Posted on 07/09/2006 10:21:53 AM PDT by DBeers
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa - Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is optimistic the Legislature quickly will reinstate a ban on same-sex couples serving as foster parents in his state.
"What we are talking about is whether the state should place a child in a relationship that is not recognized by the state as a marriage," the Republican governor, a potential presidential candidate in 2008, told The Associated Press on Saturday.
The Arkansas Supreme Court last month struck down regulations banning the placement of foster children with same sex couples. The court said state officials went too far in imposing the ban, but the court did not rule on the merit of the ban.
Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister who is leaving office in 2007 because of term limits, has said there is little doubt the Legislature will reinstate the ban and that the courts eventually will uphold it.
"Our attorneys read into that that if it was legislation it would likely stand, that we could in fact say that only married couples could be foster parents," Huckabee said. "We think that if we go back and codify that into law that probably takes care of it."
Huckabee said the Arkansas dispute had nothing to do with the welfare of children.
"What I feared was going on was that the plaintiffs in this case were not as interested in foster children as they were in making the political point of homosexual activism," Huckabee said. "That's troubling, that we would use children as a political tool to enact something that has nothing to do with the best interest of a foster child."
Huckabee spoke as he opened a three-day campaign swing in Iowa, where precinct caucuses traditionally launch the presidential nominating season.
The governor is testing the waters for a possible White House run. Religious conservatives are an important force in Iowa's Republican politics and Huckabee's view would be favorably received by that group.
He said his religious and moral views have shaped his approach to the issue, a view he said is shared overwhelmingly in his home state.
"Marriage has historically never meant anything other than a man and a woman. It has never meant two men, two women, a man and his pet, or a man and a whole herd of pets," he said.
Huckabee said activists "want to change rules that have been in place for thousands of years."
"What I feared was going on was that the plaintiffs in this case were not as interested in foster children as they were in making the political point of homosexual activism," Huckabee said. "That's troubling, that we would use children as a political tool to enact something that has nothing to do with the best interest of a foster child."
-a political tool fueled with propaganda and fabricated research:
No Basis: What the Studies Dont Tell Us About Same-Sex Parenting
A 129 page Adobe Acrobat document:
Executive Summary
It is routinely asserted in courts, journals and the media that it makes no difference whether a child has a mother and a father, two fathers, or two mothers. Reference is often made to social-scientific studies that are claimed to have demonstrated this.
An objective analysis, however, demonstrates that there is no basis for this assertion. The studies on which such claims are based are all gravely deficient.
Robert Lerner, Ph.D., and Althea Nagai, Ph.D., professionals in the field of quantitative analysis, evaluated 49 empirical studies on same-sex (or homosexual) parenting.
The evaluation looks at how each study carries out six key research tasks: (1) formulating a hypothesis and research design; (2) controlling for unrelated effects; (3) measuring concepts (bias, reliability and validity); (4) sampling; (5) statistical testing; and (6) addressing the problem of false negatives (statistical power).
Each chapter of the evaluation describes and evaluates how the studies utilized one of these research steps. Along the way, Lerner and Nagai offer pointers for how future studies can be more competently done. Some major problems uncovered in the studies include the following:
- Unclear hypotheses and research designs
- Missing or inadequate comparison groups
- Self-constructed, unreliable and invalid measurements
- Non-random samples, including participants who recruit other participants
- Samples too small to yield meaningful results
- Missing or inadequate statistical analysis
Lerner and Nagai found at least one fatal research flaw in all fortynine studies. As a result, they conclude that no generalizations can reliably be made based on any of these studies. For these reasons the studies are no basis for good science or good public policy.
Four Appendices follow. Appendix 1 is a bibliography of the studies and related publications. Appendix 2 is a table that summarizes the evaluation of each of the studies with regard to each research step. Appendix 3 (by William C. Duncan) is an overview of how these studies have been used in the law. Appendix 4 (by Kristina Mirus) describes how the media has covered these studies.
Homosexual Urban Legends
Exposed: Homosexual Child Molesters
EXCERPT:
Homosexuals claim that heterosexuals molest most children but statistics show that homosexuals molest at far higher rates than do heterosexuals.
Homosexual Predation
Child Molestation and Homosexuality
EXCERPT:
Summary
Whether examining surveys of the general populace or counts of those caught, homosexual teachers are disproportionately apt to become sexually involved with children.
Proportionality: The Key
Study after nationwide study (3) has yielded estimates of male homosexuality that range between 1% and 3%. The proportion of lesbians in these studies is almost always lower, usually about half that of gays. So, overall, perhaps 2% of adults regularly indulge in homosexuality. Yet they account for between 20% to 40% of all molestations of children.
Child molestation is not to be taken lightly. Officials at a facility which serves about 1,500 runaway youngsters each year estimate that about half of the boys have been homosexually abused and 90% of the girls heterosexually assaulted. (27) Investigation of those suffering severe chronic mental illness implicates child molestation as a primary cause (45% of Bigras et als (28) patients were homosexually abused).
If 2% of the population is responsible for 20% to 40% of something as socially and personally troubling as child molestation, something must be desperately wrong with that 2%. Not every homosexual is a child molester. But enough gays do molest children so that the risk of a homosexual molesting a child is 10 to 20 times greater than that of a heterosexual.
Thank you for broadcasting the truth.
Maybe we can coin a term to describe such activity in regard to the homosexual disorder -- Parkering?
;-)
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