Steve Ray on New Evangelization

Does Faith = Hate? - Gay marriage and religious liberty are uneasy bedfellows - by Rod Dreher

In CERC

This summer's Windsor decision from the Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, but it did not declare a constitutional right to gay marriage.  Yet even Maggie Gallagher, the country's most tireless and high-profile opponent of same-sex marriage, now believes such an outcome is a foregone conclusion.

"It's clear that the courts are going to shut down the marriage debate and impose gay marriage uniformly," she says.  "There is not yet a unified sense of where we go from here, except for this: there is an accelerating awareness that the consequence of marriage equality is going to be extremely negative for traditionalist Christians."

Interviews with legal scholars, activists, and other social and religious conservatives involved in the fight against same-sex marriage confirm this grim outlook.  In the courts, and in the court of public opinion, the momentum towards same-sex marriage has been clear.  A consensus is emerging on the right that the most important goal at this stage is not to stop gay marriage entirely but to secure as much liberty as possible for dissenting religious and social conservatives while there is still time.

To do so requires waking conservatives up to what may happen to them and their religious institutions if current trends continue — and Catholic bishops, say, come to be regarded as latter-day Bull Connors.

Will religious conservatives be seen as no better than racist bullies in the emerging settlement?  Despite what you haven't heard — the news media's silence on religious liberty threats from same-sex marriage is deafening — this is not slippery-slope alarmism.  The threat is real.

Robin Fretwell Wilson is a University of Illinois law professor and religious liberty expert.  Though she takes no position on same-sex marriage, Wilson argues that religious freedom is enormously important in this fight.

"Everybody knows that [church] sanctuaries are going to be out of the reach of same-sex marriage laws," she says.  "The whole fight is over religiously affiliated organizations and individuals who are in government employment or out in commerce."

Religious schools and charities could suffer penalties such as the loss of government funding or state credentials necessary to operate.  They could also have their tax-exempt status taken from them.

The latter actually happened to a group of New Jersey Methodists in the 2007 Ocean Grove case.  That state court decision held that the New Jersey government was permitted to withdraw a special tax exemption, tied to public access, from a church-owned pavilion that declined to host two gay commitment ceremonies.  What happened next, says Wilson, set an ominous precedent.

"The local taxing authority then removed the local exemption for ad valorem taxes for the pavilion, and then billed them for back taxes," she says.  "That tax benefit is one of the most substantial benefits religious groups receive from the government.  Although the group had elected a local tax status tied to public access, if state and local governments use this as a guide for how to deal with religious organizations that don't accept same-sex marriage, that could be a big deal."

Individual religious believers also stand to lose their jobs or have their businesses take to court.  Christian florists, photographers, and bakers have already been sued or punished under nondiscrimination law for refusing to provide wedding or commitment-ceremony services to gay couples.  State courts in New Mexico have upheld a $6,000 fine levied against a wedding photographer who declined to shoot a lesbian commitment ceremony.  Civil litigation underway in Colorado pits a gay couple against two Christian pastry chefs who refused to bake a cake to celebrate a wedding the pair held in Massachusetts.

In these cases, state nondiscrimination laws did not carve out religious liberty exceptions.  Though many observers focus only on Supreme Court rulings, Wilson says instances like these highlight the importance of marriage battles in state legislatures.

"When same-sex marriage gets dropped out of the sky, it doesn't drop onto a blank slate, but into the existing substrate of state anti-discrimination laws," she explains.

This belies the claim by marriage-equality activists that same-sex marriage is merely a simple expansion of marriage rights and that no one who opposes it will suffer undue hardship.

But if gay activists understate the threat same-sex marriage poses to religious freedom, chicken-little traditionalists sometimes overstate their vulnerability.

Wilson points out that the courts have expressed support for what they deem reasonable accommodation of religious belief, even when that belief clashes with civil rights claims.

"The idea that this is all of a sudden some newfangled thing where we're having to think through for the very first time how religious organizations are having to deal with civil rights norms is just not true," says Wilson.

Wilson and others engaged in this debate have suggested detailed legislative remedies attempting to balance gay rights and religious liberty for the common good.  She concedes, however, that the 1960s civil rights template is of limited use in thinking through religious liberty vis-à-vis homosexual rights.  Those laws were written in a time in which no one could have imagined them being used to question the gender structure of marriage.

Until now, the debate has focused on the question, "What is marriage?"  But henceforth it is coalescing around the question, "What is homosexuality?"  Or, to be more specific:  is homosexuality the same thing as race?  The future of religious freedom depends on how the courts, and the country, answer that question.

To gay marriage supporters, homosexuality is, like race, a morally neutral condition.  Opponents disagree, believing that because homosexuality, like heterosexuality, has to do with behavior, it cannot be separated from moral reflection.  As Gallagher put it in a 2010 paper in Northwestern University's law journal, "Skin color does not give rise to a morality."

The problem for traditionalists is that the sexual revolution taught Americans to think of sexual desire as fundamental to one's identity.  If this is true, then aside from extreme exceptions (e.g., pedophilia), stigmatizing desire, like stigmatizing race, denies a person's full humanity.  To do so would be an act of blind animosity.

Though she appealed in that same law journal paper to the magnanimity of gay rights supporters, Gallagher acknowledged that their confidence that homosexuality is no different from race would make compromise morally indecent.  Americans, she wrote, "do not draft legislative accommodations for irrational hatred."

This is largely why the Supreme Court majority struck down DOMA: the 5-4 majority saw it as motivated only by an unconstitutional desire to stigmatize and injure homosexuals.  Though Chief Justice John Roberts's dissent highlighted the majority's explicit endorsement of the right of states to define marriage, Justice Antonin Scalia warned that this was only because his anti-DOMA colleagues didn't think they could get away with going further — for now.

