FGB -- on Friday, Yet

Even Dead, We Can't Get Rid of Him

I was considering titling this bit "Liddy Dole is an idiot," but some things are so self-evident they don't bear saying. This one has been all over, but C&L has a good summary.

McCain on Families

This started as a much longer and more analytical post, but I am on such short sleep this week that I simply couldn't make it coherent. So, the short form:

The Straight Talker has done it again. This time, "Straight Talk" translates as "straight man talks about how awful gay parents are." Here's the key quote, courtesy Pam Spaulding:

Mr. McCain, who with his wife, Cindy, has an adopted daughter, said flatly that he opposed allowing gay couples to adopt. "I think that we've proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no, I don't believe in gay adoption," he said.

Let's not worry too much about what a fuzzy, unfocused statement this is. Others have done the parsing on it and it's pretty pathetic in terms of actually making sense. Here's a good analysis from Steve Benen at C&L. And here's a transcript of the NYT interview. Dale Carpenter has a couple of commentaries at Volokh Conspiracy that I find somewhat problematical, but I can't quite pin down the reasons. His first discussion seems fairly sensible, except for his comments on the social sciences and the reasarch on gay parenting:

In the context of the culture wars, I think McCain hears a question like, "Do you favor gay adoption?" as, "Do you think gay parents are as good as a married mother and father?" I don't think he hears it as, "Do you think that, once a child is up for adoption because his married mother and father are out of the picture, a gay person should be eligible to adopt that child?"

There is considerable debate about the first question, though even if you think opposite-sex parents are generally better it's not obvious why this should lead you to oppose adoption by gay couples under all circumstances.

I can only credit Carpenter's statement on the first question is we assume he's talking about political debate rather than scientific debate, which his further comments on the "state of social sciences" on this issue lead me to believe is not the case. TerranceDC points out at Booman Tribune:

But, in fact, there are nationally representative studies of children raised by same-sex couples. The public use files of the 2000 U.S. census contain information about thousands of individual children living with same-sex couple parents, and a million children living with other family types.

We can tell, by analyzing the census data, whether children raised by same-sex couples are any more likely to be held back in elementary school than children from other families. If being raised by same-sex couple parents were such a profound disadvantage as critics claim, we should expect children raised by same-sex couples to do poorly in elementary school.

The census data show that children raised by same-sex couples are just as likely as children raised by heterosexual couples to make normal progress through elementary school, given the same levels of parental education and income.

And Charlotte Patterson, a recognized expert in the area, says quite unequivocally:

Social science research has shown that parents' sexual orientation has no bearing on that of children, and that children of LGBT couples fare as well as other children in many objective measures[40]; the American Psychological Association, Child Welfare League of America, American Academy of Pediatrics, and many other relevant professional organizations believe LGBT parents to be as qualified as heterosexuals.

This agrees with the thrust of the research I've seen, in studies and testimony going back to the early 1990s.

After putting his foot in it, McCain sent a spokesman to "clarify":

McCain could have been clearer in the interview in stating that his position on gay adoption is that it is a state issue, just as he made it clear in the interview that marriage is a state issue. He was not endorsing any federal legislation.

McCain’s expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible. However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative.

Carpenter has some comments on the "clarification," that are pretty nonsensical and seem to reveal nothing so much as a definite bias toward McCain, no matter how unjustified.

This is another one that makes me wonder if Carpenter actually knows any thing about the current state of research in this area. It's not exhaustive, but it's pretty definitive: no serious researcher has any major objections to the conclusion that children raised by same-sex parents are equivalent in every measurable category to children raised by opposite-sex parents. (I've lost most of my prior research in this area, but I did find one link: a summary report from the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute.)

On the whole, McCain's position is not defensible in the least, unless you count pandering to far-right anti-gay organizations as a defense. I'm hard put to find a rationale behind Carpenter's remarks. Maybe if I had more sleep. . . .

Terrance DC at Pam's House Blend on "natural families" and a day at Washington's family court (where he and his husband finalized their adoption of their second son). This one's long and has a major punch. (Terrance Heath is great for putting a human face on these issues. I recommend you follow his blog, The Republic of T.)

And it looks as though the Census Bureau is going to make sure our families don't count.

I'm going back to bed for a while. I am really, really tired.