"Compelling" Evidence

I was reading an article by George A. Rekers, Ph. D. in St. Thomas L. Rev. entitled "An Empirically-Supported Rational Basis for Prohibiting Adoption, Foster Parenting, and Contested Child Custody by Any Person Residing in a Household That Includes a Homosexually-Behaving Member." I thought one of the most compelling findings he presented against homosexually-behaving parents was as follows:

In 2001, from a country long-recognized for its more tolerant acceptance of homosexuality, Theodorus Sandfort and colleagues published a study of a representative sample of the Dutch population (N=7076; aged 18-64 years), in which 5998 subjects could be classified as heterosexual or homosexual based on reported sexual behavior in the preceding year. 2.8% of men and 1.4% of women had same-sex partners. Reporting twelve-month prevalence rates, 21.1% of heterosexual men and 35.4% of homosexual men had one or more DSM diagnoses, and 22.4% of heterosexual women and 34.9% of homosexual women had one or more DSM diagnoses. Homosexual men had a higher twelve-month prevalence of mood disorders and anxiety disorders than heterosexual men. Homosexual women had a higher twelve-month prevalence of substance use disorders. Reporting life-time prevalence rates, 41.4% of heterosexual men and 56.1% of homosexual men had one or more DSM diagnoses, and 39.1% of heterosexual women and 67.4% of homosexual women had one or more DSM diagnoses. Homosexual women had a higher life-time prevalence rate of mood disorders than heterosexual women.

At first glance, the evidence feels compelling, but I can think of four reasons why the evidence can be thrown out in a discussion of same-sex couples adopting.

1) It's irrelevant. It's irrelevant with regards to whether or not these couples are fit to raise children. The evidence (and subsequent arguments) do not show that couples with DSM disorders are unfit to raise children.

2) It's an argument against disorders. Surely, a couple can be tested for DSM disorders if we're concerned about the mental health and abilities of the parents.

3) It doesn't explore why these disorders came about. Consider the following. All my life, I assume myself to be a male, but one day I make the startling discovery that I'm a female. Couldn't that be cause for exhibiting existential crises and accumulating temporary mental disorders?

4) The mental disorders are undefined in the article. Consider some of the following mental disorders from the DSM-IV*:

• 625.8 Female hypoactive sexual desire disorder due to... [indicate the general medical condition]
• 608.89 Male hypoactive sexual desire disorder due to... [indicate the general medical condition]
• 302.71 Hypoactive sexual desire disorder
• 302.79 Sexual aversion disorder
• 302.72 Female sexual arousal disorder
• 302.72 Male erectile disorder
• 607.84 Male erectile disorder due to... [indicate the general medical condition]
• 302.73 Female orgasmic disorder
• 302.74 Male orgasmic disorder
• 302.75 Premature ejaculation
• 302.76 Dyspareunia (not due to a general medical condition)
• 625.0 Female dyspareunia due to... [indicate the general medical condition]
• 608.89 Male dyspareunia due to... [indicate the general medical condition]
• 306.51 Vaginismus (not due to a general medical condition)
• 625.8 Other female sexual dysfunction due to... [indicate the general medical condition]
• 608.89 Other male sexual dysfunction due to... [indicate the general medical condition]
• Sexual Abuse
  • V61.1 Sexual abuse of adult
  • 995.81 Sexual abuse of adult (if focus of attention is on victim)
  • V61.21 Sexual abuse of child
  • 995.5 Sexual abuse of child (if focus of attention is on victim)

• 302.9 Sexual disorder NOS
• 302.70 Sexual dysfunction NOS

Is it really illogical to presume that homosexuals are more prone to be diagnosed for a DSM-IV disorder if most of the definitions are close to the very definition of homosexuality itself?

While the article does well in controlling for the habitat (in terms of acceptance of homosexuality), it still misleads by failing to give us enough information with regards to why same-sex couples should be barred from adoption, or what disorders were exhibited by homosexual persons.

- - - - - - - - - -

*Codes can be found here.
Incomplete list of disorders presented above can be found here.

Cycles of Cash

Vox Day already had his comments about a certain article (in which he ripped the poor soul apart), but I have something quick to say about it as well.

