Good job Mr Franken.. the best part about science is that it is self-correcting. You can only use it to lie for so long before you are refuted and your position abandoned by reasonable people. Taking longer with some issues than others, certainly.

Ah yes, the universal antidote against people using studies to further their political agenda: reading said studies.

I've just finished looking up 'nuclear family' in every dictionary I could think of and, with the exception of Cambridge, they all say it's a mother, a father and their children.

Now, in the case of a study, it's important to check the way they define the terms because that's what the data reflects, but this could have just been a case of him not reading the study completely.

It doesn't change the fact that his conclusions were wrong, but they could have been an honest mistake. I wouldn't be very surprised either way.

It could also be that since he's a homophobe, he just did a hack job of finding "facts" that back his points of view. That would be in opposition to reading ALL the facts and having an open mind, THEN forming your conclusion. Or at least being open to the fact his view was wrong, and revising it when he's read other facts without making assumptions. But what do you expect of a bigot?

Even if it said what he thought it said, did the study actually look specifically at if it was a same sex couple or not? Did they do overall consistently better or worse?

*quality

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by Lendl.

Umm...What about this?
.

"In its most common usage, the term nuclear family refers to a household consisting of a father, a mother and their children all in one household dwelling."

Just asking.

The study defined nuclear family. Why would you look elsewhere for a definition, when the study provided it?

>> ^J-Main:

Umm...What about this?
.
"In its most common usage, the term nuclear family refers to a household consisting of a father, a mother and their children all in one household dwelling."
Just asking.

Watch the homophobe squirm... I think he knew quite well that he had intentionally misread the study, hoping his opponents would take the rethuglican Christian wingnut approach of simply taking his word for it.

Sorry, but I don't see it. Let me state from the start that I think it's complete bullshit that same-sex couples can't get married. But this study doesn't help.

The study defines a nuclear family as "2 parents, married to each other and kids". Given that same-sex marriage isn't recognised in the states, surely the study is actually talking about a heterosexual couple exactly as the homophobe says? Again that is not to say that same sex parents are any worse, merely that this particular study doesn't seem to back Franken up.

Does anyone know of or have a link to the study in question?

>> ^ChaosEngine:

Sorry, but I don't see it. Let me state from the start that I think it's complete bullshit that same-sex couples can't get married. But this study doesn't help.
The study defines a nuclear family as "2 parents, married to each other and kids". Given that same-sex marriage isn't recognised in the states, surely the study is actually talking about a heterosexual couple exactly as the homophobe says? Again that is not to say that same sex parents are any worse, merely that this particular study doesn't seem to back Franken up.
Does anyone know of or have a link to the study in question?


ChaosEngine has it right, I think. From the basis of this clip, we can figure that the study was done in 2010 in the USA. We know how they define "nuclear family" in the study, which doesn't explicitly exclude same-sex couples, but they would be de-facto excluded or at a minimum very under-represented since same-sex marriage isn't recognized in the US (yet).

So basically, the study has no comment about same-sex married couples with adopted children. I think that it is likely that kids in such a household would have many or most of the same benefits of a heterosexual marriage. To be fair, kids in such arrangement are likely to face some stigmas and possibly bullying, but similar things have historically been / are true for adopted kids of heterosexual couples.

I think that both sides are interpreting the study in ways that aren't actually supported by the data in it. I'd wager Franken is right, but he would need another study that includes familes of same-sex marriages to prove it.

There are similar studies, specifically targeting same-sex couples, that show that they produce children who are as well-adjusted (if not more-so) than different sex couples.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/514477

The point that the senator is making is that this fellow cherry-picked results to satisfy his predisposition against same-sex couples.

Exactly. Which means that this study cannot be used to compare same-sex to opposite-sex couples, which is what the homophobe is attempting to do.
>> ^MilkmanDan:


So basically, the study has no comment about same-sex married couples with adopted children.

Christophobic conservaphobic Frankenphiles.

The other thing I'd be interested in is how the study controlled for economic status. It's very difficult to disentangle these things and the correlation is going to be high in most parts of the States. And it'd be even harder to do with gay couples - there's far fewer, and I'd bet there's very, very few poor gay couples (married or not) that manage to adopt children. That's going to make it very hard to isolate any sort of causal effect.

The other problem in using a statistic like this (even if it had been correct) is that society is currently going to be less accepting of the children of gay couples, and this will leak into the data. However, that's also a very bad starting point for reasoning about gay marriage. For example, compare it with a debate on interracial marriages in the 1950s. Their children probably were less happy, and they were probably less successful overall because a lot of people would have treated them (parents and children) poorly due to prejudices at the time. But that doesn't mean that interracial marriages should have been disallowed. Sometimes things are right even if the transition isn't easy for those involved.

