Happy same-sex families make the religious right ill

Glenn T. Stanton of the right-wing Focus on the Family is maligning same-sex families again. According to Religious Right Watch, during an episode of the radio show Truth that Transforms with John Rabe, he called into question the idea that same-sex families are healthy and attacked research proving this point:

Rabe: Glenn, it’s always very interesting to me because we Christians are portrayed as being often anti-science and anti-progress and so forth yet when you talk about the issue of marriage and family it’s interesting how the other side very quickly becomes the sentimentalists in the group, suddenly all the empirical data, all the scientific stuff, is completely ignored and you hear statements about ‘people who just love each other should be able to marry and define that for themselves.’ From an empirical perspective there’s not even any argument about how beneficial a traditional man-woman marriage and family is as opposed to other models, is there?

Stanton: You said it exactly right. It’s remarkable how those folks on the other side being the ‘reasonable ones,’ the ones who unlike us don’t believe in sentimentality and myth and things like that, they become very, very unscientific.

Stanton should really be careful as to how he claims to know science. It got him figuratively spanked in 2008 by the American Anthropological Association.

How sad that he hasn't learned his lesson. But as William Shakespeare said in the play King Lear:

To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters

Right Wing Watch took the time to systematically dismantle Stanton's claim:

The American Psychological Association’s review of mainstream scientific literature has debunked claims that children of same-sex couples would have more mental and emotional problems. In addition, studies consistently find that children raised by same-sex parents are just as well-adjusted those raised in households with opposite-sex parents.

A University of Amsterdam study [pdf] on the “quality of life (QoL) of adolescents in planned lesbian families” found that their quality of life is no different from their peers.

Researchers from the University of Virginia similarly found that “adolescents with same-sex parents did not differ significantly from a matched group of adolescents living with opposite-sex parents”

Now when faced with these studies, religious right spokespeople and phony experts will quickly find fault with them:

 "The sample size is too small,"
"the researchers were biased,"
 "there were methodological flaws."

And there lies the rub. When studies show that same-sex parenting isn't necessarily a bad thing, the religious right will bash these studies because they can't refute this work with studies of their own.

How can they? Very few of these folks on the right talking about "families" have any expertise  when it comes to researching these families. And Stanton is no different. According to his bio:

Glenn T. Stanton is the director for Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs and a research fellow at the Institute of Marriage and Family in Ottawa. He debates and lectures extensively on the issues of gender, sexuality, marriage and parenting at universities and churches around the country. He served the George W. Bush administration for many years as a consultant on increasing fatherhood involvement in the Head Start program.

Stanton is the author of five books and a contributor to nine others, including Why Marriage Matters: Reasons to Believe in Marriage in Postmodern Society (1997), My Crazy, Imperfect Christian Family (NavPress, 2004) and Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-Sex Marriage and Parenting (InterVarsity Press, 2004), which was featured on C-SPAN BookTV.

His latest book, The Ring Makes All the Difference (Moody Publishers, September 2011), explains the latest research findings, as well as biblical wisdom, on why cohabitation is not a smart idea for couples and their children. Stanton's previous book, Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children Into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity (Multnomah, 2011), explored how mothers and fathers raise girls and boys to be strong, healthy women and men.

You'll notice that the one thing he has never published are studies on same-sex families. I wouldn't necessarily call him an out-and-out fraud, but I will say that he has no standing to criticize any studies in regards to same-sex parenting, since he hasn't done any himself.

Stanton is clearly applying old adage of "faking it until he makes it."

But Glenn, you aren't making it. Not by a long shot.