The article in question criticizes the Austrian economist's view of how the bubble happened and what the US should do now. I really want to zero in on the following that Paul Krugman wrote:

Call it the overinvestment theory of recessions, or "liquidationism," or just call it the "hangover theory." It is the idea that slumps are the price we pay for booms, that the suffering the economy experiences during a recession is a necessary punishment for the excesses of the previous expansion.
[...]
Powerful as these seductions may be, they must be resisted—for the hangover theory is disastrously wrongheaded. Recessions are not necessary consequences of booms. They can and should be fought, not with austerity but with liberality—with policies that encourage people to spend more, not less.

It's funny, and I don't mean to bash on Paul Krugman or anything, but I wonder if he really does have a handle on how Wall Street bubbles are created.

The article I'm taking my ideas from might not be totally correct, but at the same time, it seems to make logical sense.

A bubble is created when investors see something, buy it, and sell it for more. Other investors buy it, turn around, and sell it for more, too. Pretty soon, investors see that the price of the thing is going up, so they too buy the thing, turn around, and sell it for more. At this point in time, it's a big happy party because prices go up as money flies everywhere. One might expect lamp shades to be atop everyone's heads (not just because people seem blind to the inevitable outcome).

However, eventually people find that the prices are too high, or don't think they can turn around and sell the thing for more than they're going to buy it for. Spending slows down. The people who have the things realize that they're not worth as much as the ticket they're holding says they're worth, so they desperately lower their prices in an attempt to get the stuff off their hands. Pretty soon, the party's over, and now all of that borrowed money or those future prospects of selling are gone. Kaput. No more future assets, and the current assets we have are grossly overvalued. That is, until they're reassessed and we realize that we're just trying to pawn off trash.

So yes, Mr. Krugman. It logically follows that recessions follow booms. But doesn't it follow that booms follow recessions as well? Doesn't it follow that we shouldn't tinker with the system, because it will eventually fix itself?

A Poorly Constructed Argument

I was reading an article by Jonathan Curci entitled "The Evolution of the Legal Concepts of “Family” and “Marriage” in the EU Legal System and Its Impact on Society." In the article, Curci argues against same-sex marriages, saying that they will be the downfall of society. In his conclusion, he makes three main points. This is his first point:

This circle can lead to a dysfunctional society. Often it is a dysfunctional heterosexual family that leads to homosexual behaviour. Indeed, scientific evidence demonstrates that a boy's perception that he has been abandoned by his father seems to be one of the factors associated with male attraction and homosexual behaviour. A girl's broken relationship with her father has a direct link to maintaining an intimate and emotional relationship with men. The loss of a father (through divorce) will mean that there is a higher risk of homosexuality. In turn, the legalisation of same-sex marriages means formally accepting most of the negative aspects causing this behaviour and promoting it as a new model (citation omitted).

This is his third point:

A final argument brought up by certain researchers is that a homoparental family model [...] runs counter to the interest of society since it annihilates the difference between sexes. This model is the first step towards a division of humanity into two worlds: one masculine and the other feminine, with no possibility that can recombine. The loss of any contact between a man and a woman may follow. There will be no effort to bridge gender differences since one can please himself staying in his own sexual world.

The funny thing is that he first argues that homosexuality is a result of dysfunctional families and is therefore outside of the person's control. After that, he argues that people -can- choose their sexual orientation and -will- choose it if they don't wish to interact with the opposite sex.

Furthermore, such a contradiction displays a complete lack of understanding in regards to scientific research on homosexuality. Not only has the author contradicted himself (and rather badly, too), but he demonstrates that he really does not peruse scientific articles carefully.

Reviewing Research

I was reading an article published in the Regent University Law Review in favor of traditional marriage type families. One of the arguments was that a father was clearly an important figure for a stable family and a successful child. The articles cited were these:

Econ: Greg J. Duncan et al., Economic Deprivation and Early Childhood Development, 65 Child Dev. 296 (1994); Abbie K. Frost & Bilge Pakiz, The Effects of Marital Disruption on Adolescents: Time as a Dynamic, 60 Am. J. Orthopsychiatry 544 (1990); M. Eileen Matlack et al., Family Correlates of Social Skill Deficits in Incarcerated and Non-incarcerated Adolescents, 29 Adolescence 117 (1994).