That's why some leading traditional-marriage activists insist that the movement must continue to press arguments on the marriage question itself, even as religious liberty takes center stage in their political and policy strategizing.

The Heritage Foundation's Ryan T.Anderson is one of the top theoreticians of the traditional-marriage movement.  Anderson has become a high-profile advocate of applying natural law thinking to the marriage debate.  His view, in short, is that traditional marriage recognizes anthropological truths about human nature and therefore is critical to building stable societies in which to rear children.  Accepting same-sex marriage, he says, requires a philosophical shift that erodes the solid ground on which traditional marriage stands.

"The other side's lead talking point is that opposing gay marriage is the same as racial bigotry," he says.  "If this goes unresponded to, it will be no surprise if a majority of Americans eventually decide that they're right.  We're not there yet, but if that happens, the religious liberty protections we are able to lock in now will be very fragile."

Both Congress and the Supreme Court are sensitive to political reality.  Anderson says the court's refusal to constitutionalize gay marriage in its two rulings this term indicates that the justices are not willing to get out too far ahead of the country on this issue.

"Justice Scalia's dissent said it's just a matter of time until the other shoe drops," Anderson says.  "If it looks like the pro-marriage people have given up, the Supreme Court will be more likely to move quickly in usurping authority from citizens and redefining marriage for the entire country.  If Congress thinks we've surrendered, they will conclude that there's no point in extending religious liberty to bigots."

In Washington, a prominent religious conservative lobbyist sees Democrats increasingly energized around advancing gay rights, and Republicans "scared of the entire issue."

"They'll talk about these things behind closed doors and wonder where they are leading, but it's only a small group that's prepared to do anything about it right now," says Russell Moore, the new head of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

Moore, a 42-year-old pastor and theologian, has drawn favorable notice for taking a nuanced approach to culture-war issues.  He sees his task as not only communicating grassroots Evangelical concerns to political elites but also helping grassroots Evangelicals understand how radically circumstances have changed.

"The problem is that Evangelicals have taken a God-and-country, Moral Majority stance for so long, one that assumes the rest of the culture shares our values, and that it's only small groups of elites out there who are out of step," Moore says.

"I tell them you have to understand the mindset of the other side," he continues.  "They see this as the equivalent of the civil rights movement.  If the Christian definition of marriage becomes the equivalent of KKK ideology, then religious liberty will be very hard to defend."

This is why both the Windsor ruling and the 2003 Lawrence v. Texas ruling that overturned anti-sodomy laws portend so much ill for marriage traditionalists.  Twice in the last decade, the Supreme Court found that laws restricting gay rights were based entirely on animus and served no rational purpose.  If the justices apply this reasoning to the core of marriage law, religious conservatives may well find little asylum outside the walls of their churches.

Hence the urgency of marriage activists on religious liberty.  Though same-sex marriage is almost certainly the wave of the future, the country isn't there yet.  In states where marriage equality is still under contention, traditionalists could take advantage of this divide to negotiate a settlement that both sides can live with — one that protects both religious institutions and religious individuals.  Time is on the gay-rights side, but its more pragmatic leaders may be persuaded that achieving basic marriage equality now is worth granting substantial protections to religious dissenters.

This is hard to do in a culture where religious conservatives are increasingly demonized for their beliefs about homosexuality.  And not just religious conservatives.  In August, Dartmouth withdrew its job offer to African Anglican bishop hired to run a campus spirituality and ethics center because of his past opposition to gay rights.  Though Bishop James Tengatenga, a widely respected and effective advocate for peace and reconciliation in his native Malawi, had since evolved into a gay-supporting liberal Anglican, the fact that he hadn't always been one cost him his job.

Granted, a New Hampshire liberal arts college is not America.  But stories like this help vindicate the hardline view of Princeton's Robert George that there is "no chance of persuading [gay-marriage proponents] that they should respect, or permit the law to respect, the conscience rights of those with whom they disagree."

Equal Employment Opportunity Commission chairman and gay-rights advocate Chai Feldblum agrees with George.  The former Georgetown law professor has written sympathetically about religious concerns, but he concludes that the clash between gay rights and religious liberty is a "zero-sum" affair.  People who don't see that are fooling themselves, she contends.

So, with the front in the gay-marriage culture war shifting to religious liberty, where do traditionalists stand?

George writes that they have to win this battle entirely or be crushed everywhere, as segregationists were, and for the same reason: their views will be deemed too abhorrent to be tolerated.  On this view, preserving religious liberty cannot be separated from preserving traditional marriage.

Wilson, a religious-liberty scholar, believes that there is room for compromise at the state level to protect religious liberty, and there are good prudential reasons for both sides to do so — but time is running out for the faithful to make deals in state legislatures.

Anderson, the think-tank philosopher, contends that the battle over the meaning of marriage is increasingly difficult but can be won.  In any case, he says, it must be waged to prevent an eventual rout for religious liberty. 

And Gallagher, the activist, no longer believes winning — that is, stopping gay marriage — is possible but insists, like Anderson, that conservatives cannot afford to surrender and accept their opponents' judgment of them as bigots and haters.

"Refusing despair is a powerful political weapon.  If we don't keep fighting, we are not going to be tolerated," says Gallagher.  In Windsor's wake, she is working to build legal and political institutions to help traditionalists endure coming hardships.

"The question we have to face is this:  did the Supreme Court give us Roe v. Wade, or Brown v. Board?" she says.  "If it's Roe, we lose, but our views of marriage will still be respectable.  But if we let it be Brown, we're in big trouble."

