Tweet
crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
A column I read this morning in the American Spectator by Concerned Women for America “senior analyst” Janice Crouse had me reeling due to its audacity to deceive.
The goal of Crouse's piece was probably to demonstrate just how the recent Proposition 8 decision and gay marriage in general is hurting the black community.
However, what she accomplished was showing yet again how some on the right, especially the religious right, dishonestly manipulate facts and figures.
In her piece, Why Young Black Males Are Not Graduating High School, Crouse seems to be trying make a correlation between a recent report by the Schott Foundation (in which the overall 2007-08 graduation rate for Black males in the U.S. was only 47 percent) and the recent Prop 8 ruling:
Nancy Pearcey, in an article on American Thinker, identified certain “facts that Judge Walker claims are now established by the 'evidence' presented in his courtroom.” Those “facts” presumably will be deemed as “truth” far beyond the courtroom. Among those “facts,” the following three are especially relevant for young black boys' futures:
• “Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.”
• “The gender of a child's parent is not a factor in a child's adjustment.”
• “Having both a male and a female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted.”
Those three general false principles that Judge Walker supposedly established in his arguments in favor of so-called “same-sex marriage” are equally faulty when applied to the more than 40 percent of today's children who are born to single mothers. They are doubly relevant when the majority of those children are black.
What Crouse is doing is a tactic done by many on the right after the Prop 8 ruling went down – cherry picking parts of Judge Walker's statements to imply that he said “fathers don't matter” and then using data having absolutely nothing to do with his decision or same sex marriage in general to make an unfair correlation.
It's a diversionary tactic designed to take attention away from the fact that the Prop 8 folks lost because their case was poor.
To a bigger extent, Crouse sad piece is a part of a grander tactic by the religious right to unfairly brand same-sex parents as selfish or to imply that lgbts who seek to parent children are causing these children to be “denied” something vital and important despite the fact that studies have shown just the opposite.
Crouse lists a number of problems facing black youth including poverty, bad schools, and family breakdown. Same-sex marriage and equality didn't make the list, but it doesn't stop Crouse from trying to push it in as best as she can.
The irony is that Crouse actually does provide an excellent solution:
Common sense tells us that there is no surer recipe for the child to lag behind in learning than having to contend with the strain and disruption of a broken, dysfunctional family, where the parent or parents are so focused on themselves and their needs that they have little emotional energy to spare for the child's needs. Before we can address the problems of public education, we have to address the problems of marriage and family. Only then can we begin the massive overhaul of cultural values that will be necessary to close the educational gaps in America.
Too that good point got obscured by a bunch of anti-gay garbage.
7 Comments
This is so maddening.The real tie-in to Prop 8, of course, is that this idea was raised and shot down during the trial (not with the racial twist, specifically).
The problem is that all the studies compared two-parent households to single-parent households, and for valid scientific reasons (it wasn’t what they were studying) didn’t include or didn’t distinguish same-sex households.
So, for the purposes of the study, “single parent who is female” and “child without a father” are essentially synonymous, and properly discussing the data and conclusions, you can use that language (though not scientifically.) It isn’t the absence of the father so much as the absence of the second parent, and all the stresses and time-issues that adds to the single parent.
But then these people extend that accurate, but loaded “child without a father” onto a two-parent lesbian family as though it means anything. If kids without fathers do badly, then kids raised by lesbians must do badly too. It’s science! Why, lesbian households are even more without fathers than straight single moms, because at least they date men and might marry one, so they must be even worse for kids, and who needs data!?!
The actual studies looking at children raised by same-sex couples all show no significant differences (or actual better outcomes) for kids than straight two-parent homes.
What shocks me more isthe outright bigotry of the article. I’ve worked with many men of color who were raised by only thier mother and/or grandmother. There were all strong confident men who were very capable at thier jobs and excelled in thier professions.
And yes, not all of them graduated high school. But they all learned that lesson the hard way and they got a GED and quite a few went on to get a higher degree. (maybe its just the military types?)
I guess they’re gonna just use every off the wall argument now?
Next up, why Gay Marriage caused the recession and housing market bust.
Perception and ExpectationsI once met a guy who taught math at a public high school in New York City. During our conversation I asked him some general question about what he has observed about academic success and gender. He told me that in his school young women and and young gay men generally experienced greater academic success. It was his opinion that the pressure to appear macho prevented most young men from showing any overt interest in school. He inferred that guys who were already out felt substantially less pressure to conform, which freed them up to explore their genuine interests. (Granted, we did not discuss the other enormous difficulties that face a gay teen in an inner city school, or if we did I don’t remember because I was drinking pretty heavily that night.)
It seems to me that anything we can do that helps breakdown rigid expectations of gender is going to be of service to young black males.
Her logical fallacies have names. She uses both straw man and red herring fallacies.
Anyone who’s been in a debate class knows them well and recognizes them readily.
Isn’t it interesting how she fails to note how the CHURCH has failed black families?
She fails to mention that the overwhelming majority of the black men and women she talks about are deeply committed to their churches yet somehow it’s the gays and not the churches who are responsible for the family crises in the African-American community.
I’ve noticed that Harry Jackson and Ken Hutcherson and other anti-gay black pastors conveniently avoid addressing this conundrum too.
Let’s look at our ridiculous, punitive drug laws and for-profit prisons to see the real attack on families in the U.S.Is there a problem? Yes. Is it because gay marriage is destroying black men? Um, no. But let’s take a look at the impact of our so-called criminal justice system on poor families.
I’ve noticed this too as a student and TAWhile far too many young men feel this way, regardless of their race or ethnicity, this attitude has horrible consequences for low-income ethnic minorities. But usually the blame isn’t put on gays at that point.
I love how influential our community is in ALL these other cases yet the rights we’re fighting for seem to elude us on a regular basis.