When Christianity Stands Against Favored Causes

 

Introduction

The foundation of America was based on the premise that no person was naturally superior to another and that no group could coerce a person or group to do something they believed was evil. Of course, this premise also presumed some common sense responsibilities as well. If you believed a group believed the wrong thing (for example, believed that a religion taught error), you didn’t try to force that group to change because they had rights too. You simply didn’t associate with that group (either by leaving it or not joining it in the first place), and you used reason and politeness to explain the truth as you understood it, recognizing this as a civilized exchange that led to a greater understanding of what was true.

That’s not the case nowadays. Today we have favored causes and favored classes whose beliefs are given special treatment, imposed on all at the expense of those groups who believe they are wrong. It doesn’t have to be this way of course. It is possible that even if one way of thinking is recognized by a majority of a nation, that the minority can practice their beliefs without being hindered by the majority—provided they do not do harm on others. But that isn’t the way things are here in America. Here we take the all or nothing approach where if something is deemed favored, all must accept it.

Right now the denigrated class is Christianity—specifically Christianity which insists on moral values that the state has no right to alter. This is the belief in God who encounters the human person individually and as a group and teaches them the right way to live, and what acts are not compatible with this belief. It is reasonable that an institution that is established by a Christian denomination (like a University or a Hospital) will be run in accordance with the beliefs of this denomination and it will not act contrary to these beliefs. It is also reasonable that an individual who belongs to a religion (and takes it seriously) and owns a business will not run his business in opposition to what he believes. So a customer or an employee who wants a service which runs contrary to the religious beliefs of the employer should either do without or go to where the service can be provided—so long as it is not harmful to others. Otherwise that customer or employee is trying to violate the civil rights of the employer.

Now, if an employer does not have a philosophical basis, then the beliefs of the employee do not matter, and it would be unjust to take action against them because they hold a belief.

The History of Racism and Its Misapplication By Weak Analogy

The problem we have in America that is we have a legacy in this country of racism. It formally (that is, enshrined in law) extended from the founding of the country to the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and informally (that is, held by individuals and some groups, but not recognized as acceptable government policy) even today. It was an ugly legacy with dehumanizing slavery and then attempts to keep an ethnic group separate and oppressed. Most people today recognize it was a shameful part of our history.

Unfortunately, Americans have a habit of using the fallacy of weak analogy which looks at two events and assumes they are identical when the differences are actually more significant than the similarities. For example, some have actually tried to argue that the opposition to "same sex marriage" is the same as the racist laws which forbade interracial marriage and conclude that opposition to “same sex marriage” is also motivated by bigotry. The problem is, this analogy is weak because it has only one point of similarity, laws limiting who can be married, but many points of dissimilarity.

For example, the laws against racial marriage presumed that reproduction between a member of a Caucasian ethnic group and a member of an African ethnic group would end up “diluting” the “superior” Caucasian ethnic group. “Same sex marriage” cannot involve reproduction. So, right off the bat, this is a major difference. Another difference is that the shameful laws of racism in America were based on the belief that the people of African origin were less human than Caucasians, while the opposition to “same sex marriage” is based on the belief that some behaviors must never be acted on. I could go on, but these two examples show that the motivation for the two laws were entirely different. Sure there could have been people who took a moral prohibition and treated the person acting on it with hatred, but the hatred by some of people with same sex attraction did not cause the laws against “same sex marriage,” but hatred did cause the laws restricting African Americans.

The Begging the Question Leads to Self-Righteous Justification

This Weak Analogy leads to the fallacy of begging the question. This is where a proposition which needs to be proven is assumed to be true without proof. Opposition to abortion and contraception is assumed to be based on “controlling women,” when that’s the point that needs to be proven. Opposition to “same sex marriage is assumed to be based on “homophobia,” when (again) that’s the point which needs to be proven.

The Supreme Court of the United States made this fallacy when it struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (United States v. Windsor), assuming the motivation was intolerance, when that was the point to be proven. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, "The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity.” That the purpose was “to disparage and injure” is precisely what needed to be proven. Instead it was assumed to be true.