If I was representing "organized religion"s interests in this debate, my position would be to get government out of the marriage business altogether. Let government oversee civil unions as a matter of contract and civil law. Let people then define marriage however they see fit. Churches would thus be in the clear to think of gays as unmarried (even if they had a civil union) or as still married even if a civil union was ended (if that church doesn't recognize divorce). Some churches would do gay marriages, some wouldn't. Similarly, some churches currently recognize a baptism performed by some other subset of churches or denominations, and some don't. And yet there isn't big fights about this or something, because there's no single government standard that everyone can't agree on.

Now, certainly, for practicality sakes there's no reason that they couldn't still do the civil union stuff in association with whatever kind of marriage ceremony is preferred - but either could also proceed without the other. Marriage is a word loaded with baggage, and is tied to personal issues and relationships that government needn't concern itself with. At the same time, the concept of a civil union is still useful in helping to protect people in a relationship - and there's perfectly good reason for the government to manage that.

In any case, good on Franken for examining source data, and for making his point in a clear, calm, and effective manner. Good politicianing!

in my eyes, one of the big differences between heterosexual couples who have kids and homosexual couples who adopt (or conceive through artificial insemination or other means) is that heterosexual couples are assholes who fuck without protection and spit out kids like a pez dispenser before they go score some more meth and start the process all over again.

and if you don't believe me, you should, because i got that from a study.

>> ^jmzero:

If I was representing "organized religion"s interests in this debate, my position would be to get government out of the marriage business altogether. Let government oversee civil unions as a matter of contract and civil law. Let people then define marriage however they see fit. Churches would thus be in the clear to think of gays as unmarried (even if they had a civil union) or as still married even if a civil union was ended (if that church doesn't recognize divorce). Some churches would do gay marriages, some wouldn't. Similarly, some churches currently recognize a baptism performed by some other subset of churches or denominations, and some don't. And yet there isn't big fights about this or something, because there's no single government standard that everyone can't agree on.
Now, certainly, for practicality sakes there's no reason that they couldn't still do the civil union stuff in association with whatever kind of marriage ceremony is preferred - but either could also proceed without the other. Marriage is a word loaded with baggage, and is tied to personal issues and relationships that government needn't concern itself with. At the same time, the concept of a civil union is still useful in helping to protect people in a relationship - and there's perfectly good reason for the government to manage that.


That would be logical if their goal was to be allowed to freely practice their religion. Unfortunately their real goal is to make society conform to their religion. They are trying to justify their opinions, marriage between a man and woman, be having it legislated and enforced on everyone. If everyone is made to do it, it must be right.

I haven't heard of any poor folks adopting kids unless they are related to them or have something in the will of the biological parents saying it can be done upon their death or disability.

That means on the whole adopted kids are going to have access to a lot more resources than a non-adopted....assuming the adoptive parents don't suddenly go broke or illegally adopt to bypass the financial concerns.

That also means those adoptive parents can decide where to live, where to send their kids to school...and generally make sure their kids are raised in a place where the typical public school is not going to offer an environment able to deal with them being adopted by homosexual couples, mixed race couples, couples who are of a different race than the adopted kid, any other combination I haven't thought of. They on the whole have the finances to shape the environment their kid will grow up and the people whom they live near and associate with. Hell there might even be communities out there where they cater specifically to adoptive parents and adopted kids of "unconventional" varieties.

I mean in general, adoptive parents aren't just on a whim deciding they want a kid to keep their marriage together or whatever else. They have to spend a long time, a lot of money, and go through many checks before and after to make sure everything is OK......so it's very unlikely they are going to go through that just to get a kid and turn around to raise it into a psychopath or whatever.

So....there's a chance the study could have ignored homosexual couples due to the marriage thing, but I suspect they chose that definition so they wouldn't have to break down each case to describe the race of the child, the race of the parents, ages of all involved and whatever else. Although I really doubt they excluded gay couples.....I don't think someone at the adoption agencies and decided to filter them out because while married (at least marked in their system as married) but aren't the traditional man/woman combo.

I think regardless of whether Franken is interpreting what the study means correctly or not, he's not drawing any conclusions or entering evidence based on it. The study may mean exactly what the anti-gay marriage guy thinks it does, but it doesn't back him up. At the very least, the due dilligence would rest on the person giving testimony to confirm the definition before drawing conclusions based upon it, or they would lose significant credibility.

Gotta love those four words:

I don't think you should you the definition that "the study" gives because then the definition can be swayed by "the study". If a definition is given it should be defined by an outside source and the history of the definition should be seen how it has been used and the context in which it was used.

Independent verification-strange concept indeed

Excuse me-I should have type "use"