One of the next battleground states for protecting traditional marriage is New York. Democrat senator Ruben Diaz Sr. has promised he will not vote for a senate leader who supports a gay marriage bill reaching the senate floor (New York Times Article). He is now under intense pressure with Democrat organizations.
Send Reben Diaz an email to express your support:
The article below claims Diaz is“showing strain under pressure.” Kingfisher disagrees. From Diaz’ statements it’s clear he continues to stand for what he believes the Democrat party should care about—defending the traditional family. It seems traditional marriage would be important to all politicians since multiple studies show children do better in the in-tact, traditional married family. Diaz is correct in his stand.
Anti-Gay NY Pol Showing Strain Under Pressure
by Kilian Melloy, The Edge Contributor
Political groups, GLBT equality organizations, and unions have all come forward to issue a simple plea to New York state Sen. Rubén Díaz Sr. to prove himself a Democrat in more than name.
The Working Families Party, among other groups, has been active in attempting to bring pressure on to Díaz and fellow member of the so-called "Gang of Three," Democratic state Senator-elect Pedro Espada, Jr., by taking out a newspaper ad in several weekly Bronx publications.
The ad, which was reproduced in the Dec. 29 edition of the New York Daily News, reads, "Dear Senator Diaz and Senator-elect Espada: for decades our community has suffered under the failed leadership of the Republicans in Albany.
"People across New York voted to change that in November by electing a Democrat/Working Families majority in the State Senate for the first time in 43 years."
Continued the ad, "Now we can finally look forward to a better education for our children, more health care, affordable housing, and a real focus on all the issues that matter to working families.
"But only if you join the Democratic majority we voted for."
The Working Families party and other groups have circulated petitions urging Díaz to join with other state Democrats.
At issue is the question of whether fellow Democrat Malcolm Smith will be confirmed as Majority Leader of the New York state Senate. Díaz, Espada, and the third member of the so-called "Gang of Three," state Sen. Karl Kruger, another Democrat, have resisted Smith’s confirmation to the post due to Smith’s pro-marriage equality stance.
The New York state Assembly has already approved a bill that would allow gay and lesbian families in New York the right to marry. That bill, under outgoing Senate Majority Speaker Joseph Bruno, a Republican, was never allowed to come to a vote in the Senate.
The New York Daily News reported in November that Díaz, who is also an evangelical pastor, had attempted to convince Smith to sign a document promising not to allow the issue of marriage equality to come up for a vote.
But the turmoil surrounding Smith’s confirmation as the new Senate Majority Leader has had broader effects than the question of whether all families in New York will have equal access to legal recognition. Constituents see the flap as threatening the Democratic agenda overall.
In response to the petitions and the ads, Díaz’s people sent out a press release in which Díaz declared, "I am still a Democrat.
"And I will always be a Democrat."
New York Magazine reported in a Dec. 30 article that Díaz’s Dec. 29 release did address the evangelical pastor’s opposition to marriage rights for gay and lesbian families, but also decried budget cuts announced by Gov. David Paterson’s office and the ready availability of abortion services.
In a statement from earlier this month, Díaz praised President-elect Barack Obama for making the Democratic party more inclusive for Democrats who are more religiously and socially conservative.
Obama had drawn criticism from other quarters for inviting mega-church pastor and marriage equality opponent Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the Presidential Inauguration.
Read Díaz’s statement, "Obama has sent a message to the world that ’Yes We Can’ have a Democratic Party where everyone should be included."
Added Díaz, "It has been the belief that the Democratic Party is owned exclusively by certain groups, and if you do not believe in nor follow the ideology of these groups and their agendas, then you will be a registered outcast."
Díaz went on, "To some people, if you oppose homosexual marriage and abortion, you are not a Democrat and you are certainly not be invited to deliver an inaugural invocation."
Just wanted to point out that in fact the studies have not shown that kids do better in heterosexual families. There was indeed early studies done by an anti homosexual group that said that kids do not do well in homosexual families but that study has sense been disproven. More recent studies have said that kids do just as well in homosexual families as they do in heterosexual families.
ReplyDeletebill, while study after study shows that children do awesome in traditional marriages--there is no evidence that shows children do the same in same-gender households. I don't think it's a good idea for government to sanction a social experiment.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Meezan & Jonathan Rauch, Gay Marriage, Same-Sex Parenting, and America’s Children, 15 FUTURE OF CHILD. 97, 104 (2005)
“We do not know how the normative child in a same-sex family compares with other children. . . . Those who say the evidence falls short of showing that same-sex parenting is equivalent to opposite- sex parenting (or better, or worse) are . . . right.”
