It is the business he is in. Therefore it is a perfect choice. He also spent a lot of time on radio and TV as a political commentator.
Yup. Striking down DOMA would open the doors to more gay marriages. Per that study, kids generally do best in a family with married parents. FotF essentially want to deny some kids that by ensuring their parents cannot legally marry.
Nobody’s calling for ridicule. I don’t disagree that the FotF hacks are completely full of it. It would have been better ownage if the definition of “nuclear family” didn’t almost entirely exclude gays by requiring that the pair be married.
So all we know is married couples are good for kids. Married couples are typically straight, far more straight than non-married couples for obvious reasons. What I would have liked to see was that the cited study showed that there is no distinction between the wellbeing of children raised by straight or gay couples. Instead, we got a study saying “Here’s this group of people, who are almost exclusively straight, and we’ve made no attempt to further scrutinize or compare the rare exceptions who are not, that are good for raising children.” Okay. So FotF stated they had a study that claimed men and women couples raised healthier children, but the actual claim is a certain type of couple, which is almost always comprised of men and women and only very occasionally not, are good for raising children.
FotF presented a poor argument not supported by evidence, but major smackdownage, as much as I would have liked it to be, it was not.
But that’s the whole point. It’s a strong argument for allowing gays to marry (since the document presents that married couples–opposite gender or not–are better parents), and not at all an argument that gays shouldn’t marry, which is what FoF tried to say it was.
The debate is about allowing gays to marry. Franken turned the major piece of evidence FoF used to say “no” into a strong argument for “yes, they should be allowed.”
Shakes head.
So, what were you looking for, exactly? Evidence that shows gays can be excellent parents regardless of being married? Since these are DOMA removal hearings, it seems to me that anything which strengthens the argument against DOMA and for gay marriage is a good thing. That is what Franken accomplished.
barney frank is one of the best “off the cuff” people. he is fast and so very quotable. i love the guy.
No it isn’t. It says that married couples - opposite gender AND not - are better parents. If we want to know if married couples - opposite gender OR not - are better parents we need to compare each group individually, not as a whole.
I agree that the report does not support FoF’s position, but it doesn’t really refute it either.
From the soundbites we heard of the study, it says that MARRIAGE and a legal relationship between all household members leads to better outcomes for children. It certainly does refute FoFs position, which is that gay marriage harms children. Why would cohabitating but not married straight couples have a detrimental effect on the children, but cohabitating but not married gay couples be better for the children?
I guess it is easy for different people to watch the video and see different things. I watched it, and saw Franken shut down a witness who either made large assumptions and called them “facts” or just knowingly misreported the content of the study. Paul stanley, apparently, saw a bully (or liar, since the article below says the study did not define nuclear family). And Yes, its the paul stanley who resigned because of an affair with an intern, not the member of KISS.
Thanks. That’s what I was going to say, but in a lengthy and unclear fashion. Upon preview I realized you said it better, so in the can goes the rambling nonsense.
I already told you it would have been nice if to see something making clear there is no difference between the wellbeing of children raised by heterosexual and homosexual couples, as their point seemed to be that there was, and that hetero couples were more beneficial to the child.
According to the politico.com, the lead author of the study says that homosexual couples were not excluded from the definition or from the study.
Franken spars with hearing witness - POLITICO
I can’t think of a good reason, but the fact still remains that without looking at same sex and opposite sex families separately the study neither proves nor disproves any posited difference between them.
But FoF’s point was refuted, in that the major piece of evidence they used to support their position (opposite-sex couples are better for raising children than same sex) was shown to do nothing of the sort.
Look, here’s the argument Leahy and Franken (among others) were trying to build that is pertinent to the OP, and it is one of the important arguments against DOMA: marriage (including same-sex married couples) is better for children. There is no evidence that same-sex couples are inherently worse parents than opposite sex. Therefore, it is wrong for society to deny same-sex couples the possibility of marriage.
(Of course there are also other important arguments against DOMA, such as regarding taxes, estates, hospital and health issues, etc.)
Franken’s having embarrassed the FoF witness was an important component of building the argument that marriage is better for kids and should include same-sex couples. I honestly think asking for more from this single moment is quite unrealistic. The OP is “Franken pwns Focus on the Family.” Which he did. He did not thereby also win the day for defeating DOMA; that will take more time. But the FoF witness was thoroughly discredited, a very good thing in the long run.
