The religious right defends its intolerance towards gays and lesbians by generating misleading statistics about them. For example, groups like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council claim that gay men are more likely to be pedophiles than straight men simply by calling men who abuse boys “gay,” rather than pedophiles. A greater proportion of child molesters choose victims of the same sex than consenting adults choose partners of the same sex, so there you have it: Gay men molest boys. (Confused? You should be.)
They also claim again and again that children do best with a mother and a father. That’s not what the research says. Research says that kids do better with two parents than one, but parents’ gender and orientation have no effect. (Slate‘s William Saletan exhaustively debunked the right’s response to Mary Cheney’s pregnancy if you want more details.) Just as their bogus studies (with such qualified authors as born again actor Kirk Cameron) make a mockery of science, so does their success getting their views reported by media outlets trying to be balanced make a mockery of that basic journalistic tenet.
Well, at long last, the scientists whose professional studies are being cherry-picked and distorted to bolster the religious right’s claims have created a website to refute the misuse of their work. The site, RespectMyResearch.org, lists the studies that have been distorted and explains how. It also has a portal researchers can use to report misuse of their findings.
If only mainstream media outlets will check it before they publish bogus claims fed to them by right-wing think tanks, maybe some intelligent public dialogue about GLBT issues will follow.