Uma resposta antecipada de S. João Paulo II a uma entrevista do Papa Francisco

O Bem-aventurado João Paulo II uma vez concedeu uma entrevista ao respeitado jornalista Vittorio Messori, que lhe perguntou se ele não seria porventura “obsessivo” na sua pregação contra o aborto. O Santo Padre retorquiu-lhe:
 

"A legalização da terminação da gravidez não é senão a autorização dada a um adulto, com a aprovação de uma lei estabelecida, de tirar a vida a crianças ainda não nascidas e por isso incapazes de se defenderem. É difícil conceber uma situação mais injusta, e é muito difícil falar de obsessão nesta matéria, pois trata-se de um imperativo fundamental de toda a consciência recta – a defesa do direito à vida de um ser humano inocente e indefeso”

Blessed John Paul II once submitted to an interview with the respected journalist Vittorio Messori, who asked him if he was perhaps "obsessive" in his preaching against abortion.  The Holy Father replied:

“The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves.  It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being."

Women have abortions because they feel trapped and hopeless, study finds - by Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D, NRL-ETF Director of Education & Research

October 9, 2013 (NRLC) - The reasons women have abortions are not simple and thus can be difficult to study and/or categorize. That’s one reason why the two most recent previous studies on abortion reasons, from the Guttmacher Institute, date from 2005 and 1988.

Now, though, the same team from University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) that brought us the “Turnaway” study, has used the same data set to lay out the reasons the nearly one thousand women in their study had abortions. While their data set included more women with advanced pregnancies and reasons did not always fit into clear categories, the results are revealing nonetheless.

The article, “Understanding why women seek abortions in the U.S.,” was published in the July 5, 2013, edition of BMC Women’s Health and can be freely accessed.

As noted above the authors, M. Antonia Biggs, Heather Gould, and Diana Greene Foster, all participated in the “Turnaway” study. They are part of the Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIR) project at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the notorious abortion research center from the west coast.

Biggs and her fellow researchers began the “Turnaway” study in 2008. They were specifically looking to contrast the consequences of those who received abortions versus those who were “denied” abortions. Women were “denied” either because available abortionists were not trained or facilities were not equipped to handle those women presenting at those particular gestations, or because state law, for some reason, prohibited abortions at a particular stage.

We discussed this study in a five-part series National Right to Life News Today ran back in January. (Part Five, with links to four previous articles, can be found here.)

The UCSF team took data from the same set of 956 women, 273 who received first trimester abortions, 452 who obtained abortions just under the gestational limits, and 231 who sought but did not receive abortions. They asked them two open ended questions: the first about why they sought an abortion, and, second, what their main was reason behind the request. (Two women out of the 956 in the study did not answer questions on the reasons for their abortions.)

The findings are both illuminating and ambiguous. Women rarely gave a single reason and often gave additional, maybe even different reasons when pressed as to their main reason. Researchers attempted to gather these into basic themes or categories, but some of these were harder to categorize than others.

For example, one 19 year old gave the following list: “I already have one baby, money wise, my relationship with the father of my first baby, relationship with my mom, school.” Another woman, 27 years old, said “My relationship is newer and we wanted to wait. I don’t have a job, I have some debt, I want to finish school and I honestly am not in the physical shape that would want to be to start out a pregnancy.”

These cover the gamut–financial, relationship, school, and, in the way that some count it, even maternal health.

Essentially, the study authors decided just to identify certain general themes and then count every time a woman gave a response in this category. The authors seem to have abandoned the effort to identify a woman’s primary reason for abortion, as that data is not listed anywhere. Thus the best one can do with this data is to simply see how often women offered a particular rationale.

Researchers found 40% of these women mentioning something financial, 36% in some way discussing the bad “timing” of the pregnancy, 31% raising a partner issue, 29% speaking of “other children,” 20% talking of the child somehow interfering with future opportunities.

Less than 20% mentioned something about not being emotionally or mentally prepared (19%), health related reasons (12%), wanting a better life than she could provide (12%), not being independent or mature enough (7%), influence of family or friends, and not wanting to have a baby or to place a baby up for adoption (4%). [1]

These do not add to 100%, of course, because women tended to give more than one reason. And some other important qualifications need to be made to give a proper analysis

Looking more carefully at the data

These responses reflect a women’s self-reported subjective assessment, not some independent analysis of her situation. As such, it is a good guide to her perceptions (or at least to her beliefs about what others will consider an acceptable justification). But they do not necessarily tell us the facts about her circumstances.

For example, though we know from demographic data reported by the authors that 45% of women participating in the survey were receiving public assistance and that a considerable portion (40%) were not able to indicate that they had “enough money in the past month to meet basic needs,” we do not know what these women’s precise income was or what mix of public and private resources were available in their communities.

Would they have arrived at the same conclusion if someone had sat down with them, looked at the sort of resources available to them, and given them the sort of budget planning advice and assistance that is available at many local pregnancy care centers?

Finances are an issue for many a young couple starting out, and it is common to wonder or even worry as to exactly how one can “afford” a baby. Some circumstances are admittedly more dire than others, but it is remarkable how that year after year, decade after decade, century after century, people, some with larger families, find ways to give birth to all their children and care for them.