According to this source from a magazine devoted to same-gender parenting…no one knows what the outcomes are for same-gender parenting.
2. American college of Pediatricians:
Data on long-term outcomes for children placed in homosexual households are very limited and the available evidence reveals grave concerns. Those current studies that appear to indicate neutral to favorable results from homosexual parenting have critical flaws such as non-longitudinal design, inadequate sample size, biased sample selection, lack of proper controls, and failure to account for confounding variables.
3. Bonus Problems with the studies
“Numerous reviews of the literature on sexual orientation and parenting have been conducted. At least three such reviews have pointed to the serious scientific limitations of the social science literature on gay parenting.
Perhaps the most thorough review was prepared by Steven Nock, a sociologist at the University of Virginia who was asked to review several hundred studies as an expert witness for the Attorney General of Canada.
Nock concluded:
Through this analysis I draw my conclusions that
1) all of the articles I reviewed contained at least one fatal
flaw of design or execution;
2) not a single one of those studies was conducted according to general accepted standards of scientific research. Design flaws researchers have found in these studies include very basic limitations:
a. No nationally representative sample. Even scholars enthusiastic about unisex parenting, such as Stacey and Biblarz, acknowledge that “there are no studies of child development based on random, representative samples of [same-sex couple] families.”
b. Limited outcome measures. Many of the outcomes measured by the research are unrelated to standard measures of child well-being used by family sociologists (perhaps because most of the researchers
are developmental psychologists, not sociologists).
c. Reliance on maternal reports. Many studies rely on a mother’s report of her
parenting skills and abilities, rather than objective measures of child outcomes.
d. No long-term studies. All of the studies conducted to date focus on static or short-term measures of child development. Few or none follow children of unisex parents to adulthood.”
Hi Bill, can you give us a link so we can verify your claims.
ReplyDeleteThere is also a very recent study out (2008) which says that children have fewer problems at school and home when they live with both biological parents and frequently attend religious services. Children Who Live with Biological Parents Fare Best.
thepomegranetapple, you came up with some good ideas there.
Wow, pomegranateapple, that's quite the comprehensive list of rebuttals there. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteI will pray for Senator Diaz as well as send him my thanks for his continued strength of conviction against same-sex "marriage." I fervently hope he can withstand the strong-arm tactics his opposition will surely use to attempt to force him to succumb to and promote their views on the subject.
yeah, i know i kind of went crazy. there's just a lot of misinformation on both sides.
ReplyDeleteno one knows the outcome of same-gender parenting. experts on both side of the issue admit this.
what we do know is that every study ever done shows the in-tact married family is the best situation for children.
politicians should not try social experiments to be PC or get more votes.
I love Diaz for the stand he's taking.
I suppose yo have heard about the new book that just a came out last year "Out From Under". It tells of one womens experiences growing up in a family where her father ha a same sex attraction.
ReplyDeletei saw that! it's really interesting. I would like to see more studies done with same-gender parenting.
ReplyDeleteThere haven't been enough, but my common sense says: kids need a mom and a dad.
I have a particular bias favoring SSM, but appreciate the references provided by thepomegranateapple. Nevertheless, please do note the statement quoted therein:
ReplyDelete"Those who say the evidence falls short of showing that same-sex parenting is equivalent to opposite- sex parenting (or better, or worse) are . . . right."
That is, any statement that same-sex parenting is any "worse" for a child than opposite-sex parenting is likewise unsupported by the evidence.
Further, if we are to accept the proposition that child rearing in the nuclear biological family is a positive environment, this does not mean that anything "different" from that environment is necessarily negative. (If that were the case then surely any time and effort devoted toward thwarting gay marriage would help more children if tasked toward reducing straight marriage divorce rates and childbirth out of wedlock, both of which are quite prevalent and perfectly legal.)
I simply haven't seen any statistical evidence (as contrasted with analogical evidence) that demonstrates any cognizable secular damage to individuals or society caused by SSM. Faith, as the antithesis of ratioincination, is by definition not subject to rational debate, but when we discuss the societal goods of competent parenting there is nothing out there that would rank a same sex couple's abilities as anything less than any other form of familial organization.
Finally, provide a counterpoint citation, The American Psychological Association, for example, has said: “[T]here is no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental sexual orientation: lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children. … [R]esearch has shown that the adjustment, development, and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation and that the children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish.” See: http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/policy/parents.html
Oops -- meant to say, in the last paragraph:
ReplyDelete"Finally, [to] provide a counterpoint citation ..."