The Result Is The Attacking of Christianity For Opposing a Favored Cause

When Christianity opposes legitimizing something that is morally wrong, and that moral wrong is a favored cause, the result is that Christianity is accused of holding these views out of hatred and intolerance. Basically, the argument is:

• Nothing Good can Oppose X
• Christianity Opposes X
• Therefore Christianity is Nothing Good.

The problem is, the major premise (Nothing Good can Oppose X) needs to be proven, not assumed to be true. But because nobody is questioning the major premise, the conclusion is assumed to be true (falsely). This means that Christianity is viewed as a hate group that needs to be isolated from society, much as one would want to isolate a Klansman or a Neo-Nazi.

Conclusion

What we have now in America is a case where politicians and judges favor certain stances and promote them in law and judicial rulings. When they declare X good, they effectively declare those who oppose X to be enemies of the state. Because the favored causes today involve things that are morally wrong from the Christian belief, Christianity must be the enemy of the state. The problem is, the Constitution does not allow the government to decide Christianity is an enemy of the state. But so long as the branches of government set aside the Constitution to favor a cause, we can expect this attack to continue.

No Matter How You Slice It, It is Still Baloney: Reflections on the Flawed Lesbian Family Study

Source: http://www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/pdf/Gartrell-Bos-Goldberg-2010.pdf

Introduction

On Facebook someone passed another link from the Huffington Post  claiming there is 0% instances of physical or sexual abuse among the children of lesbian couples.  The conclusion being drawn is that there are no dangers to children for being the child of a homosexual couple.  Suspecting that this claim was highly dubious (similar to the 100% support claimed by dictators), I looked up the actual report (linked above).

This report claims (page 6) that:

A key finding in the current study was that none of the NLLFS adolescents reported physical or sexual abuse by a parent or other caregiver. This finding contradicts the notion, offered in opposition to parenting by gay and lesbian people, that same-sex parents are likely to abuse their offspring sexually. (Arkansas Department of Human Services, 2010;Falk, 1989; Ford, 2010; Golombok & Tasker, 1994; Patterson, 1992)

They contrast this to other studies saying:

In the 17-year-old weighted subsample of the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence (NATSCEV) (Finkelhor et al., 2009a, b, c), it was found that the lifetime rates of victimization by a parent or other caregiver were: 26.1% of adolescents had been physically abused and 8.3% sexually assaulted (D. Finkelhor, personal communication, March 13, 2010)

The inference drawn by supporters is that a child living with a lesbian couple is safer than those with heterosexual parents.  Therefore there is no basis for those people to oppose homosexuals raising children on grounds of abuse.

The Logical Fallacies

There are several logical fallacies with such a conclusion, and I will focus on three: Weak Analogy, Hasty Generalization, and Begging the Question.

Weak Analogy

In an analogy or comparison, we have two different  situations which are compared.  If we say that conditions [A], [B] and [C] are the same in both Situation 1 and 2, we might think that the conditions are acceptable to compare and contrast.  However, if relevant conditions [X], [Y] and [Z] are different, this may show the comparison is not accurate.

In this case, we have a false comparison comparing the abuse suffered by juvenile delinquents compared to the adolescents in this survey.  This is a comparison of apples and oranges.  We are comparing one sample of delinquents to one sample of lesbian couples with children.

A proper comparison would be to compare what percentage of those juvenile delinquents abused came from heterosexual homes compared to heterosexual families as a whole, and then compare this to those juvenile delinquents who were abused and came from homosexual homes to homosexual families as a whole.

Therefore, this study does not have equal conditions for comparison.

There is another problem with their comparison.  It is relevant is that all the couples made use of artificial insemination.  However, this report (see page 2) is being used to discuss homosexual couple adoptions and the objections to them:

Another claim about the origins of sexual orientation that has been put forth in litigation and public discourse by opponents of equality in marriage, adoption, and foster care for same-sex couples is that lesbian and gay parents are more likely to abuse their children sexually.

Quite simply, there is a difference between Artificial Insemination to have a child and to adopt a child.  You can't use the experience of one [artificial insemination] to argue in favor of the other [same sex couple adoption] without studying the experience of the other.

In short, the relevant issues which are different make any general conclusions drawn by this conclusion a weak analogy.

