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Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Lies in the Name of God are Still Lies (And Probably Worse...)

Sociological research is a tricky thing. It relies heavily on statistics, which can be notoriously unreliable, and can often be spun any way we want. Case in point, Focus on the Family, along with several other anti-gay groups, routinely cites a Health and Human Services study to claim that children do much better with a mother and father then with two fathers or two mothers. During today's hearings on the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act Senator Al Franken took FotF's Tom Minnery to task over their misuse of that study.


As a Christian I find it particularly egregious that these supposedly moral, Christian organizations would blatantly lie and deceive in order to further their agenda. They are welcome to their opinions, and they're welcome to make the best case possible for those opinions. But lying, even for sake of maintaining "Biblical morality", is still lying.

What's worse is that this isn't an isolated instance. These groups have repeatedly used studies comparing single mothers with married parents to conclude that children being raised by same-sex female couples are harmed by not having a man around. Zack Ford over at ThinkProgress has a good post explaining why Focus on the Family’s ‘Fatherless’ studies are irrelevant to DOMA.

There is a reason God calls us to honesty, deception ruins our credibility and can destroy our witness. As Senator Franken put it, “I frankly don’t really know how we can trust the rest of your testimony if you are reading studies this way.”

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