May 24, 2013 (C-FAM.org) – Last week we reported about a hopelessly un-scientific “LGBT Survey” published and promoted by the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) as part of a larger effort to push its absurd “anti-discrimination” agenda, in particular a directive that would eliminate important civil freedoms such as the freedom of conscience and the freedom of contract.
According to the survey, 48 percent of homosexuals are afraid of exhibiting their sexual proclivities in public.
This has angered several political figureheads of the homosexual agenda. However, when asked to provide a substantial argument why the FRA Survey (which cost the European taxpayer 370.000 Euro, i.e. roughly $5 U.S. for each of the replies received) was not “bogus,” they remained conspicuously silent.
Are they still searching for arguments, or are they aware that they have none?
The leading Austrian newspaper Die Presse commented:
For this survey, the FRA has followed the most un-representative approach that could have been imagined: they put a questionnaire on the internet and invited all non-heterosexuals to participate, in particular relevant pressure-groups. Thus the outcome is not a representative study of the situation of LGBT people, but simply a collection of data. And theoretically it is even possible that all questionnaires were filled out by one single activist with a well-written computer program…The teaching manual Social Research on the Internet says as much: “when the respondents themselves decide whether they want to be part of the sample, the result of the survey only will provide insights on the opinions of those participants and therefore will be unusable.”
Pseudo-science and the systematic use of manipulative “surveys” are the pillars upon which the LGBT rights movement rests. This is true for the claim that LGBT persons are victims of rampant “discrimination” or “hate crimes” as well as for claims regarding their “equality.”
We have discovered yet another incredible and telling example for this strategy. In its recent decision in the case of X. and Others against Austria, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decided that it was “discriminatory” (and hence “a violation of human rights”) that Austria did not foresee a possibility for a lesbian woman to adopt the child of her same-sex partner in order to form a “rainbow family.”
Austrian does allow single adoption, but it provides that the biological father can only be replaced by a man, and the biological mother only by a woman. (One actually fails to understand how such a law could be “discriminatory,” given that men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, are treated exactly in the same way. However, this law meant that the complainant could only take her same-sex partner’s place as the child’s mother, but not form a couple of “two mothers”).
What is particularly interesting in this regard is the Court’s use of “scientific studies.”
In § 67 of the Decision, one reads:
The applicants noted the Government’s argument that Austrian adoption law was aimed at protecting the interests of the child. According to the Court’s case-law, it was for the Government to show that the exclusion of same-sex couples from second-parent adoption was necessary to achieve that aim. There was a far-reaching scientific consensus that same-sex couples were as capable as different-sex couples of ensuring the positive development of children. From among the studies they submitted, the applicants referred at the hearing to a large-scale study entitled “The life of children in same-sex partnerships” commissioned by the German Ministry of Justice (Rupp Martina (ed.), Die Lebenssituation von Kindern in gleichgeschlechtlichen Partnerschaften, Cologne, 2009).
And in § 143:
The Government did not adduce any specific argument, any scientific studies or any other item of evidence to show that a family with two parents of the same sex could in no circumstances adequately provide for a child’s needs.
It is astonishing to read that the government did not adduce any scientific studies that could have supported its point of view, when such studies would actually have been easily available. Was there a tacit complicity between the defendant government, the Court, and the complainants? (But in fact, the question was not whether “two parents of the same sex could in no circumstances adequately provide for a child’s needs” – it was only whether there was statistical evidence suggesting that it might be better for the child to be raised by persons without unusual sexual proclivities…).
Be that as it may, the Court’s pretension that it had not been in possession of such studies is disingenuous. In actual fact two NGOs – the Alliance Defending Freedom and the European Center for Law and Justice – had submitted numerous studies, among them the study published by Mark Regnerus, ” How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study, Social Science Research 41.4 (2012), 752–770.
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What is the difference between the Study by Regnerus and the Study by Rupp? It is the difference between real science and bogus science.
Bogus science: we have criticized the methodology of the FRA Survey, which essentially is an opinion poll among self-perceived “LGBT victims of discrimination.” Ms. Rupp’s Study follows the same approach: it is an opinion poll among homosexual couples who raise children, and comes (surprise, surprise!) to the conclusion that these couples believe to be good parents. You can find an explanation of the methodology followed here (unfortunately, the information is available only in German).
This is not the first time that “scientific” studies on LGBT parenting turn out to be about nothing but the self.
Real science: the Regnerus Study follows the gold standard rules of social research. It is based on a sample of the population that is truly representative, and it measures their real success in life. It then finds out the differences between adults who as children have been raised in real families and those who have been raised by homosexual parents (not necessarily by adoptive parents, though, but the question was whether one or both parents had had homosexual relationships). It results from this research that children raised by homosexual parents are less successful in life, less likely to form lasting relationships, more likely to abuse alcohol and drugs, more likely to be sexually abused (including by their parents), more likely to commit crimes, more likely to commit suicide, etc., etc. This time we are speaking of facts (i.e. of actual education outcomes), not of mere opinions.
Of course, there are, and will always be, situations where children have to live with parents who indulge in a homosexual lifestyle. But in the context of adoption the question is whether such situations should be artificially created, given the very significant differences in outcome demonstrated by the Regnerus study. Children are neither toys nor pets for adults to play with. They are persons with rights, whose chances in life must not be needlessly diminished by handing them over to adoptive parents who cannot provide them with adequate role models.
It is telling for the ECHR’s careless and ideology-driven way of pushing LGBT issues that it passes off as “scientific” a mere opinion poll while omitting any mention of the inconvenient findings of real science.
Given that Article 21 of the UN Child Rights Convention stipulates that in all matters concerning abortion the interest of the Child must be the paramount consideration, the ECHR’s decision in the case of X. and Others v. Austria is itself a human rights violation. The guardians of human rights have turned into perpetrators of structural child abuse.
Assertions of “LGBT discrimination” and “LGBT equality ” are modern myths. They are quickly debunked through critical thinking. This is why the LGBT movement and its allys hate rational debate and rely on indoctrination.
This article originally appeared on the website of C-FAM.org and is reprinted with permission.