You can get the article most places, and I even found the exact bill (it's SB 6) on the Texas legislature website, but it was a lot of gibberish I didn't have time to wade through.
What does everyone think of this?
Apparently, much of the proof of this is based on 'research' done in Illinois, that has since proven to be a compilation of information from unverifiable web sites. This research said that kids in homosexual foster care homes were 11 times more likely to be abused. (That part I got from the Daily Show).
I don't know. I don't believe that statistic, or at least I'd want to see the sources to verify it for myself. It's not only discrimination, it's stupid to cut off a viable support system for children escaping bad living situations. And especially so since many male/female home situations also result in sexual abuse.
Furthermore, there is a provision in the bill that allows the family services people check into your background to make sure you aren't lying about your sexuality. This seems an overstepping of their invasion of privacy. A certain amount is warranted, they need to make sure it's a fit home for a child, but your sexual history? Seems over the top, and overly invasive.
My concern is more the safety of those kids than gay rights. Don't get me wrong, gay rights are important, and I believe they should be equal. But I'd need to see more statistics and reports from both sides to come up with a more informed decision.
Edit to add: I searched for this post on Hatrack and couldn't find it. If there is one already started, just point me in its direction so I can kill this thread.
quote:This research said that kids in homosexual foster care homes were 11 times more likely to be abused.
If that were an even remotely justifiable statement, Focus on the Family and like groups would be shouting from the rooftops. I think I'll hold onto my extreme skepticism.
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Given that all the research I've seen refutes that statistic, I'd be incredibly surprised if it were remotely accurate.
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Depressing, as there are not enough foster homes as it is. They should screen each home carefully, but overlook homosexuality I think.
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I think that the Texas system is looking for "quick fix" reforms, and that's not a good thing. It's a very poor foster care system, they should be focusing on other things. I do not advocate a homosexual lifestyle. In fact, I think it's wrong. But there are far too many children in desperate need of any kind of decent home that it's abhorrently immoral to allow any couples, regardless of orientation, to be excluded from providing an otherwise stable, caring, safe home environment, when so many children are in bad, bad situations in foster homes, and so many more are in need of homes, period.
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quote: The prospective foster/adoptive parents may be single or married and must:
* be at least 21 years of age, financially stable, and responsible mature adults, * complete an application (staff will assist you, if you prefer), * share information regarding their background and lifestyle, * provide relative and non-relative references, * show proof of marriage and/or divorce, * agree to a home study which includes visits with all household members, * allow staff to complete a criminal history background check and an abuse/neglect check on all adults in the household, and * attend free training to learn about issues of abused and neglected children.
These requirements seem rather lax and adding sexual orientation to the list appears out of place. It seems like information into the stability of a person's sex life would be relevant in assessing the potential for abuse. However, discriminating simply based on sexual preference is blatant prejudice.
posted
Ah, but you're missing the obvious fact that the presence of homosexuality, deviant sexual practices, or even excess gromming products in male bathrooms automatically indicates abuse, promiscuity, and that other icky stuff. You have to start with that assumption or none of this makes sense.
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Should this law pass, it is a sad day in these United States...where people finally are guilty until proven innocent...and guilty on BS "evidence"...
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Amanecer, the thing is that many of those rules are not followed. I've heard several times that parents went to take the training, only to find it was not currently being offered more than twice a year due to budget issues in their area; you can get provisional permission to be a foster parent before an adequate home study is done, and sometimes that can be up to a year. There is a huge social worker shortage right now, and even though they do their best, their caseloads are far too heavy. There have been several cases lately of children dying in abusive situations whose social workers did not check up on them or did not respond to calls.
Because they may confuse the child about "appropriate sex roles."
Since society and peers have no influence, and since all historically mandated sex roles are always good.
What is the harm in that?
The children may try the gay lifestyle.
Unless they are not gay and have been raised with a sense of responsibility towards themselves and others. If they are gay and have raised in such a manner then I'd expect they would try the "lifestyle," whatever that is.
What is the harm in that?
If they become gay they can not have children of their own.
True. Unless they also foster/adopt, as their parents did. Or unless they have children from a previous marriage. Or unless they use artificial insemination and/or a host mother, depending on their needs.
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What they need is more foster parents, more good people willing to take children in, more social workers to screen the parents, but NOT based on something as arbitrary as sexual orientation, or if they are single or anything ridiculous like that. By focusing exclusively on homosexuality they over look other problems and it's how you end up with situations like the one that happened to a young boy a few months ago.
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The gist of the evidence of these Illinois studies are (as I understand them) this: some foster parents abuse children in their charge. Male foster parents sexually abuse male charges 11% of the time. Therefore, abusers are gay, and gay people are abusers, and bad potential parents.
