Here is the video interview with Fox News Studio B where Dr. Keith Ablow admits he hesitates to write about same-sex parenting and related issues because every time he does he gets threats (see our related NOMblog story here).
After explaining the new research on same-sex parenting, Dr. Ablow says:
"...these are concerning data, that have to be investigated, and I know how controversial it is but as a doctor, as somebody who cares about science, you can't dismiss numbers that come across as compelling as these do."
And later in the interview:
"...it's such a controversial thing [talking about this issue], I have to tell you I hesitate to write the blog. Because every time I do I get threats -- no I get threats, people come, they're going to come to my office, they're going to burn down my house, it's incredible ... in this politically correct insane environment, citing data doesn't seem to be compelling enough, because there's a lot of hatred."
Watch the whole segment:
19 Comments
Now this is interesting.
I see the inuendo, leading us to believe it is someone who supports marriage equality making threats.
But I wonder . . . Could as easily have been barb or "overcame"ssa. Am I right?
Just to add more validity to Ablow's point - Professor Mark Regnerus is being investigated by the Univ of Texas for publishing a study highlighting shortcomings in Gay Parenting.
As we all know, facts are the enemy of the opposition.
Facts contradict the pseudo-marriage narrative.
Emotionally charged slogans and catch phrases are the bread and butter of the marriage redefiners.
Facts and the people who discuss them must be stopped.
Barb, if anything, the study goes to show the importance of legalizing same-sex marriage. The facts show that when homosexuals have children in opposite-sex marriages, it leads to broken homes and poor results.
The problem is that conservatives are using this to say that "gay parents" in general (including same-sex parents) are bad for children -- which is not supported whatsoever. In fact, every study which has looked at same-sex parents in committed relationships has shown that same-sex parents can be just as good for children as opposite-sex biological parents (I know, they have their flaws too, but they are the only studies that have actually tried to investigate the issue at hand).
This is why liberals are getting so angry about the study. It's not because the data show that gays are always terrible parents, it's that conservatives are interpreting the data incorrectly and using the study to attack gays.
Barb, please, discuss the facts with me. Facts are not my enemy. Faith, and the underlying belief held by many on the NOM side that homosexuality is immoral, disgusting, heinous, and wrong because some people wrote it down in a book 2000 years ago, are my enemy.
As we all know, facts are the enemy of the opposition.
Facts contradict the pseudo-marriage narrative.
Emotionally charged slogans and catch phrases are the bread and butter of the marriage redefiners.
Facts and the people who discuss them must be stopped.
Well put Barb and when the other side has to rely on persecution, violence, name calling, personal attacks, and threats then you know that you are right. Because the truth stands for itself. The truth does not need to rely on intimindation to win out, the facts of the truth speak for themselves. This is why the other side tries to stifle fair votes of the people. They cannot win on their own merits.
@Jon,
“In fact, every study which has looked at same-sex parents in committed relationships has shown that same-sex parents can be just as good for children as opposite-sex biological parents (I know, they have their flaws too, but they are the only studies that have actually tried to investigate the issue at hand).”
There is no study that compares children raised from birth by same-sex parents to those raised from birth by their married biological parents. Not one.
“Opposite-sex biological parents” can mean cohabitating parents. And research shows that cohabitating unions don’t measure up to the married biological family. That’s why a direct comparison between any new family structure (same-sex parenting) and the married biological family is key.
Of course, such a study would have to be free of the flaws inherent in much of the past research: self-selected, self-reporting, disproportionately White, educated and wealthy, lesbian mothers as compared to lower-SES’d single parents, or a random sample of ALL families in the U.S. without proper controls for confounding variables.
How about this study of same-sex parents: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3000058/?tool=pmcentrez
Again, it may not be perfect, but it does actually study same-sex parents (the Regnerus study DOES NOT LOOK AT SAME SEX PARENTS, I can not emphasize this enough).