How much these women were aware of or considered taking advantage of these resources is unknown [2]

Twelve percent is a higher figure than we are accustomed to seeing citing “health” reasons, but a few caveats are needed here as well. To start with, this study group includes more women with advanced pregnancies than would be found in a general sample of aborting women. This could mean a slightly higher likelihood of physical issues (though researchers specifically excluded any women seeking abortions for “fetal anomaly” from their sample and concluded, in contrast to some other previous studies, that gestational age was not a factor here). But a bigger issue, again, is that these are subjective reports of concerns about possible health problems with the mother or the unborn child, not medical determinations of any particular risk.

Data and interviews bear this out. Almost half of the 12% reported were attributed to concerns that the woman had about the impact of her own tobacco, alcohol, or drug use on the health of her child or on her ability to care for the child. One woman said, “because I had been doing drinking and the medication I’m on for bipolar is known to cause birth defects and we decided it’s akin to child abuse if you know you’re bringing your child into the world with a higher risk for things.” There is no indication that this mother or any of the other patients giving these answers had medical tests showing any problem with the child, or were told by a doctor that having a child posed any threat to the mother’s health.

Other issues like “timing” are amorphous and hard to analyze. About 34 points of the 36% raising this issue said they simply weren’t “ready,” that it wasn’t the “right time.” Discussions involving timing often bled into other more tangible issues related to finances, school, or work schedules. Sometimes this was simply expressed in terms of emotional stress. Two percent expressed concerns about being “too old.”

Women often mentioned concerns about already born children when talking about timing or finances and nearly one in three (29%) mentioned this concern about other children overall. Though the sample here in this study is somewhat different in composition, the percentage of women reporting already having or caring for at least one child (62%) is similar to national figures on abortion patients having previously given birth obtained by Guttmacher and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

How much would change if partners were supportive and encouraging and women felt they would have help raising another child (women said 8% of partners were “not supportive,” 6% of partners did not want baby, 3% were abusive). No indication, again, of whether women knew of or had access to other support in their wider communities.

Demographic correlations

One thing useful that the study does is to match reasons with demographics. Perhaps not surprisingly, younger women seeking abortion were more likely to report concerns about immaturity, a lack of independence, or the child interfering with future plans. Younger women also more frequently mentioned the influence of family or friends either in pressuring to have an abortion or as people from whom they trying to keep their pregnancies secret by aborting.

African American women were more likely to report problems with their partner but less likely to report being emotionally or mentally unprepared to raise a child at the time. Women who were separated, divorced, or widowed were more also likely to report partner issues.

Women who were employed were half as likely to report a health related reason, while those who had a history of depression or an anxiety diagnosis were more than three times more likely to mention health.

It is not clear why, but women with more than a high school education were more likely to express concerns about not being financially prepared and to want to abort because they said they desired a better life for the child than the mother felt she could provide.

Some women (4%) simply admitted they wanted abortions because they didn’t want a baby or didn’t want any children and/or wouldn’t consider adoption. More than two thirds (68%) of the women saying this had never born a child. A handful of women sought abortions because of legal issues they were going through (3 women) or because of fear of giving birth (2 women).

Some of what we learned

Though it is not brought out in any detailed analysis here, it is worth noting that despite what appears to be a general resolve to abort among women in the study, data on the same women in the turnaway study show that, even as little as one week later, more than a third of the women (35%) were no longer convinced that abortion was the outcome they wanted. How many more shared that view once the child was born is not addressed here or in that earlier paper.

Identifying one single approach that will address every woman’s concerns and change her mind is difficult, given the multiplicity of the reasons and rationales given by women for seeking abortion. Some will be benefited by being connected to better support systems, while others need practical economic assistance. Anything making men more responsible for the children they father will go a long way towards helping many of these women care for their children.

Yet abortion’s legality and the implied social sanction that comes with it is clearly a major part of the cultural machinery that forces these cruel choices on women, that lets men off the hook, that leaves women to care for households of children all alone, and that makes society less accommodating to the demands of motherhood. Collectively such factors may conspire to force many of these women to consider an option that goes totally against their nurturing natures and pit the needs of one or more of their children against another.

If we believe the survey, most of the women seeking to abort here did so, not because they were triumphantly exercising their “power to choose,” but because they felt like–given the circumstances–they had no other realistic choice. Abortion forces on them a cruel, violent, destructive option that does little to solve their basic social or economic problems, problems, which may, in part, themselves be a consequence of Roe’s forced cultural transformation.

Those women would find better options and more respect for their rights and responsibilities as women and mothers with abortion off the table.

[1] No mention is made or percentages given for abortions related to rape, incest, or any type of sexual assault. This could perhaps mean that occurrences were so few as to merit no specific mention or that these were excluded from the study for some reason not given.

[2] Although we do know those citing financial reasons included 0.6% who cited lack of insurance or inability to obtain government assistance as a factor in their decision to seek abortion, while, alternatively, another 0.4% sought abortions because they did not want to rely on government assistance.

Does same-sex parenting really make ‘no difference’? - by Douglas W Allen

In MercatorNet 
October 10, 2013

Douglas W. Allen, an economist at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, has just published a highly controversial study in the journal Review of Economics of the Household. It breaks with the conventional wisdom that there is no difference between parenting by a mother and a father and parenting by a same-sex couple. 

MercatorNet interviewed Professor Allen about his findings. 

MercatorNet: What has your research found about educational outcomes for children of same-sex couples versus children of opposite sex couples?

 

Doug Allen: There have been about 60 studies over the past 15 years or so that have asked “do child outcomes differ when the child is raised in a same-sex household." Almost all of this literature has the following characteristics: the samples are tiny and biased, the outcome measures are subjective and difficult to replicate, and the finding is always one of "no difference."

Despite the limited scientific validity of these studies, they all end with sweeping policy recommendations. It really is not a scientific literature, but rather a political literature targeted at judges, lawyers, and politicians.