The Hasty Generalization

There is another problem with such a study .  The youth interviewed were in fact a total of 78 youths approximately 17 years of age (half male youth, half female youth) from 77 families which completed all stages of this study.  78 youth are in fact far too small a number to gauge the proper state of affairs of lesbian couples with children.  This is especially notable when the report describes the statistical breakdown of the geography of the couples:

Family region of residence (U.S.)
Northeast 47%
Midwest 1%
South 9%
West 43%

We should point out that 1% of 77 couples would be 0.77 families and 9% of the 77 couples would be 6.93 families.  In other words, in the entire Midwest, we have 1 family represented.  Sure we can assume this group rounded off, but one family in the entire Midwest?  That's asinine to assume they represent the entire lesbian population of the Midwest.

The footnote describes this situation as:

Between T3 and T5, the NLLFS families resided in large urban communities, midsized towns, and rural areas of California, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin

That's a pretty biased sample.  90% of the population is drawn from two regions.  Only 10% of the population from the South and Midwest (Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Wisconsin and Maryland).

Moreover, to make a blanket assumption (0% of lesbian "families" abuse their children) requires how such couples behave in other regions of the world.  Essentially this is a report on how 77 lesbian families (of which 56% broke up within 7 years of the birth of the child [see page 3]) in the US, with a majority in the West and the Northeast) treated their children.

First, we need to know what number of lesbian couples exist in the United States, especially in each region, then what percentage of them these children make up.  Since this study in fact tells us that this study was made up of 77 families with 78 adolescent children (see page 3 of this report).  Since we don't know from this report the number of lesbian couples with children, we cannot say that such a sample is representative of the whole.

Indeed, on page 8 of this report, the Gartrell-Bos-Goldberg study admits the flaw with the NLLFS study:

Despite these strengths, the NLLFS has several limitations.  First, it is a nonrandom sample. At the time that the NLLFS began in the mid-1980s, due to the long history of discrimination against lesbian and gay people, the prospect of recruiting a representative sample of planned lesbian families was even more remote than it is today (Bos et al., 2007). A second limitation is that the NLLFS and NSFG were neither matched nor controlled for socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, or region of residence. An analysis of a more economically diverse sample would be an important contribution given that same-sex couples raising children are more likely to live in poverty and have lower household incomes than married, heterosexual couples raising children (Albelda, Badgett, Schneebaum,& Gates, 2009; Julien, Jouvin, Jodoin, l’Archeveque, & Chartrand, 2008). In addition, now that it is possible to obtain more information about sperm donors, future studies might benefit from exploring the association between the offspring’s sexual orientation and that of both parents. Finally, although the NLLFS is the largest, longest-running prospective study of planned lesbian families, the findings would be strengthened by replication in a larger sample.

So, what is flawed is, according to Gartrell, Bos and Goldberg:

1. The sample is non-random.
2. The sample is not representative
3. The socio-economic status was not controlled in sample.
4. Race/ethnicity was not controlled in sample (adolescents were 87.1% white, 12.9% non-white).
5. The regions represented was not controlled in sample.
6. The sample is considered too small.
7. The study did not account for the sexual orientation of the sperm donor.

When you consider that any or all of these can throw off the actual results of the study, it would be a hasty generalization to assume that lesbian couples do not abuse their children on the basis of this study.

The Fallacy of Begging the Question

In discussing physical abuse, this study performs the Begging the Question fallacy when it comes to what is understood by physical abuse.  This study describes (page 7) the idea of less physical abuse among lesbian couples as:

In addition, corporal punishment is less commonly used by lesbian mothers as a disciplinary
measure than by heterosexual fathers (Gartrell et al., 1999, 2000, 2005, 2006; Golombok et al., 2003)

However, corporal punishment has not been established as physical abuse intrinsically, though there is no doubt that some can turn corporal punishment into physical abuse (the "link" referred to further on in the paragraph cited).  The point is, if parents do spank their children, is this automatically considered to be physical abuse?  Most parents, it would seem, would disagree.  So this is an issue which needs to be proven, not assumed to be true.

