Family Pride’s Blog

I read a recent post on Pam’s House Blend about the Manford-Roach Family’s appearance on CNN. She did a great job and raised a few interesting points. The CNN article quotes Dr. James Dobson in a statement he released about Mary Cheney’s pregnancy.

The two most loving women in the world cannot provide a daddy for a little boy—any more than the two most loving men can be complete role models for a little girl.

Pam notes that this statement slams not only gay parents, but single parents as well. According to the 2000 census, of the 34.6 million households with children under the age of 18, 28% are being headed by a single parent. That’s more than 1 in 4 parents.

Of course, this isn’t a numbers game. It doesn’t matter if Dobson discriminates against 100 million people or against 1 person. We all have heard the now cliché quote that “an injustice to one is an injustice to all.” But when you lash out against some 10 million people (and their families), it tends to get a lot more attention.

And Dobson’s statement that boys need dads and girls need moms is in stark contrast to the more than 30 years of social science research on the subject. Despite what Dobson would like the world to believe, that social science research supports parenting by LGBTQ individuals. Being gay or straight doesn’t impact your ability to parent. In fact, Dobson’s continued distortion of this research is angering many of researchers he quotes.

Dobson and his organization, Focus on the Family, are charged with strengthening and defending families. Ironic, isn’t it?

Gov Ritter signed the 2nd parents adoption bill into law yesterday making Colorado (home to the vehemently homophobic James Dobson and Focus on the Family) the 10th state to allow second-parent adoption (through statue or case law). In total, 18 other states allow second parent adoption in certain counties and municipalities.

In a press release from the office of the governor, Ritter states:

From my experience in law enforcement, I know how important it is for children to grow up in a stable environment. This law gives children in a one-parent family a chance to grow up in a two-parent home. We must do all we can to strengthen families and provide children with as stable an environment as possible. This law will give children a better chance to succeed.”

A May 2nd Associated Press story (see this CBS news piece) reported that some Christian fundamentalist leaders are calling upon their members to consider adoption and foster care in response to criticism that their movement does not do enough to promote the welfare of children. 

We welcome the efforts of Focus on the Family and other Christian fundamentalists to direct their vast resources toward creating families rather than attacking them.

For far too long, these types of organizations have spent their energy baselessly and wastefully attacking families headed by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and parents. We have long maintained that - instead of focusing on our families - they should be combating the real issues faced by children in this country: abuse, neglect, violence, poverty, hunger and lack of access to health care and educational opportunity.

It is about time they understood that one of the best ways to help children is to focus time and energy on finding permanent loving homes for the half a million children languishing in our foster care system and the more than 100,000 children awaiting adoption. We can only hope that, as part of their efforts, they will also cease their attempts to block qualified LGBTQ parents from fostering and adopting children in need.

We will be watching these organizations to see how they follow through on this professed commitment to the welfare of families and children. We challenge them to step up and join us in tackling the challenging issues facing all American families, including those headed by LGBTQ parents.

We had a good chuckle this morning when this Doonesbury comic strip was forwarded along to us - and thought we should share it with you. Take a look:

In December, 2006 Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family wrote a guest article for Time Magazine blasting the decision of Mary Cheney, the lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, and her partner, Heather Poe, to start a family. The article misstates and twists social-science research to arrive at a false conclusion: gay parents are bad parents. Outraged by Dobson’s fraudulent accusations, Family Pride executive director Jennifer Chrisler wrote a rebuttal article that was published Time.

The manipulation of social science research by the radical right must stop.

There was a time when the media would hold organizations like Focus on the Family accountable for their misinformation and lies. The times have changed. But the scientific community is fighting back.

Today, Truth Wins Out launched a new website, respectmyresearch.org, where top researchers can speak out and report distortions of their work. Among the researchers featured, Dr. Carol Gilligan, whose research was misquoted by Dobson in his Time Magazine article.

It’s a start. We applaud the academic community for standing up and refusing to let their work be distorted for political gain.

If you suspect that scientific research is being misrepresented, do your homework. Confirm the distortion. Let the researcher know. Report it to respectmyresearch.org, and write an op-ed reporting the misuse. Take a stand for truth.