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Wow, that "understanding" from the study should be really easy to refute if it collected, oh, any other evidence whatsoever. Got a link, even to something that names the study, I don't suppose?
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The study itself appeared in Psychological Reports, which isn't readily available online. Here is a conservative news article on World Net Daily quoting the study which is what I'm basing my understanding on.
Here is the text of it:
quote:A six-year study of sexual abuse committed by foster parents in Illinois found a highly disproportionate percentage of the cases were homosexual in nature.
About one-third were same-sex while estimates are that no more than 3 percent of people in the general population say they engage in homosexual acts.
An article in the March issue of the peer-reviewed publication Psychological Reports presented data analyzed by Dr. Paul Cameron, chairman of the Colorado-based Family Research Institute.
Cameron believes it's likely the Illinois figures reflect the situation among the nation's estimated half-million foster children.
"What's shocking, is that 34 percent of the molestations were homosexual," Cameron told the Illinois Leader.
According to a DCFS spokeswoman, the agency does not track the sexual orientation of prospective foster or adoptive parents.
"We track our foster and adoptive parents on the basis of their being single or married. That's it," Marjorie Newman told the paper last year.
The agency would not say whether the information would lead to a change in policy.
The study showed 1 percent of Illinois foster and subsidized-adoption children are molested and 3 percent are abused physically every year.
"Professional societies are so taken with gay rights they are ignoring the evidence," said Cameron. "Just last year, the American Psychological Association [APA] declared opposition to 'discrimination against lesbian or gay parents adoption, child custody and visitation, foster care and reproductive health services.'"
Cameron added, "How does the APA answer this new evidence?"
Last year, Newman said the DCFS does not "discriminate based on gender, race, sexual orientation, sexual preference. There is no law that says that a gay or lesbian person cannot adopt."
The Leader acquired information from DCFS through the Freedom of Information Act indicating most sexual abuse of children was by foster fathers, but that foster mothers were responsible for over three-fourths of physical abuse.
The study found 966 foster parents violated their charges. Of those who engaged in both physical and sexual abuse, eight of the 15 abused children of their own sex.
Cameron said Illinois, which has about 60,000 children in 4,300 foster or adoption-subsidized homes, was the first state to disclose details about abuse.
Based on that, it's clear that self-definition as a gay person is not how they're deciding whether a person counts as gay. If you're male and have molested boy-children, then you're gay, even if your adult-adult relationships are heterosexual. This seems to me like an entirely self-referential way to decide gay-ness.
In other words:
Some males choose to molest boy-children. We'll call these people (for lack of a better term) gays. Some adult males prefer to partner with other adult males. They call themselves gay. Therefore people of this latter category, given the opportunity, would molest boy-children. Therefore all adult males who would choose to partner with other adult males may not have access to children.
You could just as easily do it with heterosexual adults-- if eight of fifteen molesters molested people of their same gender, then that means that seven of fifteen molested people of the opposite gender! Therefore straights are molesters!
[ May 03, 2005, 02:10 PM: Message edited by: dean ]
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quote: We'll call these people (for lack of a better term) gays.
Yeah, so sad to see so many failing to notice that particular flaw in the study. You can make statistics say anything you want pretty easily when you're willing to make nonsensical definitions into conclusions.
There is a better term: male-male molesters. But how silly of me to expect accurate descriptive terminology from a study with a forgone conclusion.
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quote: There is a huge social worker shortage right now, and even though they do their best, their caseloads are far too heavy. There have been several cases lately of children dying in abusive situations whose social workers did not check up on them or did not respond to calls.
posted
Psychological Reports (which, incidentally, I've never heard of) doesn't have e-resources available, so I can't speak to the actual article. However, I can tell you that it's not a APA journal, and that it's one of two journals published by Ammons Scientific. I have no idea what they consider peer-review, but if the article actually uses that argument as pertaining to homosexuals, it can't be all that reputable.
Dr. Cameron has apparently been censured and thrown out of the APA and the ASA for ethical violations concerning his history of fabricating and putting unjustifiable conclusions on evidence.
The APA resolution that was mentioned by the WorldNetDaily article above was one condemning the prejudicial treatment of homosexuals in adoption and foster parent decisions based largely on falsified and/or methodologically and ethically unsound research. It was the APA finding that reputable research did not exist in anywhere near sufficient levels to justify this treatment.
But I mean, if you don't let them make their evidence up, where are they going to get it?
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I'm wondering: does anyone dispute that these people are, by any reasonable definition, bigots?
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This makes me so mad. I've seen firsthand the problems a shortage of foster care creates, and I'm aware of the situation for foster children in TX, and it just makes me want to scream that they're excluding qualified foster parents on the basis of sexual preference or orientation.
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