Then came a paper by Michael Rosenfeld, published in Demography 2010. This paper had a large random sample and looked at normal progression though schools in the US. It was, in my opinion, the first solid piece of statistical work done on the question, and he confirmed the "no difference" finding. Later, Joe Price, Catherine Pakaluk, and myself replicated his study and found two problems.

First, he didn't find "no difference". What he found was a lot of noise, and so he was unable to statistically distinguish children in same-sex households from children in any other type of household - including ones we know are not good for children.

Second, the lack of precision in his estimates came from a decision he made to throw out children from the sample who had not lived in the same location for five years. This turned out to be heavily correlated with same-sex households. Hence, he inadvertently threw away most of the same-sex households from the sample. Without that information, he did not have the statistical power to distinguish between family types.

So, the three of us restored the sample and used the statistical technique of controlling for household stability. What we found was that children of same-sex households were about 35 percent more likely to fail a grade.

While this was going on, I was using the Canada census to look at some other questions. I noticed several things about the census that differed from the US. one. First, unlike in the US, the Canada census actually identifies same-sex couples. This solves a big measurement problem with the US census, which could include room mates, family members, and opposite sex couples as same-sex ones.

Second, the Canada census had a nice link between the children and the parents, so I was able to control for the education of the parents and their marital status. Poor performance in school is correlated with marital disruptions of parents, so this is an important control. In many ways then, the Canada census is a much better data set for addressing this question, and I decided to simply redo the Rosenfeld study using this data. (The census does not record progress through school, so I examined high school graduation rates instead).

So, what did I find? First, I simply looked at how any child in a gay or lesbian home did compared to children from married, cohabiting, and single parent homes. Most of the discussion in the paper compares children in same-sex homes to those in opposite sex married homes, but a reader can do all of the comparisons by looking at the tables.

I found that on average, children in same-sex homes were about 65 percent as likely to graduate from high school, compared to similar children in married opposite sex homes. That finding seems very similar to the one we found in the US regarding normal progress. Next, I wondered if the gender composition mattered at all, so I separated out the boys and girls. I was very surprised by the results.

On the boy side, I just found a lot of noise. Some boys do well in same-sex households; some do quite poorly. I cannot statistically determine the effect.

Just looking at the point estimates, boys in lesbian homes are about 76 percent as likely to graduate, in gay homes they are about 60 percent more likely to graduate. But neither of these are statistically significant, meaning they cannot be distinguished from zero.

Girls are another story. First, the estimates are very precise. Second, they are low. A girl in a gay household is only 15 percent as likely to graduate, in a lesbian household about 45 percent as likely. The result found by lumping all of the children together is being driven by this girl effect. This result is very robust, I tried many specifications, sample restrictions, and estimation techniques, but it always remained.

So, my paper no only rejects the "no difference" consensus, it points to a finding -- that if upheld by other studies -- seems incredibly important.

 

It's particularly hard on girls, isn't it? Why is that?

 

Allen: It is important to point out that I make no theoretical claims in the paper. I'm simply pointing out an empirical finding that is based on a high quality large random sample, and which is inconsistent with almost everything that has come before.

Having said that, as an economist, I would make the following speculation: specialization. It makes sense to me that fathers and mothers are not perfect substitutes. Indeed, mothers may provide some parenting services that a father cannot provide, and fathers may provide parenting services that mothers cannot. These services may be necessary for girls but not necessary for boys.

For example, I've been told by medical people that when a biological father is present in the home, daughters begin menstruation at an older age. Later menstruation is likely correlated with delayed sexual activity, etc., and this may lead to a better likelihood of high school completion.

It seems to me there could be dozens of channels this could work. As a father of two girls and one boy, I've often had discussions with other parents noting that with boys you just have to keep them fed and away from explosives, but with girls rearing is a little more complicated. That's a poor attempt at humour, but the bottom line is this is an interesting question that deserves to be looked at.

One explanation of poor school performance in general is that children of same-sex couples may be discriminated against at school. This seems less likely given the different finding between boys or girls. Or at least one would have to come up with a different more complicated story of discrimination.

 

This turns the conventional wisdom on its head, doesn't it? Most people think that there is no difference. Was there anything wrong with the quality of previous research?

 

Allen: I think I've answered this above. I should point out one other thing, however. I've read just about every paper on this subject that has been published since 1995. Although many of them claim to find "no difference", they often do find something. Again, the finding is coming from a biased small sample, but differences are found. For example, children growing up in same-sex homes are more likely to experiment with alternative sexual lifestyles, etc.

I should also point out that not all studies are created equal. For example, an Australian sociologist named Sotirios Sarantakos has done considerable work in the 1990s that (though not random) uses large longitudinal studies of objective, verifiable, and hard measures of performance. He finds many differences with children in same-sex households in terms of mathematics, language and other school performance measures. Interestingly, his work is never referenced in most literature surveys. Again, this points to the political nature of this literature.

 

Your conclusions are based on Canadian census data. Why is that better than US data?

 

Allen: I've mentioned this above, but let me give more detail. The US census does not identify same-sex cohabiting or married couples. So how did Rosenfeld and others find them? They looked at a series of questions: for example, what is your sex, are you married, what is the sex of your spouse? If someone answered male / yes / male, then this would be considered a gay couple.

The problem with this is that it can lead to a number of measurement issues. Suppose I'm a married man, bunking with another man in a work camp (this may seem far fetched, but it is a real example). When I answer the survey I say I'm male, I'm married, and I'm currently living with a male. I may get counted as a same-sex couple even though I'm not. This can happen with same-sex family members who live together, room mates, and others.

