Family Research Council continues pushing flawed, outdated anti-gay study

FRC president Tony Perkins

Editor's note - I've written about following Family Research Council study, Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples, several times. However the fact that the organization continues to push it as "trending" on its webpage gives me another opportunity to show how FRC distorts and cherry-picks information in order to demonize the lgbt community. So much for "Christian" values.

On the Family Research Council's webpage, this study, Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples,  is supposedly "trending."  That's not necessarily a good thing because it is flawed on so many levels. The headline should give you an indication of one flaw, i.e. the comparison of  homosexual couples to married heterosexual couples.The study ignores the simple fact that lgbts can now marry in several states. 

 

Another flaw is that the study is highly out-of-date. Its author, Timothy Dailey, hasn't been employed by FRC for a number of years now. As a matter of fact, I pointed out several flaws in Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples as far back as 2009.

Allow me to do a recap. Amongst the errors, Comparing the Lifestyles of Homosexual Couples to Married Couples contains:

 

- A citation of the book Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women by Alan Bell and Martin Weinberg as a correct generalization of lgbt sexual habits despite the fact that it was published in 1978 and was not meant by the authors to be a correct assessment of the lgbt community in general.  A passage from 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.”

- A citation of the book The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop by David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison despite the fact that the book was written 1984 and was not meant to be a correct assessment of the lgbt community in general.  A passage from The Male Couple says:

“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.”

In addition to outdated work, the study also distorts the work of researchers Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey to make the case against children being raised in lgbt homes.

Claims regarding the numbers of children being raised in homosexual and lesbian households vary widely and are often unsubstantiated. According to a study on homosexual parenting in the American Sociological Review, researchers have given figures "of uncertain origin, depicting a range of...6 to 14 million children of gay or lesbian parents in the United States." According to the study's authors, Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz, the higher estimates are based upon "classifying as a lesbigay [sic] parent anyone who reports that even the idea of homoerotic sex is appealing." Instead, the authors favor a figure of about one million, which "derives from the narrower...definition of a lesbigay parent as one who self-identifies as such."

However, FRC and Dailey conveniently fails to mention that Stacey and Biblarz's study found:

. . . that lesbian and gay parents were as competent as heterosexual parents. The article did note some differences between families with gay and lesbian parents and those with heterosexual parents, but was careful to emphasize that these were differences, not deficits. Many of those opposing parenting rights for lesbian and gay people seized on these differences, using them to assert that gay and lesbian parents were not as effective as heterosexual parents.

Furthermore, during an interview with the organization Soulforce, Stacey complained about the distortion of her work:

"Significant, reliable social scientific evidence indicates that lesbian and gay parents are as fit, effective, and successful as heterosexual parents. The research also shows that children of same-sex couples are as emotionally healthy and socially adjusted and at least as educationally and socially successful as children raised by heterosexual parents." Later in the interview she commented: "There is not a single, respectable social scientist conducting and publishing research in this area today who claims that gay and lesbian parents harm children." She explained that the research does find some differences between families with gay and lesbian parents and those with heterosexual parents, but emphasized that they are differences, not deficits. For example, daughters of lesbian moms tend to be somewhat more career-oriented than other daughters. That anti-gay activists had cited these differences as evidence supporting their efforts to deny partnership and parenting rights to lesbians and gays was for Stacey "a serious misreading and abuse of our work."

To give an exact impression of badly Dailey manipulates credible research in the study, one could take the examples he lists showing the so-called promiscuity of lgbt relationships as opposed to heterosexual marriages and compare them side by side. 

 

Dailey claims that lgbt relationships are more promiscuous than heterosexual marriages. 

 

Dailey's examples of married heterosexual couples:

 

 - A nationally representative survey of 884 men and 1,288 women published in the Journal of Sex Research in 1997 

 

 - Another 1997 national survey appearing in the Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States. 

 

  - A telephone survey conducted for Parade magazine of 1,049 adults selected to represent the demographic characteristics of the United States published in 1994.

 

 All of the couples listed in the above examples were married. 

 

The following are the examples Dailey used for lgbt couples:

 

  - A Dutch study of partnered gay men in the Netherlands that collected data between the years of 1984-2000 (same-sex marriage was legalized in the Netherlands in 2001).

 

  - Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women, a study of gay men in the city of San Francisco in the early 1970s. 

 

 - A study of the sexual profiles of 2,583 older homosexuals published in the Journal of Sex Research published in 1997. The study included homosexual men in other countries. More than three quarters of men were born in Australia or New Zealand (78.1%), a high number of the men were from United Kingdom or elsewhere in Europe (19.5%) and a small percentage of men surveyed were from other countries (Asia, Africa, Oceania, North, Central or South America—2.3%). 

 

 - A survey conducted by the gay magazine Genre. Dailey received the results from a web page with an anti-gay bias.(The Lambda Report was a publication founded by anti-gay activist Peter LaBarbera in 1993.)

 

None of the gay couples were married and lesbian couples were omitted from every example.

I was surprised to see this study take such a prominent place on FRC's webpage. It was my understanding that the organization had kept it shoddy research in the background in lieu of portraying itself and other groups like it as so-called victims of an "aggressive gay agenda."

But with this flawed study taking a prominent place, it gives the lgbt community an opportunity to show what we and the Southern Poverty Law Center have been talking about when we describe FRC as a hate group.

FRC's crap study is pseudo-scientific work not unlike the work which claims that African-Americans or women are inferior. I guess the difference is that neither racists nor misogynists have a Bible to hide their true motives behind.