Dobson Twists Research -- Researchers Cry Foul

Mary Cheney's pregnant.
Those words are enough to send christian conservative leaders into
apoplectic fits. As the openly lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick
Cheney, Mary's bad enough all on her lonesome. But now that she wants
to start a family with partner Heather Poe, she's positively evil.

For
the life of me, I can't figure out gay Republicans like Cheney. With
gay bashing a party cornerstone, Mary Cheney and groups like the Log Cabin Republicans
are pretty hard to understand. You'd think they'd be Libertarian or
something. But Mary sold out a long time ago -- becoming a PR flack and
token lesbian for the brewer Adolph Coors. The Coors family are
intolerant lunatics, but they still wanted to sell beer to gays, who
they'd turned off with Coors' association with antigay hate groups. To
give you an idea how nuts these people are, William Coors once told an african american audience, "...one of the best things they [slave traders] did for you is to drag your ancestors over here in chains." Sweet fella.

So,
you'd imagine she's used to this kind of crap and took it into account
in her decision to start a family. But other people aren't as lucky and
the haters are using her to attack all lesbian and gay families. In a guest column for TIME titled. 'Two Mommies Is One Too Many,'
the evangelical leader James Dobson did just that. In that piece,
Dobson called on findings by Dr. Kyle Pruett and educational
psychologist Carol Gilligan. Here's the relevant snippet of BS:

...The
fact remains that gender matters--perhaps nowhere more than in regard
to child rearing. The unique value of fathers has been explained by Dr.
Kyle Pruett of Yale Medical School in his book Fatherneed: Why Father
Care Is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child. Pruett says dads
are critically important simply because "fathers do not mother."
Psychology Today explained in 1996 that "fatherhood turns out to be a
complex and unique phenomenon with huge consequences for the emotional
and intellectual growth of children." A father, as a male parent, makes
unique contributions to the task of parenting that a mother cannot
emulate, and vice versa.

According to educational psychologist
Carol Gilligan, mothers tend to stress sympathy, grace and care to
their children, while fathers accent justice, fairness and duty. Moms
give a child a sense of hopefulness; dads provide a sense of right and
wrong and its consequences. Other researchers have determined that boys
are not born with an understanding of "maleness." They have to learn
it, ideally from their fathers.

And that's when
Dobson's argument hit the fan. Both Gilligan and Pruett denounced his
citation of their work as distortion and have asked Dobson to never
refer to their findings again. The first was Gilligan.

Truth Wins OUT:

Dear Dr. Dobson:

I
am writing to ask that you cease and desist from quoting my research in
the future. I was mortified to learn that you had distorted my work
this week in a guest column you wrote in Time Magazine. Not only did
you take my research out of context, you did so without my knowledge to
support discriminatory goals that I do not agree with. What you wrote
was not truthful and I ask that you refrain from ever quoting me again
and that you apologize for twisting my work.

Then, Pruett joined in the fun:

Dr.
Dobson, I was startled and disappointed to see my work referenced in
the current Time Magazine piece in which you opined that social
science, such as mine, supports your convictions opposing lesbian and
gay parenthood. I write now to insist that you not quote from my
research in your media campaigns, personal or corporate, without
previously securing my permission. You cherry-picked a phrase to shore
up highly (in my view) discriminatory purposes. This practice is
condemned in real science, common though it may be in pseudo-science
circles. There is nothing in my longitudinal research or any of my
writings to support such conclusions. On page 134 of the book you cite
in your piece, I wrote, “What we do know is that there is no reason for
concern about the development or psychological competence of children
living with gay fathers. It is love that binds relationships, not sex.”
Kyle Pruett, M.D. Yale School of Medicine

Oops! Not so ethical. Dobson's a licensed psychologist,
so he knows better. His distortion of the two works is deliberate. He's
using it to lie. "James Dobson should start to wonder if there is
something inherently wrong with his stance on gay issues if the only
way he can support his positions is outright lying," says Wayne Besen,
Executive Director of Truth Wins OUT, a group that counters antigay
propaganda.

"[T]here is nothing in my research that would lead
you to draw the stated conclusions you did in the Time article,"
Gilligan wrote. "My work in no way suggests same-gender families are
harmful to children or can’t raise these children to be as healthy and
well adjusted as those brought up in traditional households."

"I trust that this will be the last time my work is cited by Focus on the Family," her letter closes.

I
wouldn't count on it, Carol -- dishonesty's a major weapon in the holy
warrior's arsenal. Dobson and company believe they are literally
fighting the devil. When you're fighting the greatest evil in the
universe, ethics don't matter, honesty is irrelevant, and justice is
the concern only of God. Asking Dobson to stop lying and accept reality
is asking him to cave in to Satan. If you think your enemy is literally
the devil, you're going to fight dirty.

Asking Dobson to worry about professional ethics is useless.