There is also the problem of random mistakes. No one fills out a form perfectly, and sometimes the wrong box is ticked off. Because there are so many heterosexuals compared to gays and lesbians, it only takes a small fraction of seniors to tick off the wrong sex box and it can swamp the same-sex sample. The Canada census avoids these problems. It not only identifies same-sex couples, but they must be in a cohabiting or marriage relationship.

Canada has also had legal same-sex marriage before the census was taken. Many have argued that Canada is more open and accepting of same-sex marriage. As a result, the reporting bias is likely lower in Canada than in the US.

Finally, as mentioned above, I was able to control for the marital history of the parents. This also turns out to be statistically important, and in the paper I show what happens when this is not controlled for. Children in same-sex households are much more likely to come from a previous heterosexual marriage than from adoption or other means. Divorce, however, reduces the likelihood of graduation. If you don't control for this effect, children of same-sex households look like they do even worse at graduation. So this is an important variable to consider.

Does your study prove conclusively that there is no difference? What questions does it raise?

 

Allen: Assuming there are no mistakes in the study, it rejects the claim that there is "no difference." I personally think that in social science we should never place too much weight on a given study. It is important that we look at evidence from different countries, etc. I would say this study builds on a few others that are questioning the long held consensus. An examination of the literature shows that the consensus is built on only a series of preliminary work. Now that people have started looking at this more seriously, we're finding no evidence for that conclusion.

 

In such a contentious field, will your study make an impact upon the public debate?

 

Allen: I don't know, but I suspect it will have little impact. The debate seems to have shifted from the statistical lab to the bumper sticker. The concept of "marriage equality" and the alignment of same-sex marriage rights with the civil rights movement seems so powerful that I doubt one little study will matter much.

If there is merit to the study, and if there really is a difference that matters, I think it is much more likely that 20 years from now we'll be asking "how did we get here and how can we clean up the mess" -- in much the way we now wonder how we ended up in a world where so many children are raised by single parents.

 

Sociologist Mark Regnerus published a paper which came to a similar conclusion last year and was all but crucified by his colleagues and activists. Do you expect a similar reaction?

 

Allen: Prior to the publication of his paper I was unaware of Professor Regnerus' existence. Because I was working in this area I saw what immediately happened. I was struck by the hypocrisy of those who attacked him.

Here was someone who had looked at the literature and decided to do something better. There were tiny samples, so he went and found a large sample. There was nothing but bias and snowballing (the procedure of asking friends to join a study), so he did a random procedure. There was way too much soft-balling of questions, so he asked a series of quantifiable ones. He was trying to improve the work, and that is commendable.

Was his study perfect? No, but a study never is. His great error, of course, was that he found the wrong answer. Those who came later and complained about the things he did should have been equally outraged by what had come before. Had Regnerus found otherwise, they would have lauded his work as path-breaking.

I rather suspect this will not happen to me for a number of reasons. First, after the Demography comment came out last year, my university received several letters (sent to the president, various other administrators, and many of my colleagues) demanding that I be fired. These were the same tactics that were used against Professor Regnerus.

Fortunately for me, I'm well known and respected at my institution and we have a strong sense of academic freedom. Indeed, Simon Fraser University has recently been ranked as one of the safest universities to express ideas that may be politically incorrect.

Second, my study only looks at one margin of child performance: high school graduation. Professor Regnerus looked at many and in many ways he found more problems than I found.

Third, my sample is a 20 percent sample of the Canada census. No one can claim I have a small biased sample or that the agency in charge of collecting it is not trustworthy. Fourth, Professor Regnerus was first, and I think being first is much more likely to come under fire. Fifth, the US Supreme Court has already made a decision on Prop 8 and DOMA, so much of the incentive to attack has passed.

Having said that, I have come under some attack, and I would like to relay one incident that has happened.

Last week I received an email from David Badash, the editor of The New Civil Rights Movement, a prominent gay rights website. In it he said he'd heard about the study, wasn't happy about it, but wanted to talk to me before he wrote about it. I emailed back, sent him a copy, and invited him to ask me any questions about the work.

On Monday, when I arrived at work, there were a number of colourful emails waiting for me, calling me all kinds of four-letter words. I soon realized that these were coming from people who had read Mr Badash's blog page.

So I went to have a look myself. What I found was a mixture of personal attacks, misunderstandings and misrepresentations of my work, and a general meanspiritedness. Just the opposite of what I've always believed a public discussion should be.

So, maybe I'm naive, maybe the attacks will come. I hope not. Anyone who wants to read my work is welcome, and I'm willing to have a reasonable discussion about it with anyone.

 

Douglas W. Allen is the Burnaby Mountain Professor of economics at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, where he earned his undergraduate degree. He has a PhD in economics from the University of Washington, and is the author of four books and numerous articles.

Il fondatore de “young gay America” rinnega il suo passato omosessuale: Capii che l'omosessualità impedisce di trovare la propria vera identità: è per questo che i rapporti gay non sono soddisfacenti - di Michael Glatze

In BB

All'omosessualità sono arrivato facilmente, perché ero già fragile. Mia madre è morta quando avevo 19 anni. Mio padre quando ne avevo 13. Giovanissimo, ero già confuso sulla mia identità e i miei sentimenti. La confusione che provavo riguardo i miei "desideri" e l'attrazione che sentivo per i ragazzi, ha fatto si che già a 14 anni mi sentissi parte della categoria "gay". A 20 anni, mi dichiarai gay con tutti quelli che mi conoscevano. A 22 anni, divenni editore della prima rivista per giovani gay. Il contenuto fotografico rasentava la pornografia, ma ritenevo di poterlo utilizzare come piattaforma per ottenere risultati sempre maggiori. Infatti arrivò Young Gay America. Questa rivista aspirava a riempire il vuoto creato dalla precedente rivista per la quale avevo lavorato; doveva essere qualcosa di non troppo pornografico, mirata al pubblico di giovani gay americani. Young Gay America decollò. Il pubblico gay accolse calorosamente Young Gay America.

