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from Parenting & Family
Arkansas Supreme Court Rules
In Favor Of Gay Foster Parenting
Decision based on questionable science in amicus brief filed by American Psychological Association and social worker organizations.
July 6, 2006 -
On June 29, 2006, the Arkansas Supreme Court issued a decision in Department of Human Services and Child Welfare Agency Review Board, Appellants/Cross-Appellees v. Matthew Lee Howard; Craig Stoopes; Anne Shelley; and William Wagner, Appellees/Cross-Appelants.
The decision was written by Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Donald L. Corbin. The case has been appealed to the Supreme Court after a lower court ruling issued a favorable ruling overturning the state's welfare agency prohibition against placing children in gay households.
The original case for the state was handled by attorney Kathy Hall, who had access to the expertise of Dr. George Rekers, a NARTH member and authority on homosexuality and gender identity disorders in children.
The editorial note to Dr. Rekers' paper, "Review of Research On Homosexual Parenting, Adoption, and Foster Parenting," describes Dr. Rekers frustration in dealing with Hall when she made motions in court to exclude "all scientific evidence regarding the higher frequency of domestic violence, pedophilia, and sexual disease transmission by homosexual adults to children compared to married couples to children, which undermined her own case. Then, after seeing Dr. Rekers' review (included in this paper) of the evidence of higher rates of psychiatric disorders in practicing homosexuals compared to heterosexuals, attorney Kathy Hall made last minute motions to exclude that scientific evidence from consideration in the case just prior to Dr. Reker's courtroom testimony."
As a result of Kathy Hall's suppression of data that would have been harmful to her opposition, the state of Arkansas lost the case in a lower court.
Supreme Court Uses Arguments From Lower Court Decision
In issuing its own decision rejecting the right of Arkansas to prohibit gay couples from adopting or serving as foster parents, the Court relied almost exclusively upon the findings of the lower court--which had been unable to see Dr. Rekers' research findings--and relied on the questionable scholarship provided by the American Psychological Association in its amicus brief.
The Supreme Court decision found that the Child Welfare Agency Review Board's policy against gay adoptions as outlined in Regulation 220.3.2 "...does not promote the health, safety, or welfare of children and, thus, is unconstitutional as being a violation of the separation-of-powers doctrine."
The decision quoted extensively from the lower court ruling where the lower court determined the following based upon the APA's brief:
Being raised by gay parents does not increase the risk of problems in adjustment for children.
Being raised by gay parents does not risk increase the risk of psychological problems for children.
Being raised by gay parents does not cause academic problems.
Being raised by gay parents does not cause gender identity problems.
Children of lesbian or gay parents are equivalently adjusted to children of heterosexual children.
There is no factual evidence that gay people, as a group, are more likely to engage in domestic violence than heterosexuals.
There is no evidence that gay people as a group, are more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexuals.
Based upon this information--and not having access to Dr. Rekers' complete research, the Court asserted: "These facts demonstrate that there is no correlation between the health, welfare, and safety of foster children and the blanket exclusion of any individual who is a homosexual or who resides in a household with a homosexual."
The Court also criticized members of the state child welfare agency because at least two of the members of the agency testified that they thought homosexuality was a sin. According to the Court, "This testimony demonstrates that the driving force behind adoption of the regulation was not to promote the health, safety, and welfare of foster children, but rather based upon the Board's views of morality and its bias against homosexuals."
APA Brief Based On Questionable Sources And Studies
The American Psychological Association brief filed in December, 2005, presented evidence ostensibly showing that gay couples are no different than heterosexual couples in how they rear children and how children respond in gay homes.
The APA claims that its brief "has been guided solely by criteria relating to the scientific rigor and reliability of studies and literature, not by whether a given study supports or undermines a particular conclusion.
According to the APA, "Scientific research has firmly established that homosexuality is not a disorder or disease, but rather a normal variant of human sexual orientation. The vast majority of gay and lesbian individuals lead happy, healthy, well-adjusted and productive lives."
The APA asserted that the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders after APA officials reviewed the research funded by the National Institute of Mental Health. According to the APA, "That study and subsequent research consistently failed to provide any empirical or scientific basis for regarding homosexuality as a disorder or abnormality, rather a normal and healthy sexual orientation."
The NIMH study, which was not named in the amicus, was produced by psychologist Evelyn Hooker who headed up the NIMH Task Force on Homosexuality. Hooker had produced a flawed study in 1957 that claimed to have discovered that homosexuals were no different than heterosexuals in their mental functioning. The NIMH study, published in 1969, claimed that any homosexual suffering was produced by societal prejudice.
