Family Research Council clearly lying about scientific evidence and gay parenting

Kenneth Blackwell of the Family Research Council

I've said it once and I will say it again. Once the religious right finds a factoid or meme to use against the lgbt community, they will continue to repeat it even though the factoid or meme has been refuted.

 Earlier this week, I wrote about how the Family Research Council was repeating a lie that the Obama Administration declared war on mothers in its Supreme Court brief against the California anti-marriage equality law, Prop 8.

Yesterday, FRC took that lie further via an employee, Kenneth Blackwell, in a recent piece he wrote, Obama Drops His Family Friendly Mask:

Last week, President Obama dropped the family friendly mask. He sent his Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli up the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court with a simple message:

Dump Dads. Lose Moms.

That's because the Solicitor General speaks for the President. In the most august and formal way, it is this officer who carries the President's deepest convictions to lay them before the nation's High Court. What the Solicitor General actually said was this:

"As an initial matter, no sound basis exists for concluding that same-sex couples who have committed to marriage are anything other than fully capable of responsible parenting and child-rearing. To the contrary, many leading medical, psychological, and social-welfare organizations have issued policy statements opposing restrictions on gay and lesbian parenting based on their conclusion, supported by numerous scientific studies, that children raised by gay and lesbian parents are as likely to be well adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents."

"The weight of the scientific literature strongly supports the view that same-sex parents are just as capable as opposite-sex parents."

Actually, the weight of scientific evidence proves no such thing. All the work of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute (www.marri.org) shows that children do best in a family where mother and dad are married and where the family worships regularly.

As for children raised by two adults of the same sex, the most extensive study ever done was that of Dr. Mark Regnerus. Dr. Regnerus of the University of Texas conducted the largest, most rigorously controlled study in history. Here's what the U.T. study found:

The results of the NFSS [National Family Structures Study]research revealed that the "no differences" claim -- the claim that children raised by parents in gay or lesbian relationships fared no worse and in some cases better than children raised by intact biological parents -- was not true. On the contrary, the children of these households, on average, did worse than children raised by their biological, still-married parents.

The weight of scientific evidence -- as opposed to Donald Verrilli's politically correct posturing -- shows that his statements before the High Court are "not true. Remember, we are talking about the well-being of the children, not whether the adults in these relationships are well-satisfied with their domestic arrangements.

Mr. Blackwell omits a lot of truth to reach the point of this passage.

He said the weight of scientific evidence does not prove that same-sex parents are just as capable as opposite-sex parents in the raising of children. 

Mr. Blackwell conveniently forgets that the Obama Administration brief he tears down clearly cited both the American Psychological Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics as well as the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry as proof that same-sex parents are just as capable as opposite-sex parents in the raising of children (page 21 of the brief).

Furthermore Mr. Blackwell did not mention that independent from the Obama Administration brief, the APA submitted another brief to the court saying the same thing (i.e. same-sex parents are as capable as opposite-sex parents in the raising of children). And joining them in this brief was the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the California Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychoanalytic Association and the National Association of Social Workers.

Finally, it is very ironic that Mr. Blackwell cites the Regnerus study as proof that his scientific proof that same-sex parents are not just as capable as opposite-sex parents because of the following simple fact:

The American Sociological Association condemned the Regnerus study in its brief submitted to the Supreme Court. In the brief, the ASA also said that same-sex parents are just as capable as opposite-sex parents when it comes to the raising of children.

So when Mr. Blackwell says that the weight of scientific evidence does not prove that same-sex parents are as capable as opposite-sex parents in the raising of children, he is clearly not being truthful. Not even a little bit.

Do me a favor, folks. Don't shake your head, suck your teeth and go "there they go again" at yet another time you have seen the Family Research Council blatantly lie about the gay community. Demand that more time and knowledge be invested in uncovering how organizations like FRC distort science or push blatant lies against the lgbt community.

Organizations like the Family Research Council don't rely on truth. They rely on repetition. They repeat a point while deliberately ignoring the simple fact that the point has been refuted by those who know better.

And they also rely on the gay community and others becoming blase or jaded about their constant lying.  The Family Research Council and other so-called "pro-family" groups can't use facts against the gay community, so they hope to beat us down through the constant repetition of lies.

It's not necessarily the Christian thing to do, but I guess they figure God will turn a blind eye because they feel that they are lying on His behalf.

You see, this is the problem. This is the reason for the lgbt community's anger towards groups like FRC who claim to uphold  their version of Christian values. It's not that we are intolerant of their beliefs or views.

We are just intolerant of their lies.