Psychology: John Beer, Relation of Divorce to Self-Concepts and Grade Point Averages of Fifth Grade School Children, 65 Psychol. Rep. 104 (1989); Virginia Smith Harvey, Characteristics of Children Referred to School Psychologists: A Discriminant Analysis, 28 Psychol. in Schools 209 (1991); Beverly Raphael et al., The Impact of Parental Loss on Adolescents' Psychological Characteristics, 25 Adolescence.

Education: Paul R. Amato & Bruce Keith, Parental Divorce and Adult Well-being: A Meta Analysis, 53 J. Marriage & The Family 43 (1991); Donna Goldberg et al., Which Newborns in New York City Are at Risk for Special Education Placement?

Emotion: Darin R. Featherstone et al., Differences in School Behavior and Achievement Between Children From Intact, Reconstituted and Single-Parent Families, 27 Adolescence 1 (1992).

Another article I came across was this one, which cited the following:

(Kristin Anderson Moore, et al., “Marriage From a Child’s Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children, and What Can We Do about It?” Child Trends Research Brief (June 2002): 1.)

(Mary Parke, “Are Married Parents Really Better for Children?” Center for Law and Social Policy, Policy Brief (May 2003): 1)

(Ronald P. Rohner and Robert A. Veneziano, “The Importance of Father Love: History and Contemporary Evidence,” Review of General Psychology 5.4 (2001): 382-405)

(Deborah A. Dawson, "Family Structure and Children's Health and Well-being: Data from the National Health Interview Survey on Child Health," Journal of Marriage and the Family, 53 (1991): 573 -584)

(Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, My Brother’s Keeper: What the Social Sciences Do (and Don’t) Tell Us About Masculinity, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2002), p. 121)

(David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage are Indispensable of the Good of Children and Society, (New York: The Free Press, 1996), p. 197)

(Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur, Growing Up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 38)

These were the sources cited. Assuming that the studies were entirely accurate and had no experimental errors, what can we extrapolate from the titles?

Two parents and marital stability are clearly important for a child.

But at this point, one might ask whether a father is clearly important for a child as well.

The answer is that the studies (at least, judging from their names) don't control for that. They don't control for same-sex male parents or same-sex female parents. They control for a "father-like" figure, but why can't a female (who has been married to the wife before the child was born/adopted) become the "father-like" figure?

Granted, I haven't read these studies, but to use these studies to immediately endorse traditional marriages is a practice in gross ignorance.

That's not to say that, were these studies conducted with the proper controls for parents married before the child was born, they would still lack value. That's to say that one should refrain from jumping to heinous conclusions.

Randomness

Below is a response I gave regarding one of the more common arguments I run across in favor of intelligent design:

"The stars, the moon, the sun and the planets, the earth that sits in a perfect distance from the sun and is tilted on it's axis at just the right angle."

I recommend Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book Fooled by Randomness. As Taleb states, if you have enough monkeys on typewriters, one of them is bound to reproduce Shakespeare's works.

So, too, we have an inordinately large number of planets in the universe, and an inordinately large number of stars that these planets revolve around. Randomness suggests that, given enough planets and enough stars, one planet must have had the correct configuration to sustain life.

Rethinking "Immoral" Acts

In his book Logic and Sexual Morality, John Wilson brings up the following:

Yet there is at least one other distinction which is much more important: the distinction between those who believe in what I shall call the fallacy of discrimination and those who do not. The fallacy runs as follows:

(a) x is an activity which can be of great value or significance for human beings;
(b) therefore people ought to use discrimination when they do x;
(c) therefore we must teach them that they should only do x in forms restricted by rules, precepts, principles, or ideals, because otherwise x will become devalued, meaningless, irresponsible, or positively wicked.

The argument in which I have outlined the fallacy contains (at least) one illegitimate move, and one key ambiguity. The illegitimate move is easily seen and dismissed. It does not follow from (b) people ought to use discrimination that (c) we must teach people anything specific. For it is not clear that we know what to teach in all cases, and if anything is a case where we do not know, it is surely sex.

Certainly, some types of behavior might be more valuable than others, but that doesn't mean other kinds of behavior should be -prohibited- or even -discouraged-.

I see eating dinner as valuable when I spend it with all of my friends, cooking it, and cleaning it up afterwards, but I certainly cannot do that every night, otherwise I wouldn't have time to do other things like homework! Are my other dinners less valuable or less meaningful? Sure! But should I say that eating a sandwich by my lonesome is immoral? I should hope not.