What is your opinion on allowing same-sex couples to adopt children from orphanages?
Marriage between a man and a woman is the only institution which supports both the male and female responsibility to their mutual offspring and to each other, without the need for third party intervention.
Marriage = man + woman
Jon, that's an interesting study. It's a nationally representative one where children in all family types, including same-sex couples, are measured on the variable of progress through the educational system.
The study found the heterosexual married family to be superior, but found that it was due higher SES, racial composition, etc.
There were acknowledged limitations of the study:
"Using data from the U.S. census has several major disadvantages: normal progress through school is the only available children’s outcome, and even this outcome is measured with less precision than one would hope for...The census data are far from ideal for the subject under study here, but better data are nowhere on the horizon."
"The 2000 census did not include a question about the number of times respondents had been married, so married coresident couples cannot, in general, be distinguished from remarried couples. This problem is mitigated somewhat by the ability of the census to distinguish the head of household’s “own children” from the head of household’s “stepchildren.” The census provides only a cross-sectional snapshot of family structure, which fails to capture the ways in which family changes over time can affect children (Wolfe et al. 1996; Wu and Martinson 1993)."
To sum up the second paragraph: there is a risk that the "married" sample could be partially composed of step-families, which are shown to have poorer outcomes than married-intact families.
"Table 1 suggests that childhood grade retention is correlated with family type. Children of heterosexual married couples had the lowest implied rate of grade retention: 6.8%. Children of lesbian mothers and gay fathers had grade retention rates of 9.5% and 9.7%, respectively. Children of heterosexual cohabiting parents had a grade retention rate of 11.7%, while children of single parents had grade retention rates between 11.1% and 12.6%."
Overall, I think it was an interesting study. The researcher made a genuine attempt to have meaningful findings.
I think his overarching goal was to make the case for why adoption by same-sex couples should not be restricted because children will do better when adopted into a sub-optimal family structure than when in state care.
Perhaps this is true. I don't have a problem with same-sex couples taking in children from orphanages. My ultimate goal is to try to reduce the number of children in state care by ensuring that as many children as possible are born to and raised by their married biological parents. According to Regnerus's study, only 3% of children in intact families spend time in foster care, and this is supported by previous research. Thus, if more children are raised by their married mother and father, the need for foster care would decrease.
I could swear that Paul Amato mentioned a few things about Rosenfeld's study when discussing Regnerus's, but I can't seem to load his article right now.
Regnerus's study is more so descriptive of same-sex parenting arrangements, and found them to be rather transient, with the children overwhelmingly resulting from a previous relationship.
That's another questionable thing about Rosenfeld's findings that I have to look into some more. He didn't really elaborate on how the children came into the same-sex households; he just noted they had been living there for five years.
This tidbit is important because if we're talking about children from a previous heterosexual relationship, then we're talking about a quasi step-family, which should not do similarly to intact families even after controlling for other variables.
There are a few ways to square Regnerus's study with Rosenfeld's:
1) Rosenfeld's is a snapshot in time of grade-schoolers (as he noted). Regnerus's measures adults out of the house.
2) Rosenfeld measures one variable, grade retention, while Regnerus measures forty. I do understand Rosenfeld's rationale about how grade retention is closely correlated with future outcomes, but it is still a very limited measure.
Another study published this year found that children of same-sex couples were outperformed by those of married biological parents, but that the culprit is familial instability.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2012.00966.x/abstract
I'd like to see why Rosenfeld found SES to be the key and square his findings with Potter's.
Interesting study. Not in anyway a dent in the decades of solid research showing the married intact family to be best (even this study showed that). It doesn't meet the criteria of a study that compares children raised in intact vs. same-sex families from birth. But it's interesting, nonetheless, and helps us to see the sad state of children in state care, a far greater percentage of whom were held back in school.
