Category: Religion and sexuality

NARTH member: Mixed orientation marriages hurt children

Recently, a lively discussion has been taking place on the thread of this post: Seton Hall professor: NARTH member “misreported and misrepresented” my research (go to the comments section for the discussion). Central to the discussion has been disputes about whether or not a study by Theodora Sirota on women who grew up in mixed orientation marriages could offer any insight about gay parenting in general. Sirota found that women with gay fathers and a straight mother had more problems with interpersonal trust.

I wrote the post after Dr. Sirota made a statement about how her study was misused in an article by National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality member, Rick Fitzgibbons, posted on the website Mercatornet. Fitzgibbons generalized the results of Sirota’s work to gay couples saying,

There are strong indications that children raised by same sex couples fare less well than children raised in stable homes with a mother and a father.

Fitzgibbons then cited Sirota’s study as evidence for this claim even though the adult women in Sirota’s study grew up in homes where both a mother and father lived, at least for a time. The issue for Fitzgibbons was the father was gay.

Fitzgibbons’ writing partner on the topic of forgiveness, Robert Enright (professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison), then joined the conversation, and after much discussion boiled down his belief about what Fitzgibbons sought to accomplish with his use of the Sirota study.

There is *indirect* (not direct) evidence in the peer-reviewed scientific literature showing statistically significant (in the case of Sarantakos and Sirota) negative effects for children when at least one LGB parent is studied scientifically.

Sarantakos studied gay couples (I will eventually present a critique of this study) but Sirota is the study which Enright referred to as having one gay parent.

There are many things wrong with the way Fitzgibbons used the Sirota study but here I want to note one not often covered. Essentially, Fitzgibbons proposes that same-sex attracted parents are harmful to children, even if they follow church teaching and marry heterosexually.

Many men I work with clinically are gay or bisexual but have fallen in love with their female spouse and together they have made a marriage work. By Fitzgibbons’ reasoning, the children involved are at greater risk for being hurt simply because one parent is gay/bisexual, even though they grow up in a home with a mother and father.

Fitzgibbons’ article, whether intended or not, stigmatizes people with same-sex attraction, no matter how they live.

In fact, Sirota’s research did not use representative sampling and almost nothing can be generalized from it to other mixed orientation couples. The mixed orientation parents in her study divorced more frequently and so it is highly likely that the results were more related to divorce than to anything else. However, in any case, Sirota’s results are only suggestive of further studies and prove nothing. Fitzgibbons’ use of the study was unwarranted and as a result recklessly stigmatized both gay couples as well as those men who direct their lives in accord with their religious views.

You can’t make this stuff up: South Carolina endorsements for Rick Santorum

If I wanted to write a parody of an anti-gay, Mormon-baiting news release, I couldn’t do a better job than this real one from three South Carolina fundamentalists claiming to be evangelicals and to speak for evangelicals.

Some money lines:

  • Days before Saturday’s GOP Presidential primary here, there are signs that South Carolina evangelical Protestant leaders are starting to follow the lead of peers in Iowa and Houston who have rejected Mitt Romney, a Mormon, in favor of Rick Santorum, a Catholic. The driving thrust of the evangelical argument: Homosexuality.
  • Mills said, “The Word of Almighty God, from the Books of Moses to those of the Apostle Paul, commands faithful Jews and Christians to be homophobic. Carolinans have a God-fearing homophobia, while Mitt Romney wrongly endorses homosexuality as a good choice for our young people.
  • Rev. Mills said, “Because Rick Santorum was willing to sign this wonderful Iowa vow last summer while Romney was calling for more gay hiring and other silly liberal things that Massachusetts RINOs embrace, I’d say Senator Santorum has proven himself a courageous Catholic Christian whom any Bible-believing Jew, Protestant or evangelical can support. He does not drink the anti-science Kool-Aid to the effect that homosexuality is inherited and immutable like fingerprints.
  • [Endorser Molotov] Mitchell said, “Mitt Romney is kind of like the RINO country club hetero version of Dan Savage, and in his own vacuous way, far more dangerous to hetero-traditionalism. I hope Santorum makes a big splash on Romney’s empty suit this Saturday.”
  • Rev. Mills said, “Romney’s liberal support for homosexuality is not only at doctrinal odds with traditional Judaism and Christianity, it’s even at odds with latter-day cults like Islam and Mormonism. As an evangelical pastor, my core problem with Romney is not necessarily with the fact that he has been an elder in the cult of Mormonism – which holds that the Garden of Eden was in Missouri, that we have a Heavenly Father and Father and that Jesus is the created brother of Satan – but rather, that Romney rejects traditionalist Mormon stands as well as basic Judeo-Christian stands against homosexuality in favor of a cluelessly-liberal, anti-family public policy.

