Why can't anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council stop distorting science?

Old habits do indeed die hard. Particularly if one of those habits happen to be distorting scientific work to lie about the LGBTQ community. It's been quite a while since the Family Research Council has done this, so my guess is the group is attempting to make up for lost time.

FRC is angry at Texas Speaker of the House Joe Straus for speaking the truth about the anti-transgender bill some in that state are eager to pass.  Straus recently said he was disgusted by the debate and implied that the bill could lead to the suicides of transgender men, women, and children.

Naturally, FRC posted a push back filled with distortions:

Lt. Governor Patrick, who’s led the charge for privacy, hopes Straus’s comments were misreported. “Obviously, no one wants to see harm to anyone as a result of any legislation that is passed,” his office responded. Of course, as FRC’s Peter Sprigg points out, the most harmful position may be the House speaker’s. Suggesting that protecting women and children would lead to suicide is a ridiculously false and disingenuous statement. Even the Left cites studies by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Ann Haas, who says, “Years and years of research has taught us that the overwhelming number of people who die by suicide had a diagnosable mental disorder at the time of their death.” In other words, people do not commit suicide because of the passage of legislation, or even because of “bullying,” but because of mental illness (which gender dysphoria, according to the APA, is!). There’s absolutely no evidence that which bathroom someone uses will cause them to commit suicide.

In an older article of the journal Pediatrics, the authors wrote: “….suicide attempts were not explained by experiences with discrimination, violence, loss of friendship, or current personal attitudes towards homosexuality.” A 2005 analysis of this article, by conservative scholar Neil Whitehead, Ph.D., is still available online. “So these last two points,” Peter points out, “that public hysteria about LGBT suicides may actually contribute to them, and that early self-labeling also increases them -- suggest that Straus’s own comments (reflecting fear of transgender suicides, and implicitly supporting self-labeling even by schoolchildren) might do more to cause suicides than passing the Privacy Act would!

Then, of course, there’s the important 2011 Swedish study, which showed that even AFTER having gender reassignment surgery, people who identify as transgender had a suicide rate 19 times higher than the general population. This undermines any suggestion that simply giving those who identify as transgender everything they ask for will do anything to reduce their suicide rate.

The American College of Pediatricians calls agendas like Straus’s child abuse. This week’s Daily Signal highlights one such pediatrician, who says that this ideology has infiltrated her field and offered a deeply-flawed narrative. Read why here. As for Texas, let’s hope leaders like the House speaker can set aside their own prejudices long enough to do what’s in the best interest of the state -- which research shows is not a gender-free existence!

There is just so many lies pushed here. Allow me to break them down:


1.This quote -  Even the Left cites studies by the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Ann Haas, who says, “Years and years of research has taught us that the overwhelming number of people who die by suicide had a diagnosable mental disorder at the time of their death.” In other words, people do not commit suicide because of the passage of legislation, or even because of “bullying,” but because of mental illness (which gender dysphoria, according to the APA, is!). There’s absolutely no evidence that which bathroom someone uses will cause them to commit suicide.

The only thing accurate about that passage is the first quote. Haas did say this. But the rest is pure conjecture by FRC.  And it's rather misplaced seeing that Haas has written about and been quoted  about suicide in the transgender community.  This happened because she helped author a report which looked at the results from the  National Transgender Discrimination Survey in 2015.

In direct contrast to what FRC claimed, the survey found that:

 . . . transgender respondents who experienced rejection by family and friends, discrimination, victimization, or violence have a higher risk of attempting suicide. 78 percent of survey respondents who suffered physical or sexual violence at school reported suicide attempts, as did 65 percent of respondents who experienced violence at work.

2. This citation - In an older article of the journal Pediatrics, the authors wrote: “….suicide attempts were not explained by experiences with discrimination, violence, loss of friendship, or current personal attitudes towards homosexuality.” A 2005 analysis of this article, by conservative scholar Neil Whitehead, Ph.D., is still available online.

I found it very interesting that FRC did not link the Pediatrics citation.  I found even more interesting that FRC wants people to read the analysis of the article rather than the article itself. This is not by accident. In reading Whitehead's critique, one sees that the one of the authors was Greg Remafedi, a professor at the University of Mississippi. Remafedi has gone on record  complaining how religious right groups distort his work to denigrate the LGBTQ community.  So did FRC distort Remafedi's work to make its assertion? Odds are very possible, particularly when one takes into account that FRC cited one truncated passage without listing any information on the author or link to the article it cited.

3. This citation  - Then, of course, there’s the important 2011 Swedish study, which showed that even AFTER having gender reassignment surgery, people who identify as transgender had a suicide rate 19 times higher than the general population. This undermines any suggestion that simply giving those who identify as transgender everything they ask for will do anything to reduce their suicide rate.

FRC's citation of the 2011 Swedish study is cherry-picking backed up by bad conjecture in terms of supposedly "what the transgender community wants" as defined by FRC.

Regarding the suicide rates of transgender men and women who undergo gender reassignment surgery, FRC omitted a crucial part regarding what the study said:

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.

4. Miscellaneous distortions -  FRC cites the The American College of Pediatricians and a physician who is the president of this group (The Daily Signal article FRC alludes to is authored by Michelle Cretella, who is listed as president of the American College of Pediatricians) as proof that its anti-transgender assertions are valid.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed the American College of Pediatricians (and FRC for that matter) as an anti-LBTQ hate group:

 . . .this fringe organization, under the veneer of its professional-sounding name and claims, works to defame and discredit LGBT people, often by distorting legitimate research. It consists of around 200 members and started because a small group of anti-LGBT physicians and other healthcare professionals broke away from the 60,000 member American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), composed of leaders in the professional field, to form its own group after the AAP issued a new policy statement in 2002 in support of adoption and foster parenting by same-sex couples.  

 Anti-marriage equality protester at the Supreme Court ACPeds has a history of propagating damaging falsehoods about LGBT people, including linking homosexuality to pedophilia, and claiming that LGBT people are more promiscuous than heterosexuals, and that LGBT people are a danger to children.  

 In 2010, for example, ACPeds mailed a letter to over 14,000 school district superintendents pushing so-called “ex-gay” therapy and making other false claims about LGBT people in its “Facts About Youth” campaign, which brought a scathing response from a researcher whose work the group had distorted. That wasn’t the first time ACPeds had been called out for distorting legitimate research, but clearly, if the brief they filed is any indication, the lesson didn’t take.

And several of those "facts" in its "Facts About Youth" campaign were blatantly inaccurate. I pointed this out in a 2010 Huffington Post article.

So in a poorly written article which was easy to refute, the Family Research Council makes a sad attempt to prove that the anti-transgender legislation that it supports couldn't lead to suicides in that community.

What FRC actually does is prove yet again that it has no place in debates and discussions regarding the LGBTQ community without some type of disclaimer of danger not unlike the one on cigarette packages.

graphic taken from Planet Transgender.