Jon @ 8, gay couples should not be adopting other people's kids, when their relationships are built the glorifying immoral sex, pretending to be heterosexuals (gender and behavior identity confusion). It just adds confusion to children whom are already clueless as to how they ended up in the situation their in through no fault of their own.
Actually, we don't need a study to tell us what we already know....Check this bloglink for similar comments like the one below:
http://www.nomblog.com/24657/
....The Regnerus's study, confirms that children raised by their biological parents are much better off, in comparison to same sex parenting with all its variables, which is the "the norm" for that lifestyle. For the other side to say SS parenting is equal to biological parenting or better, his study debunks that notion using "similar", "creditable" SSRs sampling, and concluded with the opposite, period.
It was the gay activists and supporters claiming SS parenting evolution( an altered norm of acceptance) based on faulty statistics, because as noted, there isn't any and never was, creditable data (samples to draw this conclusion by the other side).
Marriage and parenting supporters, based their statistics on self-observation and mother nature, first and foremost, at no time did we suggest or inject experimentation for SS parenting to come to the conclusion we hold dear; those participants (SSCs) did that themselves. We remain bias to this notion ( SSM and parenting) for logical and obvious reasons, regardless of the effectiveness pretentious capabilities when it comes to parenting and raising children from these individuals. We, marriage supporters, are not interested one way or the other in proving or not proving through “statistics” that, SSCs raising kids are equal or better to heterosexual couples. The other side is interested (wanting) in such a study for obvious reasons. Quite frankly, for us marriage/m&w parenting supporters to every take up such interest or experimentation, the outcome could be devastating. Thus, the "scientist’s analysis" ( peer view or critics of the study) suggestive conclusions, by overreaching and contesting that, the study is also sound in wanting SSM and parenting to further dismiss the original study for said subject, or to attempt to support a finding for the opposition, despite the harm involved. They also imply manipulation (which includes experimentation) rather than allow nature to determine the outcome for its subject. Regnerus’s raw, unbiased, un-tampered sample, likely represents the "natural course", the path same sex parenting will go without coercion for the sake of a study. Leave Regnerus's study be, let the other side remaining wanting to their peril.
We need not convince anyone on the ultimate union, Mother Nature’s influence on human nature is evident every single day, just pay more attention to your surroundings... See the truth and not what you want or think you should see...
@Jon # 8
Equality for children is the best whenever possible. One father and one mother for each child if at all possible. Even if only symbolic it shows the child from where humans come from (giving him a sense of stability and confidence), and how he himself can one day create life independent of state and technology.
And if ever two people of the same sex raise a child, that child should never in the least be persuaded to think that he does not have a father or a mother somewhere (or that he does not come from man and woman). Unfortunately this is what the kindergarten teachers (pushed by the medical lobbies) will be teaching the children; that the man-woman combo is not needed to have children.
And growing under parents that openly find sexual pleasure from someone of the same sex will influence the child to try that way (or be more open to that way himself) as well. And this flexibility of the human being (of the 80 to 97 percent who are not born that way) will be influenced at the most manipulative and persuasive levels by the commercial world for its own benefit.
It is not our own marriages that we are worried about but that of our children''s. The commercial world will be trying to take our children away from what we want for them. And they will be doing it for their own selfish economic benefit reasons, not for the child's own good. That's not the kind of community that we want to live in. One where we have to be fighting against our nations educational system (and media influence) rather than with it.
And in a world where all would be possible, it would be even more valid and important for us to have a word that names the man-woman union. So that we can, in education, say to our child, “I want you to get married when you grow up.” And in saying so signifying without ambiguity that we want him to join to all the organs in the human species that he does not have himself. And to experience all that that union is capable of. We don't appreciate our kindergarten teachers telling are children that “man or woman, it does not matter, unless you are bigoted” And that, “your parents must be prejudice and bigoted if they want you to have an opposite sex union. Can't they just let you decide for yourself, and love you all the same?”
