posted
dabbler, Oh no, I do agree with statistics being good as a guide but not as a determiner. As for a 7% difference, it would depend, for me, as to how solid (i.e. how much variability there was) this number was. If, in the hypothetic case, there was no deviation in this number (i.e. the members of the one population are always, in each individual case, 7% better than the members of the other) then, yeah, I'd establish that as a good determing factor. A flat difference has to be fleshed out with degrees of error and variation before you could actually use it, but if there were no error or variation (and this never happens in real life) then even a small difference is something that could be relied on.
edit: You may be getting that I'm very dry when takling about theoretical stuff. That's how I was taught. Real world application is quite different, but I'm a big believer in passionless rigor when it comes to theoeretical and experimental analysis (witness the homophobia thing). It makes my writing about stuff like that boring as all get out, unfortunately.
posted
And I'll answer my own question the best I can. All things being equal, two qualified couples that differ by sexual orientation or by race,
1) If the child's old enough, the child decides. 2) Flip a coin?? 3) Try to determine which couple gets this child based on their interests in the kind of child to adopt, then fit the next appropriate child to the other couple. After all, they're both quite capable sets of parents. If there's a queue, Couple A and Couple B are one right after the other.
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posted
The problem with statistics is that it's impersonal. It doesn't take into account the knowledge you've already gathered on this couple. What they do is derive data from a pool of people who are presumably reasonably similar to another pool of people except for your topic of interest. But that pool of people isn't the couple you have standing in front of you, who has already proven themselves quite capable and loving.
I don't think it's been proven that if you take two pools of well qualified and practically identical couples (minus topic of interest) that one sexual orientation, or ethnicity, or hair color will have significant difference from the other.
That couple stands outside the statistics.
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posted
The problem with personal knowledge is that it is so very often wrong. When talking average cases, statistical reasoning is usually going to give you a better result. I'm not saying that each individual case shouldn't be weighed on it's specific merits, but that statistical reason is almost necessary when talking about often-made, time constrained decisions and is a useful check on the bias and incomplete issues of using personal knowledge. That isn't to say that there are important issues of false positives and negatives. Acknowledgemet of these are built into statistical analysis and hopefully combining it with personal information will help reduce these errors.
In this case, the statistical analysis is saying that there is no reason to deny homosexual couples the ability to adopt based on them being homosexual, while if people were unconstrained by this, many many of them would want to deny homosexuals this ability because they "know" that it would be bad for the child.
posted
I can guarantee that the divorce rates are actually MUCH higher for heterosexual couples than for gay couples. *delicately places finger beside nose*
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