"Your Research Cited by Gay Marriage Opponent"
An email I just sent to seven academics:
Hello,
I would like to bring to your attention the use of your published research by a militant Christian attorney in a piece opposing same-sex marriage in California, on the grounds that gay parenting is “harmful” to children:
Given that research by other scholars has been misused by similar “Christian” opponents of gay rights in the past, most notably James Dobson of Focus on the Family, I thought you should be made aware of this use, and likely misuse, of your research.
(For co-authored pieces, please forward to your colleagues as appropriate.)
Thank you for your time.
–KipEsquire, A Stitch in Haste
I of course didn’t forward it to the “scholars” of the Family Research Institute, who were unsurprisingly cited multiple times.
If I get any responses, I’ll pass them on.
Filed under: Gay Rights and Issues
Great idea. I'm looking forward to seeing what answers you get.
It was interesting to learn just how hard it can be to find the email address of an academic based only on a article citation. I would have thought that professors would want to be found by people who want to follow up with them.
Kip — I'm with Rockway Institute in San Francisco. Our mission is to counter the misuse of research by right-wing groups and thus to help advance the LGBT movement. I would love to see the seven researchers names and, if you have it, citations for the articles, as well as citations for the right-wing publications that misused the research. Possible to share? (I'm moderating a presentation to the National Gay & Lesbian Journalists Association Aug. 22 in Washington, D.C. on that very topic. It would be helpful to have some recent examples. We know of many of them, but I hope you may have some new ones.)
RM, just follow the original link, the citations are in endnotes at the bottom.
Mostly it's the same old thing: falsely extrapolating "two parent heterosexual households are better than one-parent heterosexual households" into claiming that "two-parent heterosexual are best and therfore better than homosexual households." With some bogus "gays are more likely to contract syphilis" claims thrown in for flavor.
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