As Maura Keaney writes on Democracy for Virginia, Del. Dick Black’s evil anti-gay-adoption bill was burned, stomped, and pissed on for good measure by the Virginia Senate yesterday. As every reputable study has ever shown (and as summed up by the American Psychological Association), there is absolutely no difference between children raised by straight couples and children raised by gay couples.
Of course, Del. Dick Black is a lunatic, so to support his extreme anti-family agenda, he could only round up one guy: Paul Cameron. Writes The Daily Press:
The most hostile attacks during an hourlong hearing were levied at Black’s main witness – the author of a highly criticized study that purports to show that gays and lesbians are 34 percent more likely to molest their adopted children than are straight parents.
The author of that study, Paul Cameron, who bills himself as a sociologist, also told the committee that gays and lesbians are more likely to die younger, most around age 50, and that’s not good for any children they adopt.
On questioning, Cameron admitted his life-span analysis was based on reading the obituary pages of the Washington Blade, a gay and lesbian newspaper, and that his molestation statistics had been dismissed by some sociologists as scientifically suspect, based on numerous errors.
He also admitted, under harsh questioning by Howell, that he was kicked out of the American Psychological Association on ethics charges in 1983, and that in 1986 the American Sociological Association passed a resolution denying that Cameron was a sociologist and condemning his “consistent misrepresentation of sociological research.”
Dick Black is an incorrigible liar, worse that Cameron, willing to make up anything that suits his agenda. For anybody of sound mind, this hearing would have been a terrible, terrible embarrassment from which it would be difficult to recover. For Dick Black, it’s just another day at the office.