DEI's "Psychology" Double-Bind

The NYT has an op-ed today regarding DEI programs -- and in particular, the scant research suggesting that they actually, you know, work.

I'm familiar with some of the research in this area and while I could quibble on the margins, the core point is more or less accurate. There is fairly robust research evidence that establishes implicit bias is prevalent in our society, but there is not much in the way of verifiably effective interventions that combat it. Many DEI programs which purport to address implicit bias and other forms of prejudice are at the very least not proven to actually have an impact on the problem they purport to address. Finding an intervention that reliably and durably alters discriminatory attitudes (particularly implicit ones) is somewhat of a white whale for the social psychology profession. But in the meantime, the lack of evidence that many DEI programs tailored towards altering attitudes are effective suggests that a ton of time and money is being wasted.

Given that, the article makes the following suggestions:

So what does work? Robert Livingston, a lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School who works as both a bias researcher and a diversity consultant, has a simple proposal: “Focus on actions and behaviors rather than hearts and minds.”

Dr. Livingston suggests that it’s more important to accurately diagnose an organization’s specific problems with D.E.I. and to come up with concrete strategies for solving them than it is to attempt to change the attitudes of individual employees. And D.E.I. challenges vary widely from organization to organization: Sometimes the problem has to do with the relationship between white and nonwhite employees, sometimes it has to do with the recruitment or retention of new employees and sometimes it has to do with disparate treatment of customers (think of Black patients prescribed less pain medication than white ones).

The legwork it takes to actually understand and solve these problems isn’t necessarily glamorous. If you want more Black and Latino people in management roles at your large company, that might require gathering data on what percentage of applicants come from these groups, interviewing current Black and Latino managers on whether there are climate issues that could be contributing to the problem and possibly beefing up recruitment efforts at, say, business schools with high percentages of Black and Latino graduates. Even solving this one problem — and it’s a fairly common one — could take hundreds of hours of labor.

I have no intrinsic quarrel with this. Instead of looking for "bad brains" and trying to fix them, focus on tangible actions and outcomes. If your company has too few Black and Latino people in management roles, instead of trying to root out the deep-seated biases in your executives and HR staffers, just get to work directly on the problem.

But this anti-psychology turn is interesting for one particular reason: it flies in the face of the prevailing conservative formulation of what discrimination is: namely, discrimination occurs if and only if one can prove the presence of malign intent by a discrete decisionmaker. Unless someone holds racially discriminatory attitudes, there cannot be said to be racial discrimination at all. From that framework, which holds out psychology as the exclusive prerequisite of discrimination, it makes sense that an anti-discrimination initiative would have to be psychologically-inclined as well. And indeed, focusing on actions and behaviors in absence of establishing bad psychological intent is an anathema to the conservative (and, often, alt-liberal) framework -- that way lies "racial balancing" or "equality of result" or any number of terrible ghouls which are supposedly the patrimony of the progressive DEI edifice.

And so we have a double-bind: first, prominent political and social institutions (to say nothing of legal precedents) say that the only cognizable way to speak of discrimination is through psychology -- bad motivations. Then, when DEI professionals accordingly work within that framework and try to address the problem through psychology, they're pilloried because such interventions, it turns out, are only dubiously reliable and don't directly correlate with fixing the "actual problem" of underrepresentation of social outgroups. Which is fine as far as it goes, except that when DEI tries to pivot back to the "actual problem" without the baggage of wading through conscious and subconscious attitudes, they're lambasted as crying "discrimination!" without proof, since only psychology is said to generate valid evidence of discrimination in the first place. It's an impossible situation. 

Motivated Reasoning: Social Mobility Edition

I've become more and more interested in the research on motivated cognition -- the processes by which we interpret evidence in a biased manner and reason directionally to our preferred ends. This literature is equal parts fascinating and depressing: fascinating as a window into our modes of thinking, depressing in that it has grim implications for both how much we should trust our learned intuitions and for the ability for evidence and facts to move our mental needles towards more accurate appraisals.

Today, I read an interesting study by John R. Chambers, Lawton K. Swan, and Martin Heesacker entitled Perceptions of U.S. Social Mobility Are Divided (and Distorted) Along Ideological Lines (forthcoming in Psychological Science). The study, as the name suggests, explores how people perceive facts relating to social mobility in the United States. They asked two main questions: First, they asked participants to provide their views on social mobility directly, by asking them to predict how many people who grew up in the bottom, middle, and top third of income brackets end up (as young adults) in the bottom/middle/top brackets (high social mobility would suggest that people move brackets regularly -- a society in which one's origins played no role in economic outcomes would see an even 33/33/33 split; low social mobility would suggest that people generally stay in the income bracket of their parents). Second, they asked people to appraise whether social mobility opportunities had increased or declined over time (they could say it increased a lot, a little, hadn't changed, decreased a little, or decreased a lot).

The results?