Perhaps not, but part of Franken’s point is, any difference between same-sex and opposite-sex legal marriages is not the relevant factor in the argument.
Focus on the Family is arguing that the report says that being raised in a household with a legally married father and mother is the best situation for a child. Franken points out that what the report really says is that the relevant factor is that the two parents are legally married, not that they’re of opposite gender. Since Focus on the Family purports to be concerned with the best outcomes for children, then according to that report, they should very much be in favor of legal gay marriages, not against; by denying same sex parents the ability to be legally married and/or legally adopt their children they deny those children all the safeguards they so fervently touted in their own testimony that Franken reads at the beginning of the clip. The fact that they’re trying to use that very study to support their position against gay marriage indicates that they’re either too stupid to read properly or are willing to lie or obfuscate evidence not because they actually want the best for children but because hmm, maybe their real agenda is they just don’t like those gays. Pwnage, IMHO.
I think your point of confusion is you are hung up on the gay parent thing. The hearings aren’t about gay parenting. They are about gay marriage. The study wasn’t about the differences between gay parents and straight parents. The study was about legally bonded parents (married) versus not-legally bound parents (unmarried).
FoF tried to use the study to support their case when the actual study makes no differentiation between a gay family and a straight family. In other words, the conclusions about marriage strengthening a family apply to both straight parent families and gay parent families. (i.e., marriage good)
If the hearings were about gay adoption or something like that then I would agree with you and acknowledge that it would have been nice if they pulled a study that discussed gay parenting versus straight parenting. But the issue is marriage.
Certainly. But I doubt that this pwnage is not going to force them to admit such a thing. They will continue to claim to be pro-child, and people will believe them.
Nothing short of waterboarding will get them to admit such a thing. And that would be unethical.
The battle over gay marriage is being won by the left - its slow (faster than I’d have thought), but there is definite progress being made. I don’t think it will be won with these particular Senate hearings or this bill - this is a skirmish - they don’t even intend to make this one a battle - not with a GOP controlled house. It is not being won by changing the minds of people on either the far right or the far left. Its being won in the middle. And its won in the middle because some reasonable person in the middle will say to another reasonable person in the middle “hey, that study doesn’t say what you think it says - it says marriage is better for kids, and doesn’t define marriage as between a man and a woman” - or similar discussions on similar topics hundreds of thousands of times.
Franken did his job and read the report. That was why he was able to dispute the conclusions of the witness who was claiming the report said something it did not. He did his job and all citizens should love that.
Yes, and it’s pretty exciting to watch. I think that an end to homophobia is an inevitability, and I’m betting that I’m going to witness it in my lifetime.
I’m not confused, and no I’m not.
I know that.
I know that.
The hearings were about gay marriage, but part of FotF’s reasons for supporting DOMA was a study they alleged claimed (but didn’t actually) that straight couples make better parents. Now whether or not it makes sense to talk about parenting advantages of married couples in this discussion isn’t my problem, but that’s what happened.
Look, look, look. I get it. The discussion was about whether or not we need to defend marriage from teh gay. FotF says yes, and as evidence points to a study that shows opposite-sex marriages are beneficial for raising children. Franken points out, uh no, it says marriages are beneficial for raising children, but doesn’t actually say what they want it to say, which is opposite sex marriages are helpful in a way that same sex ones are not. It just points to nuclear families, who are defined as married, as being a good thing and that’s it.
This is not that big of a deal to me. The study doesn’t prove that gay couples are worse for raising children like FotF pretended it did, but it doesn’t attempt to. It just evaluates the merits of children being raised by married couples. The problem is married couples are straight almost exclusively, so when you lump together all married couples when attempting to distinguish between gay and straight, you fail. Even if all gay married couples were worse than Hitler, they’re such a tiny percentage that they’d make no difference on the overall positives linked to the children married couples. With the couples’ sexual orientation left unaddressed, you’ve got nothing about the differences between gay and straight.
That was my best take away from that clip. Franken actually did his homework (or had aides that did), enough for Franken to be knowledgable about the discussion. I wish more of our elected officials would bother to learn about something before they opened their mouths.