 

The “wonderful” marriage vow referred to above that Santorum signed was the one that initially said, “Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-­American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-­parent household than was an African-­household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American President.”

Those familiar with Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill might remember Molotov Mitchell. He is the friend of Martin Ssempa who misled his audiences with falsehoods about the scope of the bill and offered his support for passage of the legislation.

I wonder if Rick Santorum will tout this endorsement…

Rick and Kay Warren condemn the denial of link between HIV and AIDS as promoted by the AFA’s Bryan Fischer

Early in January, Bryan Fischer, issues analyst with the American Family Association, threw his support behind the belief that HIV does not cause AIDS. On his daily talk show, Fischer hosted University of California, Berkeley professor, Peter Duesberg, who is the principle proponent of the theory that HIV is a harmless virus and that AIDS is the result of lifestyle choices, such as drug use and promiscuity, which weaken the immune system. Duesberg says that gay men are at special risk since they use drugs and engage in casual sex more so than other groups.

In a column on the AFA website, Fischer wrote:

So what is the cause of what we know as AIDS? What is the cause of this condition that is killing people? Duesberg’s answer can be found in one word: drugs.

And specifically, drug use connected with the kind of sex that is far too common in the homosexual community. While the average heterosexual has somewhere between seven to 14 sexual partners in a lifetime, it is not uncommon for homosexuals to have hundreds, even thousands, of sexual partners.

By partnering with Duesberg, Fischer brought AIDS denialism closer to the mainstream of evangelicalism. In response, Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren and his wife Kay issued a statement to me about Fischer’s and Duesberg’s denial of the HIV-AIDS link. The Warrens’ statement is powerful and decisive. It is reproduced here in full:

Since AIDS was first discovered in 1981, 30 years of non-stop scientific research by the US military, the medical community, our government, and by every international health organization has proven over and over, with countless irrefutable results, that ONLY people with HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) develop AIDS.  To imply the disease is caused by anything besides HIV is quack science, like claiming the earth is flat, or the moon is made of cheese. Since 1985, when the virus that creates AIDS was isolated, every doctor on the planet, except Peter Duesberg, has known that HIV is the only cause of AIDS.

Duesberg’s denial of the entire body of research, and his rejection of thousands of scientific trials and papers, would be laughable if millions of lives weren’t at stake.  But his view is deadly.  Unfortunately, Duesberg convinced some people in Africa that HIV was not the cause of AIDS and as a result many people there needlessly became infected with the virus, and some have subsequently suffered and died.

It is frustrating – and frightening – for those of us in AIDS ministry to see someone like Dr. Duesberg play to people’s bias and prejudices.  For the past eight years we have worked with thousands of churches around the world and in America who have ministries to those infected and affected by AIDS.  No one deserves this illness, and we must not ignore those among us who are infected or affected by HIV and AIDS.  There are numerous ways to acquire the virus – sexual activity, blood transfusions, being born to an HIV positive mother, dirty needles –  but what matters isn’t  how a person became infected as much as how we will respond. People with living with the virus are people that Jesus created, loves, and died for. Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan teaches us that when you find someone bleeding on the side of the road, you don’t say “Was it your fault?” You just help them in love!

Let’s be very careful about what reality we deny; lives are at stake.

When the Warrens write that Duesberg convinced some in Africa that HIV and AIDS were not related, they are referring to the period of AIDS denial in South Africa from 2000 to 2005. In 2000, Duesberg was invited by South African President Thabo Mbeki to provide advice on AIDS policy. Subsequently, the South African government displayed antagonism toward AIDS treatment and prevention programs which involved anti-retro viral drugs (ARVs). Nicolo Nattrass, writing in African Affairs, said that President Mbeki questioned the science behind the epidemic. However, the consequences were devastating. According to a Harvard University press release and a study from the journal African Affairs, over 330,000 deaths could have been prevented if ARVs had been used. The Harvard release, citing a 2008 study, added that 35,000 babies were born with HIV due to failure to implement appropriate drug based prevention programs.

If anything, the African epidemic provides evidence counter to Duesberg’s theory. The epidemic there is driven by heterosexual activity. The stereotype about gay men spreading HIV via lots of drugs and sex is not applicable there.

Given what is at stake, the Warrens’ statement is important. The American Family Association has a sizable audience which includes GOP Presidential candidates. Confusion over something as basic as what causes AIDS could become a barrier to the progress made in ministry and treatment for those with HIV/AIDS. As the Warrens remind us, lives are at stake.