While the parents will not be allowed to influence their children on the subject (without being seen as prejudiced), the commercial world will be holding no punches towards manipulative influencing of our children on the subject.
Ash,
I have to admit you seem quite reasonable in comparison to Leo and Good News and some of the other folks on here. My biggest issue trying to debate here is that some NOMers simply despise homosexuality and base their opinions solely on the belief that honosexuality is morally bankrupt and disgusting, and there is no room to debate with those sorts of NOMers.
I think, fundamentally, there is something wrong with changing this debate into statistical averages of child outcomes. There are many factors that cannot be measured (e.g. Stigma of having gay parents and childhood bullying), and as someone who does not personally know anyone raised by gay parents, I don't want to determine the legitimacy of their parents and their family for them. I think we should let the children speak for themselves (there are now adults who were raised by same sex parents), and I think it's indisputable that there exist gay couples who make great parents. It is also indisputable that there are children who need parents, and homosexual couples willing to take them in and give them a loving home.
I don't think statistics studies are going to convince either one of us to change our minds, so I simply appeal to your common humanity. Gay couples just want their love recognized and want to start legal families. If we could have civil unions be separate but equal that would be fine with me, but separate is inherently not equal (civil unions have not been equal in practice in the U.S.).
As for those of you who believe that children are better off with no parents than with homosexual parents, I have nothing more to say. You are blinded by faith and hatred, and I ask only that you reflect upon your beliefs and try to judge others less and improve your own lives rather than trying to damage the lives of others.
Jon said:
Ash,
I have to admit you seem quite reasonable in comparison to Leo and Good News and some of the other folks on here. My biggest issue trying to debate here is that some NOMers simply despise homosexuality and base their opinions solely on the belief that honosexuality is morally bankrupt and disgusting, and there is no room to debate with those sorts of NOMers.
Finally you something right!
Jon said:
Ash,
I have to admit you seem quite reasonable in comparison to Leo and Good News and some of the other folks on here. My biggest issue trying to debate here is that some NOMers simply despise homosexuality and base their opinions solely on the belief that honosexuality is morally bankrupt and disgusting, and there is no room to debate with those sorts of NOMers.
Finally you got something right!
A public gay marriage law can not be viewed as simply allowing gays to marry without also harming society collectively
A gay marriage law is like a legal virus that would infect, and take over, all other laws, and this virus effect on other laws would greatly hurt public society at various levels.
Indeed, until you are aware of this virus effect on other laws and the harm that poses to society, you would be supporting gay marriage ignorantly.
For starters see The Hausvater Project brief
Parental Rights as an example of this virus effect.
Jon your moralisim is on display.
You said:
"As for those of you who believe that children are better off with no parents than with homosexual parents, I have nothing more to say. You are blinded by faith and hatred, and I ask only that you reflect upon your beliefs and try to judge others less and improve your own lives rather than trying to damage the lives of others."
Hang on.
You have been challenged to explain what you intended by consensual "homosexual love" (aka romanticized same-sex sexual behavior) and have yet to step up to the plate.
You have asserted -- merely asserted without sound argumentation -- a moral equivalence between consensual "homosexual love" and coital relations of husband and wife. You have not bothered to step up to the plate on that either.
You have repeatedly emphasized gay identity and homosexual orientation. When challenged for your justification for that emphasis you have fallen silent.
Look, you can throw around your judgements on other people all you want, but maybe you ought to try to be more accountable for what you have said of your own accord rather than admonishing others. Set a good example of your own stated standards.
Meanwhile, if same-sex sexual behavior is intrinsic to the same-sex parenting scenario you have in mind, and that does appear to be the definitive feature, then, it is up to you to explain how that behavior is appropriate in a parental relationship.
Again, you need to step up to the plate.
Hahahahahahahahahaha omg this makes no sense!!!!!!!!!! I'm actually crying laughing.
This has nothing to do with anything!
Sorry I had to.
It does seem your post fits that description.