I vaguely recall a while back blogging about someone’s statistics that claimed millions of gay households in the US and then having looked up the background data finding out that the report completely and artificially inflated the number. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the exact posting or find it in my archives.
What brings it to mind is a recent posting by Harry Forbes at Squaring the Globe in which he finds the Boston Globe doing the same thing in a story about same-sex adoption. The story claims that “forty percent of same-sex couples aged 22 to 55 are raising children, about 5 percent of whom are adopted,” and that “up to 10 million children are estimated to have a lesbian or gay parent.” So Harry decided to check out those claims in the survey the Globe claimed as its source.
First, he looks at the CIA World Factbook, which tells him that the US has 60 million kids under the age of 15. I looked at the US Census data and it says there are 79 million kids under the age for 18. So the Globe claims that 1 in 8 kids in the country under the age of 18 have at least one gay or lesbian parent. Harry uses the lower under-15 number to come up with 1 in 6. Either way, that’s very doubtful.
But it’s when he goes right to the report, it says not 10 million children, but 250,000.
Same-sex couples in the United States are raising approximately 250,000 children.
Many same-sex couples in the United States are raising children. The Gay and Lesbian Atlas finds that same-sex couples were raising approximately 250,000 children under age 18 in 1999.[17]
Gee, why would the Boston Globe have any reason to over-inflate (by a factor of 40!) the number of children living in gay or lesbian households? What could have been happening in the news recently related to this?
Technorati Tags: adoption, Boston, Catholic Charities, homosexuality, media bias
Wait a second….it says same-sex couples are raising 250,000 children.
The earlier statistic was that 5% of the children being raised by same-sex couples are adopted. So 5% of 250,000 are adopted…that’s 12,500 kids in the entire United States that have been adopted by same-sex couples.
That can’t be right!! Gay couples are taking in huge numbers of children that can’t find homes anywhere else, there have to be millions, right?, no way there are only 12,500 in the whole country. That is why it’s such a travesty that the Catholic Church is against allowing gay couples to adopt!! (/sarc)
See, the first problem is that the Census was in 2000, not 2002. The second is that the Census clearly says that 415,970 were living in a household with same-sex parents. The third is the rest is just nebulous estimates which can be wildly inflated based on nothing but the authors’ own desire to push an agenda.
I’m reminded of the incident about 10 years ago when a leading pro-abortion advocate claimed in many media outlets that less than 1,000 partial-birth abortions were performed nationwide each year and that figure was picked up by everyone. When a newspaper found that 1,000 were performed in one county in New Jersey alone each year, he admitted he lied and justified it by saying that his goal was what was important.
My guess is that the “end justifying the means” tactic is used by liberals in many areas of dispute. Without hard facts from third parties that can be documented, I’m loath to believe them.
I’m saying that it’s all estimates, which is just like all those “estimates” that 10 percent of the population is gay. They believe that there is many because there “should” be this many. I’m not buying it.
This may be somewhat off the subject for this thread but I want to say something about lesbian-headed households….I lived in one as a kid, and I know/have known of many others. My opinion is that on the whole they are no better than straight households and are most of the time worse.
The lesbians I’ve known do tend to have a chip on their shoulders about obedience…they are more vicious and demanding of submission because it’s like they have something to prove. I don’t know if this is true of lesbians who adopt but the ones where they have been married, had kids, and gotten divorced and have custody of the kids….well, the case recently where the child was beaten to death because he wouldn’t call the partner “Daddy” is perhaps an extreme, but is illustrative.
My mother came out of the closet when I was 14, fought for custody with my Dad for 4 years and finally won because he refused to bring her orientation into the light, fearing my sisters and I would be stigmatized…this was the late 70’s.
My Dad is a good man and was by far the better parent, but he made a big mistake leaving us to her custody. It was much worse than any stigma that would have occurred if he had fought her honestly in court. My mother is abusive and mentally unstable, had a string of “girlfriends” in our house…she would stay out late partying and not come home at all some nights. I was gone to college during the worst of it…my younger sisters were not so fortunate. They are both very troubled women to this day. My mother had wanted custody only because it got her the house and child support checks…not because it was best for us kids.
I also know of a woman, well known by locals to be a lesbian, who recently adopted a little boy out of foster care. He was not at all a difficult-to-place child…when she first got him at the age of 2 or so, he was a beautiful blue-eyed blond haired cherub. She had a live-in girlfriend at the time but is now single. She has a good job but does not have a history of particularly good mental health. The only saving grace for this boy is that adoptive mother lives close to family and they are heavily involved and very stable.
It will be interesting to see how this boy turns out…the mother is very butchy…she looks like a man. Is a fairly decent person, and loves the boy. I have slightly less apprehension about a situation like this than one where, like with my Mom (who is also butchy) there is an attitude of extreme defensiveness and almost competitiveness toward the child’s father. They demand allegiance and watch every word and action of the child for signs of preference toward the male.
And most gays and lesbians will deny that this ever happens, but my mother encouraged me to be lesbian (which horrified me) and would have been delighted if I’d turned out like her. She hates men and taught us (or tried to) to do the same. Can’t speak for my sisters but it didn’t work on me.
Letting gays and lesbians adopt or even be foster parents is no panacea for the needy children in this society. There may be some that are truly great parents but I’ve met quite a few lesbians in my life and have not found any yet.