors committed by the ACP, including:
1. Outdated sources - Both the ACP study and Dent's study cite the following two references as proof that gay couples are more apt to be less faithful:
David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison, The Male Couple: how relationships develop (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984)
A. P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: a study of diversity among men and women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978)
But neither study can be used to generalize about the gay community. The authors of The Male Couple said:
A passage in Homosexualities clearly says:
2. Extreme distortion of studies not meant by to used to gauge the effects of same-sex parenting - Both the ACP study and Dent's study cite the following study to claim that gay men cannot be monogamous and are not good child rearers:
From this study, both ACP and Dent claimed - men in these partnerships had an average of eight casual partners per year.
But the Xiridou study only looked at casual relationships between gay men. It had nothing to do with the lesbian population and certainly nothing to do with children in lgbt households. Xiridou's study 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.
Xiridou's study cannot even be used gauge an effect of marriage equality because the researchers conducting the Amsterdam Cohort Study of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and AIDS Among Homosexual Men studied 1,800 gay men between the years of 1984- 2001.
Same-sex marriage was legalized in the Netherlands in 2001. Wouldn't that make her study useless for defending DOMA?
3. Researcher complaints - Both the ACP study and Dent's study cites the work of Dr. Judith Stacey and Dr. Kyle Pruett. On several occasions, both Stacey and Pruett have complained about how their work has been distorted by the religious right to demonize the gay community.
Keeping all of this in mind, I have a question:
How much are we (the taxpayers) paying for this mess?
I zeroed in on a poor study, No Difference?: An Analysis of Same-Sex Parenting. which was a part of the team's documentation. This study, written by George Dent, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University, contained many errors, including citing the work of discredited researchers such as Paul Cameron and George Rekers.
I also made note that the Dent's study also cited work from the American College of Pediatricians, a group designed to pass along anti-gay junk science as fact.
In fact, I said the following about Dent's citation of ACP material:
The particular study by the ACP cited by Dent, Homosexual Parenting: Is It Time for Change?, is filled with several errors which I talked about two years ago, including:
1. Outdated work
2. Extreme distortion of studies not meant by to used to gauge the effects of same-sex parenting.
3. And researcher complaints.
In citing Homosexual Parenting: Is It Time for Change?, Dent tries to pull a double deception. Not only does he cite this poor study done by ACP, but he actually takes some of the individual bad work from the study and cites it on its own throughout his study in general.
It is here that I want to go into more detail.
As I said before, not only does Dent cite the study cited by ACP, but he also pulls out material from the study and cites it in other parts of his own study, thereby becoming guilty of the same errors committed by the ACP, including:
1. Outdated sources - Both the ACP study and Dent's study cite the following two references as proof that gay couples are more apt to be less faithful:
David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison, The Male Couple: how relationships develop (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1984)
A. P. Bell and M. S. Weinberg, Homosexualities: a study of diversity among men and women (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978)
But neither study can be used to generalize about the gay community. The authors of The Male Couple said:
“We always have been very careful to explain that the very nature of our research sample, its size (156 couples), its narrow geographic location, and the natural selectiveness of the participants prevents the findings from being applicable and generalizable to the entire gay male community.”
A passage in Homosexualities clearly says:
“. . . given the variety of circumstances which discourage homosexuals from participating in research studies, it is unlikely that any investigator will ever be in a position to say that this or that is true of a given percentage of all homosexuals.”
2. Extreme distortion of studies not meant by to used to gauge the effects of same-sex parenting - Both the ACP study and Dent's study cite the following study to claim that gay men cannot be monogamous and are not good child rearers:
Maria Xiridou et al., The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV Infection in Amsterdam (Editor's note - Dent made an error in giving the name of this study in his paper. He called it Maria Xiridou et al., The Contribution of Steady and Casual Partnerships to the Incidence of HIV Infection in America. This is inaccurate because the study took place in Amsterdam. I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt here.)
From this study, both ACP and Dent claimed - men in these partnerships had an average of eight casual partners per year.
But the Xiridou study only looked at casual relationships between gay men. It had nothing to do with the lesbian population and certainly nothing to do with children in lgbt households. Xiridou's study 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.
Xiridou's study cannot even be used gauge an effect of marriage equality because the researchers conducting the Amsterdam Cohort Study of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and AIDS Among Homosexual Men studied 1,800 gay men between the years of 1984- 2001.
Same-sex marriage was legalized in the Netherlands in 2001. Wouldn't that make her study useless for defending DOMA?
3. Researcher complaints - Both the ACP study and Dent's study cites the work of Dr. Judith Stacey and Dr. Kyle Pruett. On several occasions, both Stacey and Pruett have complained about how their work has been distorted by the religious right to demonize the gay community.
Keeping all of this in mind, I have a question:
How much are we (the taxpayers) paying for this mess?