La rivista ricevette premi, riconoscimenti, rispettabilità e grandi onori, incluso il National Role Model Award da parte di Equality Forum, la più importante organizzazione gay, premio che fu consegnato l'anno seguente al Primo Ministro Canadese Jean Chrétien. E tantissime apparizioni nei media, da PBS a Seattle Times, da MSNBC alla copertina di Time magazine.

Ho prodotto, con Equality Forum e con l'aiuto di società affiliate alla PBS, il primo importante documentario che affronta il tema del suicidio di adolescenti gay "Jim In Bold"; é stato mostrato in tutto il mondo e ha ricevuto numerosi premi "best in festival".
 

Young Gay America ha organizzato una mostra fotografica, ricca di foto e storie di giovani gay di tutto il continente Nord americano; la mostra ha fatto il giro dell'Europa, del Canada e di parte degli Stati Uniti.
 

Nel 2004 Young Gay America ha lanciato la rivista YGA, che aveva la pretesa di essere il "gemello virtuoso" di altre riviste rivolte ai giovani gay. Dico "gemello virtuoso" ma la verità é che YGA era dannosa quanto qualsiasi altra rivista, era solo più "rispettabile" perché non manifestamente pornografica.
 

Mi ci vollero quasi 16 anni per scoprire che l'omosessualità non è esattamente "virtuosa". Fu difficile fare chiarezza dentro di me riguardo i miei sentimenti sulla questione, dato che la mia vita ne era completamente assorbita.
 

L'omosessualità è per sua natura pornografica. E' distruttiva e crea confusione nelle menti dei giovani, proprio in quel periodo in cui l'identità sessuale è ancora in via di definizione. Ad ogni modo, non mi resi conto di ciò fino a quando non raggiunsi i 30 anni.
 

La rivista YGA esaurì il suo primo numero in diverse città del Nord America. Il sostegno alla rivista era enorme; scuole, gruppi di genitori, biblioteche e associazioni governative, tutti sembravano volerla. Sfruttava il "filone" della "accettazione e promozione" dell'omosessualità, ed era considerata una guida. Nel 2005 mi fu chiesto di tenere un discorso al prestigioso JFK Jr. Forum della Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
 

Fu quando vidi una videoregistrazione di quella "performance", che iniziai a dubitare seriamente di ciò che stavo facendo della mia vita e della mia influenza.
 

Non conoscendo nessuno con cui poter parlare dei miei dubbi ed interrogativi, mi rivolsi a Dio, grazie anche ad un debilitante attacco di crampi intestinali causato dalle mie abitudini di vita.
 

Presto iniziai a comprendere cose che non avevo mai immaginato potessero essere reali, come il fatto che ero il leader di un movimento di peccato e corruzione. Questa frase può dare l'impressione che la mia scoperta si sia basata su un dogma, ma decisamente non é stato così.
 

Sono giunto al questa conclusione da solo.
 

Mi divenne chiaro, mentre ci riflettevo seriamente – e pregavo – che l'omosessualità ci impedisce di trovare la nostra vera identità. Non possiamo vedere la verità quando siamo accecati dall'omosessualità.
 

Crediamo, influenzati dall'omosessualità, che la lussuria non solo sia accettabile ma che sia anche una virtù. Ma non esiste "desiderio" omosessuale che sia separabile dalla lussuria.
Non volevo accettare questa verità e all'inizio ho cercato in tutti i modi di ignorarla. Ero certo, a causa della cultura e dell'influenza dei leader gay – di fare la cosa giusta.
 

D'altra parte mi sentivo spinto a cercare la verità perché avvertivo che dentro di me c'era qualcosa che non andava. Gesù Cristo ci consiglia ripetutamente di non confidare in nessuno tranne che in lui. Ed io l'ho fatto, sapendo che il Regno di Dio risiede nel cuore e nella mente di ogni uomo.
 

Ciò che ho scoperto e appreso sull'omosessualità é sorprendente.
 

Divenne chiarissimo che avrei fatto del male o rischiato di fare del male ad altre persone se avessi continuato con quella vita.
 

Mi accorsi di avere desideri omosessuali alle scuole medie quando per la prima volta iniziai a prestare attenzione ad altri ragazzi.
 

Cominciai a guarire quando per la prima volta iniziai a prestare attenzione a me stesso.
Ogni volta che provavo la tentazione di cedere alla lussuria, ne prendevo coscienza, mi fermavo e mi occupavo di essa. La chiamavo con il suo nome e poi lasciavo che si dissolvesse da sola con l'aiuto della preghiera.
 

Esiste un'enorme e vitale differenza tra ammirazione superficiale – per se stessi o per altri – e ammirazione integrale. Quando amiamo pienamente noi stessi, cessiamo di essere schiavi di desideri lussuriosi, dell'apprezzamento degli altri o di soddisfazioni fisiche. I nostri impulsi sessuali diventano intrinseci alla nostra essenza, liberi da confusioni nevrotiche.
 

L'omosessualità ci consente di evitare di scavare in profondità, oltre la superficialità e le attrazioni ispirate dalla concupiscenza – e continuerà ad essere così fino a quando avrà l' "approvazione" della Legge. Il risultato è che tantissimi perdono l'opportunità di conoscere il loro vero io, l'io fatto ad immagine di Cristo, donatoci da Dio.
 