Hooker's study and other questionable research studies are included in the APA brief. This tactic of using biased studies, misrepresenting the findings of other studies, and ignoring studies that have found the opposite results, are standard practices in gay-affirming legal briefs.
Dr. Jeffrey Satinover, M.S., M.D., writing in "The Trojan Couch: How the Mental Health Guilds Allow Medical Diagnostics, Scientific Research and Jurisprudence to be Subverted in Lockstep with the Political Aims of their Gay Sub-Components" describes Hooker's work and others who are routinely quoted in gay-affirmative legal briefs.
Satinover analyzed Hooker's original work and has concluded that she "failed to follow even the most basic tenets of the scientific method." She deliberately chose participants who understood what the survey was all about--that it was a politically motivated study designed to change cultural attitudes toward homosexuals. Not only did Hooker carefully select the participants in her study, but screened out anyone who might have mental problems. In addition, according to Satinover, "Hooker did not even maintain the initial experimental procedure she designed herself but altered it when her test (homosexual) group actually disproved her hypothesis and did display a difference she hypothesized wouldn't exist."
She admitted many years later: "I knew the men for whom the ratings were made, and I was certain as a clinician that they were relatively free of psychopathology."
Another Biased Researcher
One lesbian researcher whose work was reference in the APA brief, but not directly quoted, is Charlotte Patterson, who heads the American Psychological Association's Division 44, the Society for the Psychological Study of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Issues.
Patterson's work has come into question over her own gay activism, her use of her lesbian friends as subjects for her research and her use of bogus statistics on the numbers of children in gay households.
Dr. A. Dean Byrd, writing in "When Activism Masquerades As Science: Potential Consequences Of Recent APA Resolutions," points out that Patterson's biased research was actually tossed out of court in Florida after she refused to turn over copies of her research documentation to her own attorneys.
The APA legal brief also references the work of J. Stacey and T.J. Biblarz, (How Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?" The APA reported that this survey of peer-reviewed research "reported no differences between children raised by lesbians and those raised by heterosexuals with respect to the factors that matter: self-esteem, anxiety, depression, behavioral problems, ..."
The APA misrepresented the work of Stacey and Biblarz by using the words "factors that matter" and left out troubling differences in children reared in lesbian households compared to children reared in heterosexual homes.
Dr. A. Dean Byrd, writing in "Gender Complementarity And Child Rearing: Where Tradition And Science Agree" outlined the findings of Stacey and Biblarz:
Perhaps the most significant study to be published within last few years came from Stacy and Biblarz (2001). Stacy, the former Streisand Chair of Gender Studies at the University of Southern California and currently at New York University, conducted a meta-analysis that contradicted nearly 20 years of studies indicating that there were no differences between children reared by heterosexual versus homosexual couples. The findings of these authors include:
*Based on sex-typed cultural norms, daughters of lesbian mothers when compared with daughters of heterosexual mothers more frequently dress, play and behave in gender non-conforming ways.
* Sons of lesbian mothers behave in less traditionally masculine ways in terms of aggression and play. They are more apt to be more nurturing and affectionate than their counterparts in heterosexual families.
* One of the studies indicates that a significantly greater proportion of young adult children raised by lesbians had engaged in homosexual behavior (six of 25) when compared with those raised heterosexual mothers (none of the 20).
* Children reared by lesbian mothers are more likely to consider a homosexual relationship.
* Teenage and young adult girls reared by lesbian mothers were more sexually adventurous and less chaste than girls reared by heterosexual mothers. Sons were less sexually adventurous and more chaste than boys reared by heterosexual mothers.
These differences are certainly "factors" that should matter to those in authority who are tasked with placing children in foster homes.
Dr. Byrd also points out the wide range of unhealthful sexual practices in gay households as well as high rates of domestic violence, substance abuse, and mental disorders. Dr. Rekers' paper points out the same well-documented problems as does Dr. Satinover's paper.
The bottom line in the Arkansas Supreme Court decision on gay foster parenting is this: 1. The Court was given badly flawed data from the APA and other gay-affirmative organizations. 2. The Court did not see the credible evidence that gay behaviors place children at significant risk for domestic violence, promiscuous sexuality, negative behavioral changes, and exposure to substance abuse.
Additional Reading: Parenting and Family.
Updated: 2 September 2008
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