[In addition, this is a Weak analogy again.  Comparing Lesbian mothers with Heterosexual fathers misses a crucial comparison.  What is absent is the comparison with Homosexual fathers, as well as comparing lesbian mothers to heterosexual mothers]

Thus to conclude that there is more physical abuse among families with heterosexual male parents, basing it on the claim that corporal punishment is most likely to be done by a heterosexual male parent is to beg the question: that corporal punishment is abuse.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, this report makes use of a flawed sample, a weak comparison and an assumption that corporal punishment leads to physical abuse to argue that there is no basis for fears of homosexual couples adopting children.  Since the report by the NLLFS fails to meet the requirements for a controlled study with a representative sample which correspond to the questions asked, this report by the NLLFS cannot be said to prove its point.

No Matter How You Slice It, It is Still Baloney: Reflections on the Flawed Lesbian Family Study

Source: http://www.law.ucla.edu/williamsinstitute/pdf/Gartrell-Bos-Goldberg-2010.pdf

Introduction

On Facebook someone passed another link from the Huffington Post  claiming there is 0% instances of physical or sexual abuse among the children of lesbian couples.  The conclusion being drawn is that there are no dangers to children for being the child of a homosexual couple.  Suspecting that this claim was highly dubious (similar to the 100% support claimed by dictators), I looked up the actual report (linked above).

This report claims (page 6) that:

A key finding in the current study was that none of the NLLFS adolescents reported physical or sexual abuse by a parent or other caregiver. This finding contradicts the notion, offered in opposition to parenting by gay and lesbian people, that same-sex parents are likely to abuse their offspring sexually. (Arkansas Department of Human Services, 2010;Falk, 1989; Ford, 2010; Golombok & Tasker, 1994; Patterson, 1992)

They contrast this to other studies saying:

In the 17-year-old weighted subsample of the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s National Survey of Children’s Exposure to Violence (NATSCEV) (Finkelhor et al., 2009a, b, c), it was found that the lifetime rates of victimization by a parent or other caregiver were: 26.1% of adolescents had been physically abused and 8.3% sexually assaulted (D. Finkelhor, personal communication, March 13, 2010)

The inference drawn by supporters is that a child living with a lesbian couple is safer than those with heterosexual parents.  Therefore there is no basis for those people to oppose homosexuals raising children on grounds of abuse.

The Logical Fallacies

There are several logical fallacies with such a conclusion, and I will focus on three: Weak Analogy, Hasty Generalization, and Begging the Question.

Weak Analogy

In an analogy or comparison, we have two different  situations which are compared.  If we say that conditions [A], [B] and [C] are the same in both Situation 1 and 2, we might think that the conditions are acceptable to compare and contrast.  However, if relevant conditions [X], [Y] and [Z] are different, this may show the comparison is not accurate.

In this case, we have a false comparison comparing the abuse suffered by juvenile delinquents compared to the adolescents in this survey.  This is a comparison of apples and oranges.  We are comparing one sample of delinquents to one sample of lesbian couples with children.

A proper comparison would be to compare what percentage of those juvenile delinquents abused came from heterosexual homes compared to heterosexual families as a whole, and then compare this to those juvenile delinquents who were abused and came from homosexual homes to homosexual families as a whole.

Therefore, this study does not have equal conditions for comparison.

There is another problem with their comparison.  It is relevant is that all the couples made use of artificial insemination.  However, this report (see page 2) is being used to discuss homosexual couple adoptions and the objections to them:

Another claim about the origins of sexual orientation that has been put forth in litigation and public discourse by opponents of equality in marriage, adoption, and foster care for same-sex couples is that lesbian and gay parents are more likely to abuse their children sexually.

Quite simply, there is a difference between Artificial Insemination to have a child and to adopt a child.  You can't use the experience of one [artificial insemination] to argue in favor of the other [same sex couple adoption] without studying the experience of the other.

In short, the relevant issues which are different make any general conclusions drawn by this conclusion a weak analogy.

The Hasty Generalization

There is another problem with such a study .  The youth interviewed were in fact a total of 78 youths approximately 17 years of age (half male youth, half female youth) from 77 families which completed all stages of this study.  78 youth are in fact far too small a number to gauge the proper state of affairs of lesbian couples with children.  This is especially notable when the report describes the statistical breakdown of the geography of the couples:

Family region of residence (U.S.)
Northeast 47%
Midwest 1%
South 9%
West 43%

We should point out that 1% of 77 couples would be 0.77 families and 9% of the 77 couples would be 6.93 families.  In other words, in the entire Midwest, we have 1 family represented.  Sure we can assume this group rounded off, but one family in the entire Midwest?  That's asinine to assume they represent the entire lesbian population of the Midwest.