L'omosessualità iniziò per me all'età di 13 anni e terminò quando riuscii ad isolarmi da influenze esterne e a concentrarmi intensamente sulla verità interiore – quando scoprii, all'età di 30 anni, le profondità del mio io donatomi da Dio.
 

Dio è considerato un nemico da molte persone dominate dall'omosessualità o da altri comportamenti concupiscenti, perché Egli rammenta loro chi e che cosa dovrebbero veramente essere. Queste persone preferiscono rimanere "beatamente ignare", mettendo a tacere la verità. E lo fanno condannando ed apostrofando coloro che la dichiarano con parole come "razzisti", "insensibili", "malvagi" e "discriminatori".
 

Guarire dalle ferite causate dall'omosessualità non è facile. Il sostegno è scarso e poco evidente. Il poco che c'è viene infamato, ridicolizzato, fatto tacere con la retorica o reso illegale tramite l'alterazione di norme legislative. Per trovarlo ho dovuto separare il mio sentimento di imbarazzo e le "voci" di disapprovazione da tutto ciò che avevo imparato. Parte dell'agenda omosessuale consiste nel convincere le persone a smettere di farsi domande sulla conversione e, tanto meno, sulla la sua efficacia.
 

"Uscire" dall'influenza della mentalità omosessuale è stata per me la cosa più liberatoria, sorprendente e bella che abbai mai sperimentato nella mia intera vita.
 

La lussuria ci sottrae ai nostri corpi per "fissare" il nostro spirito alla forma fisica di qualcun altro. Ecco perché i rapporti sessuali omosessuali – e qualsiasi altra forma di attività sessuale basata sulla lussuria – non è mai soddisfacente: é un processo nevrotico piuttosto che naturale, normale. La normalità è la normalità – ed è stata chiamata così perché c'è una ragione.
 

Anormale significa "ciò che ci danneggia, che danneggia la normalità". L'omosessualità ci toglie al nostro stato di normalità, al nostro di sentirci perfettamente uniti in tutte le cose, e ci divide, facendoci tormentare dal desiderio per un obiettivo fisico esterno che non potremo mai possedere.
 

Le persone omosessuali – come tutte le persone – bramano il mitico "vero amore". Il vero amore esiste davvero, ma arriva soltanto quando non abbiamo nulla che ci impedisce di lasciarlo fuoriuscire da dentro in tutto il suo splendore.
 

Non possiamo essere pienamente noi stessi se le nostre menti sono intrappolate in una spirale, in una mentalità di gruppo edificata su una protetta, autorizzata e celebrata lussuria.
Dio mi è venuto incontro quando mi sentivo confuso, perso, solo, spaventato e sconvolto. Mi ha detto – attraverso la preghiera – che non avevo nulla da temere e che ero a casa. Avevo solo bisogno di fare un po' di pulizia nella mia mente.
 

Credo che tutti, essenzialmente, conoscano la verità. Credo che questo sia il motivo per cui il Cristianesimo spaventa così tanto le persone. Perché rammenta loro la coscienza, che tutti noi possediamo.
 

La coscienza ci dice cosa sia giusto o sbagliato ed è una guida che ci permette di crescere e diventare più forti e più liberi come esseri umani. Uscire dal peccato e dall'ignoranza è sempre possibile, ma la prima cosa che tutti devono fare è abbandonare le mentalità che dividono e conquistare l'amore per l'umanità.
 

La verità sessuale può essere trovata solo se si è disposti ad accettare che la nostra cultura sanzioni i comportamenti che nuocciono alla vita. Il senso di colpa non è una ragione sufficiente per evitare le questioni difficili.
 

L'omosessualità si è presa quasi 15 anni della mia vita, una vita trascorsa tra compromessi e menzogne, perpetuate attraverso i media nazionali mirati ai giovani.
Nei Paesi Europei l'omosessualità è considerata così normale che i bambini delle scuole elementari pubbliche vengono forniti di libri dedicati ai ragazzi "gay" come letture obbligatorie.
 

La Polonia, che conosce fin troppo bene la distruzione del suo popolo ad opera di influenze esterne, sta tentando coraggiosamente di impedire all'Unione Europea di indottrinare i suoi figli con propaganda omosessuale. In riposta, l'Unione Europea ha definito "ripugnante" il Primo Ministro della Polonia.
 

Io sono stato ripugnante per parecchio tempo; sto ancora cercando di metabolizzare tutte le mie colpe.
 

In qualità di leader nel movimento per i "diritti dei gay", mi è stata data molte volte l'opportunità di parlare in pubblico. Se potessi cancellare alcune delle cose che ho detto, lo farei. Adesso so che l'omosessualità è lussuria e pornografia insieme. Non mi lascerò mai convincere del contrario, non importa quanto sciolte possano essere le loro lingue o quanto triste la loro storia. Io l'ho vissuta. Io conosco la verità.
 

Se Dio ci ha rivelato la verità c'è un motivo. Essa esiste affinché possiamo essere noi stessi. Esiste affinché possiamo condividere quel perfetto io con il mondo, per rendere perfetto il mondo. Questi non sono progetti fantasiosi o ideali astrusi: è la Verità.
 

Non ci si può purificare dai peccati del mondo in un istante, ma succederà, se non ci opponiamo orgogliosamente a questo processo. Dio alla fine vince sempre, in caso non lo sappiate.
 

(traduzione a cura di Patrizia Battisti)

Fonte: NARTH, 23 ottobre 2012