Everybody underestimated social mobility (that is, they thought our society was less socially mobile than it was). And likewise, people thought that we had experienced a decline in social mobility opportunities over the past few decades (in reality, social mobility rates have remained flat). But on both points, liberals were further from the mark than conservatives. The authors suggest that this is because liberals are generally pessimistic about the state of economic and social opportunity in America, and so they are motivated to belief that social mobility is worse than it is. Conservatives, by contrast, are more optimistic about America's meritocratic and egalitarian nature, and so (though they underestimated our social mobility too) ended up closer to the right figures.

I bring this up not because it means that social mobility is not a problem. After all, social mobility could simultaneously be more common than we thought and still too low, and indeed there are other western countries which dramatically out-perform America on this front. Rather, I mention these findings because, as the authors note, sometimes motivated cognition is perceived to be a conservative problem ("that's why they don't believe in global warming! They're just cognitively biased!"), and in reality it is a problem shared by all (I assume most of my readers are liberals and thus could use the reminder; conservatives preparing to gloat should know there are plenty of cases where the right is the party led astray). After all, if I'm being honest I can say I was surprised to find that most people underestimated social mobility (which is, of course, exactly what the study would predict would be my response). It's hard for me -- now knowing the data -- to say with confidence how I would have answered the study questions in my naive state, but I suspect at the very least I would have marked that social mobility was slightly worse off than it had been in decades past, and that would have been wrong. And the most likely explanation for its wrongness is that I have certain ideological priors that predispose me to having certain beliefs about the fairness of the American system.

Now, if one wanted to fight the data, there are ways to go about it. Perhaps while social mobility generally has remained unchanged (and is better than we thought), it might be the case that for particular subgroups (over-represented amongst liberals?), social mobility has decreased. There is some evidence pointing in that direction, and this could cause certain people to misperceive social mobility for the polity writ large based on the particular experience of their own group. Another possibility is that the abolishment of Jim Crow, and the resulting opportunities gains for racial minorities, had an upward-social mobility effect that canceled out other factors which generally reduced such mobility -- but that the former is perceived as a one-time "low-hanging fruit" situation while the latter are viewed as more permanent. But, these arguments are, as I said, fighting the data -- it seems likely that the general conclusion (that, for motivated ideological reasons, liberals underestimate the amount of social mobility in America) is accurate. And as a liberal, it's always worth remembering my own fallibility.

What's Not Being Said

Ta-Nehisi Coates is not the only one savaging a new study purporting to question whether the children of "gay parents" (very, very loosely defined -- see below) experience negative consequences (John Corvino shreds it in a very satisfying manner), but he gets extra points for stating something important in a more general sense: "Too often, people wave the flag of 'difficult truths' and 'un-PC' as though merely saying something unpopular is somehow a kind of thinking." It was something Coates also pointed out as a persistent weakness of Andrew Sullivan, and having just been informed by Johnny Argent about how "brave" Gilad Atzmon is for daring "to even question the value of Abrahamic brainwashing," it's worth reiterating.

Meanwhile, as to the study itself, I'm not an empiricist, so I have a simple rule of the thumb for appraising empirical studies. If I can spot the methodological flaws, then it's probably a pretty weak study. And here -- oh boy here -- do we have a doozy. Normally, when doing a study like this, you try to hold as many variables as possible constant. So if your control is the children of stable heterosexual couples, you compare them to the children of stable homosexual couples, and see what happens.

But here, the study takes on the one hand the children of "intact biological families", and pairs them against the children of anyone whose parents has ever had any same-sex sexual interaction, ever. Aside from the fact that this includes persons who remain in an intact biological family (capturing anything from a bout of college experimentation to a Ted Haggard-style drug-fueled prostitution binge), it by design doesn't standardize family settings -- it's an ideal heterosexual family paired against a cottage pie of gay (and not gay) life situations. That's the sort of gaping error that makes one wonder how this thing got past peer-review.

The Cultural Cognition of Climate Change

A new paper coming out of Yale's Cultural Cognition project (led by Professor Dan Kahan) is getting some blogger buzz. Unfortunately, it's for all the wrong reasons.

Folks are seizing on the finding that more scientifically-literate respondents are less likely to believe that Global Warming represents a serious threat. This is true, but overstated -- the difference between high- and low-literacy respondents is extremely small. Kahan et al use it to refute the presumption that greater scientific education is likely to cause the average person's views on global warming to converge on the scientific consensus on the matter, but that's all.