The footnote describes this situation as:

Between T3 and T5, the NLLFS families resided in large urban communities, midsized towns, and rural areas of California, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin

That's a pretty biased sample.  90% of the population is drawn from two regions.  Only 10% of the population from the South and Midwest (Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Wisconsin and Maryland).

Moreover, to make a blanket assumption (0% of lesbian "families" abuse their children) requires how such couples behave in other regions of the world.  Essentially this is a report on how 77 lesbian families (of which 56% broke up within 7 years of the birth of the child [see page 3]) in the US, with a majority in the West and the Northeast) treated their children.

First, we need to know what number of lesbian couples exist in the United States, especially in each region, then what percentage of them these children make up.  Since this study in fact tells us that this study was made up of 77 families with 78 adolescent children (see page 3 of this report).  Since we don't know from this report the number of lesbian couples with children, we cannot say that such a sample is representative of the whole.

Indeed, on page 8 of this report, the Gartrell-Bos-Goldberg study admits the flaw with the NLLFS study:

Despite these strengths, the NLLFS has several limitations.  First, it is a nonrandom sample. At the time that the NLLFS began in the mid-1980s, due to the long history of discrimination against lesbian and gay people, the prospect of recruiting a representative sample of planned lesbian families was even more remote than it is today (Bos et al., 2007). A second limitation is that the NLLFS and NSFG were neither matched nor controlled for socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, or region of residence. An analysis of a more economically diverse sample would be an important contribution given that same-sex couples raising children are more likely to live in poverty and have lower household incomes than married, heterosexual couples raising children (Albelda, Badgett, Schneebaum,& Gates, 2009; Julien, Jouvin, Jodoin, l’Archeveque, & Chartrand, 2008). In addition, now that it is possible to obtain more information about sperm donors, future studies might benefit from exploring the association between the offspring’s sexual orientation and that of both parents. Finally, although the NLLFS is the largest, longest-running prospective study of planned lesbian families, the findings would be strengthened by replication in a larger sample.

So, what is flawed is, according to Gartrell, Bos and Goldberg:

1. The sample is non-random.
2. The sample is not representative
3. The socio-economic status was not controlled in sample.
4. Race/ethnicity was not controlled in sample (adolescents were 87.1% white, 12.9% non-white).
5. The regions represented was not controlled in sample.
6. The sample is considered too small.
7. The study did not account for the sexual orientation of the sperm donor.

When you consider that any or all of these can throw off the actual results of the study, it would be a hasty generalization to assume that lesbian couples do not abuse their children on the basis of this study.

The Fallacy of Begging the Question

In discussing physical abuse, this study performs the Begging the Question fallacy when it comes to what is understood by physical abuse.  This study describes (page 7) the idea of less physical abuse among lesbian couples as:

In addition, corporal punishment is less commonly used by lesbian mothers as a disciplinary
measure than by heterosexual fathers (Gartrell et al., 1999, 2000, 2005, 2006; Golombok et al., 2003)

However, corporal punishment has not been established as physical abuse intrinsically, though there is no doubt that some can turn corporal punishment into physical abuse (the "link" referred to further on in the paragraph cited).  The point is, if parents do spank their children, is this automatically considered to be physical abuse?  Most parents, it would seem, would disagree.  So this is an issue which needs to be proven, not assumed to be true.

[In addition, this is a Weak analogy again.  Comparing Lesbian mothers with Heterosexual fathers misses a crucial comparison.  What is absent is the comparison with Homosexual fathers, as well as comparing lesbian mothers to heterosexual mothers]

Thus to conclude that there is more physical abuse among families with heterosexual male parents, basing it on the claim that corporal punishment is most likely to be done by a heterosexual male parent is to beg the question: that corporal punishment is abuse.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, this report makes use of a flawed sample, a weak comparison and an assumption that corporal punishment leads to physical abuse to argue that there is no basis for fears of homosexual couples adopting children.  Since the report by the NLLFS fails to meet the requirements for a controlled study with a representative sample which correspond to the questions asked, this report by the NLLFS cannot be said to prove its point.