Discredited pediatrician says adoption & foster care agencies should be allowed to discriminate (against LGBTQ people)

 

Michelle Cretella of the anti-LGBTQ hate group the American College of Pediatricians

Today's post reminds me of efforts racists made to repair their bad image by claiming that they weren't "anti-black," but strongly "pro-white."

Via its phony online news publication, One News Now, the American Family Association hosted a discredited pediatrician who made a subtle dig against same-sex households who are raising children:

With many thousands of children available for adoption and in the foster care system, Dr. Michelle Cretella of the American College of Pediatricians says their best hope is to be placed in a positive and loving environment. 

"These children, many of them have suffered some form of abuse or neglect in the past, and that's the bad news," Dr. Cretella begins. "But the good news is that the effects of trauma in children can truly be healed by a loving and stable adoptive family." She points to the social science data collected over decades to demonstrate that all children thrive best when they are reared by a married mother and father in a loving home.

 "We therefore support all adoption agencies, particularly those which are faith-based and … only adopt out to married mother-father homes," the pediatrician tells One News Now. "That is truly in line with science and in the best interests of children. It is not prejudicial discrimination." So she says adoption agencies should not be subject to state or local anti-discrimination laws for following their faith and the science in how they place children for adoption or foster care.

Cretella seems to be saying "I am not anti-anything. I am simply pro-children." But a few facts trip her up.

You will notice that while she claimed that there are decades of social science data backing her position, she did not to name one study or report. That wasn't accidental.  To the contrary of what she said, there is an abundance of work which makes the opposite conclusion. Study after study after study have all said the same thing - children raised in same-sex households suffer no adverse effects and these homes are just as good for them as the traditional mother/father  household. And this includes cases of adoption and foster care.

Also while Cretella never says a word about gay parents or same-sex households, her dog whistle about allowing adoption and foster care agencies to discriminate against households not fitting the two-parent mother/father dynamic rings louder than she would like it to.  Added this point is her history of attacking LGBTQ people.

The organization she is affiliated with, the American College of Pediatricians, is a small splinter group of physicians who broke off from the larger and more credible American Academy of Pediatrics due to AAP's support of gay adoption. The Southern Poverty Law Center says it's anti-LGBTQ hate group, accusing it of trafficking homophobic junk science beliefs under the veneer of genuine science. Homophobic junk science such as supporting reparative or "ex-gay therapy" and claiming that gay men "sexualize" poop.

Cretella herself was called out in 2017 by The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine  (SAHM) for a post she published against the transgender community. In a letter on its webpage, SAHM denounced Cretella's post and then proceeded to call out eight errors and distortions she made in the piece one-by-one.

It's worth mentioning that very few fell for the attempt by racists to repair their image.   It's a lesson Cretella would do well to remember should she attempt to fool herself into thinking that her subtle dig against same-sex households raising children went unnoticed. She isn't fooling anyone else with that "won't someone please think of the children" act she's putting on.