Alan Chambers to be part of a panel at Gay Christian Network conference

Tonight, if you are around Orlando, FL, you could take in a panel discussion (tip XGW) at the Gay Christian Network conference featuring Alan Chambers, Jeremy Marks, Wendy Gritter, and John Smid. I am told that a video will be made of the event and available on the GCN website.

Marks, Gritter and Smid have issued apologies for their advocacy of the ex-gay movement over the past several years. Smid today sent an email to his mailing list linking to another apology on his website.

I will watch the video when it is posted. Marks, Gritter and Smid have moved away from the change paradigm in clear ways. Chambers has also distanced himself and Exodus from the “change is possible” language. Another interesting change at Exodus, recently reported by XGW, has been the removal of reparative therapy books by Joseph Nicolosi from the organization’s website. Other change paradigm books remain (e.g., What’s a Father to Do?). Chambers did not comment on the reasons for the removal when I asked about it.

 

 

Seton Hall professor: NARTH member “misreported and misrepresented” my research

Another researcher has issued a statement accusing a member of the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) of misrepresenting research. In a statement first issued to blogger Rob Tisinai yesterday, Theodora Sirota, a professor of Nursing at Seton Hall University, said, NARTH advisory board member Rick Fitzgibbons “mis-reported and misrepresented the results of my 2009 research.” At issue is a 2009 Archives of Psychiatric Nursing article* authored by Sirota about attachment in daughters of gay or bisexual fathers. In November, Fitzgibbons used Sirota’s research in an article on  Catholic website, MercatorNet, to make the claim that “children raised by same sex couples fare less well than children raised in stable homes with a mother and a father.”

Dr. Sirota told me today by phone that her study could not be used to make a generalization about same-sex couples because the participants in her study did not grow up in same-sex homes. Instead, they grew up in what she called, “heterosexually-organized families where fathers were gay or bisexual.” In other words, the parents were in a mixed orientation marriage, where the mother was straight and the father was gay or bisexual.

In his MercatorNet article, Fitzgibbons refers to Sirota’s article in a section titled, “The children do suffer” and claims that “There are strong indications that children raised by same sex couples fare less well than children raised in stable homes with a mother and a father.” As Sirota points out, her research does not support Fitzgibbon’s claim. He compares apples and oranges.

The women surveyed by Sirota were in families with a mother and father, not same-sex couples as implied by Fitzgibbons. Fitzgibbons improperly generalizes from mixed orientation marriages to same-sex couples. Sirota pointed this out to Fitzgibbons in the comment section of his article, but he declined to retract his incorrect use of her study.

Another factor pertinent to the findings of attachment problems in women is the frequency of divorce in mixed orientation marriages found by Sirota. Parental divorce was reported more frequently by women who grew up in mixed orientation homes than by the women with two straight parents. Sirota describes these differences in her dissertation (the 2009 study was based on her PhD dissertation research conducted in 1996). On page 81, Sirota wrote,

Daughters of gay or bisexual fathers reported significantly higher rates of divorce among their parents than daughters of heterosexual fathers (x2( 3, N = 112) = 22.53 p .001).  These data are presented in Table 18.  Mean age at parents’ separation or divorce was 12.8 years for daughters of gay or bisexual fathers (n = 39) and 9.4 years for daughters of heterosexual fathers (n = 16).

 

Note that 57.4% of the group with gay fathers reported divorce or separation compared to only 25% of the group with straight parents. Divorce is known to be a relevant factor in attachment formation and the group with gay or bisexual fathers reported significantly more of it. One cannot say that the orientation of the men was the factor which led to the poorer attachment reported by the participants in Sirota’s study. In fact, it makes more sense, especially given the average age of the daughters when the divorce took place (12.8 vs. 9.4), to propose that divorce and related instability is more the culprit for the poorer attachment results than the sexual orientation of the fathers. In any event, without controlling for divorce, one cannot reasonably isolate the father’s sexual orientation as the sole factor relating to differences in attachment, if it is a factor at all.

Having discussed divorce as a confounding variable, the main objection of Dr. Sirota remains. Her study cannot be generalized to say anything about same-sex couples and attachment dynamics in their children. Dr. Fitzgibbons makes an improper generalization in his article and adds insult to injury by defending his treatment of the study when the misuse was pointed out.

There are other studies in the MercatorNet article which are stretched too far (e.g., Sarantakos) and I may come back to the topic in a future post.

*Sirota, T, (2009) Adult attachment style dimensions in women with gay or bisexual fathers. Archives of Psychiatric Nursing, 23, 289-297.