Rather, the real action is that increased scientific-literacy increases the divergence in opinions on the matter amongst members of groups whose narratives predispose them to look with more favor on the scientific-consensus about climate change (that it is dangerous) versus those whose cultural narratives instruct them to view that consensus skeptically. Over the course of several experiments, Kahan et al have divided persons along two axes -- hierarchical/egalitarian, and individualist/communitarian. Persons with egalitarian, communitarian outlooks -- hypothesized to be favorable to believing claims of dangerous climate change -- were more likely to say climate change is dangerous, and this belief rose moderately as scientific literacy increased. Persons with hierarchical, individualist outlooks -- forecast to be skeptical of climate change data -- were accordingly less likely to view it as dangerous, and this risk-assessment dipped sharply as scientific-literacy increased (that the hierarchical, individualist risk assessment fell by considerably more than the egalitarian, communitarian one rose is what accounts for the small negative association between levels of scientific literacy and belief in the dangers of global warming). This is the main conclusion of the paper -- not about how scientific literacy impacts one's assessment of climate change risk (at least not directly), but whether scientific-literacy diminishes the salience of one's prior social narratives. And the answer was not only, "no", it was "no, increased scientific literacy enhances the polarizing impact of these priors."

This finding is part of a larger set of conclusions formed through the Cultural Cognition project's research -- to wit, that increased information does not create consensus amongst politically polarized groups (by directing everyone to the "right" outcome), but rather fosters divergence as each side is able to access bits of fact and information that help them create a coherent narrative that binds together their preferred value priors with experiential data. Discussing other research by Professor Kahan and his cohors, I wrote:

Providing additional facts and information doesn’t cause policy convergence, it causes policy polarization. The reason is that most fact patterns contain narratives, inferences, and interpretations which plausibly can be deployed to support diverse policy positions. Facts, alone, can never by themselves tell us anything about fundamentally value-based policy judgments, even under ideal deliberative conditions. People accordingly interpret the information they receive in manners which support their prior dispositions, only now they feel more comfortable in these beliefs because they have “facts” to back them up. Given this latent ambiguity, there is no incentive to agree, and lots of psychological incentives to latch on to friendly fact stories in order to preserve ones preexisting beliefs.

So persons already predisposed to believe in global climate change, upon gaining more information, have more access to bundles of facts and arguments that help buttress and amplify that belief. But persons predisposed to disbelieve in climate change, in turn, also have more access to arguments and facts that support that worldview as they become more informed. Presumably, less-informed voters -- while still likely to adhere to their predispositions, are more likely to stake a more relatively moderate path, as they have fewer narrative resources at their disposal to explain away counterarguments (and thus are more likely to admit some level of doubt in their beliefs).

There might be, in other words, an intractable barrier facing fact-based democratic policy-making in situations where the underlying policy question is normatively polarizing. The presumption was always that greater education -- greater grasp on the facts -- would overcome these divides as people discovered what the best policy option is. But Kahan's work has thrown a serious wrench in this presumption -- as it turns out, normative interpretation governs factual interpretation, not the other way around. At best, we could hope that direct experience might modify norms (if New York does end up under two feet of water, that might convince some climate change skeptics). But that's pretty drastic, and doesn't give us that much hope for normal policy disputes.

Bias in Bias

Writing in the NYT, John Tierney takes note of new efforts within the social psychology fields to explore bias against conservatives in academia. In doing so, he takes a bunch of gratutious shots at explorations of implicit bias in other fields that I think are wildly out of line.

As a liberal who has been flagging the issue of anti-conservative bias in academia as a serious problem that should be addressed for well over a half decade, I think I have credibility to speak on this issue. I absolutely agree with Mr. Tierney that this is something that colleges and universities should work to redress, including via affirmative action policies where appropriate -- that was my position six years ago, and that's my position today.

But what I don't get, and think is exceptionally difficult to justify, is Tierney's claim that the bulk of the social psychology evidence indicates that implicit bias and other structural barriers against women are gone.

Similarly, Larry Summers, then president of Harvard, was ostracized in 2005 for wondering publicly whether the preponderance of male professors in some top math and science departments might be due partly to the larger variance in I.Q. scores among men (meaning there are more men at the very high and very low ends). “This was not a permissible hypothesis,” Dr. Haidt said. “It blamed the victims rather than the powerful. The outrage ultimately led to his resignation. We psychologists should have been outraged by the outrage. We should have defended his right to think freely.”

Instead, the taboo against discussing sex differences was reinforced, so universities and the National Science Foundation went on spending tens of millions of dollars on research and programs based on the assumption that female scientists faced discrimination and various forms of unconscious bias. But that assumption has been repeatedly contradicted, most recently in a study published Monday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by two Cornell psychologists, Stephen J. Ceci and Wendy M. Williams. After reviewing two decades of research, they report that a woman in academic science typically fares as well as, if not better than, a comparable man when it comes to being interviewed, hired, promoted, financed and published.

“Thus,” they conclude, “the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort. Society is engaged in the present in solving problems of the past.” Instead of presuming discrimination in science or expecting the sexes to show equal interest in every discipline, the Cornell researchers say, universities should make it easier for women in any field to combine scholarship with family responsibilities.

That's just not an accurate summary of the state of the literature. To talk as if all the social science research explodes the myth that bias continues to exert sex-differentiated impacts, and the theory simply carries on via blind political correctness, is wrong. (see, for example, the research on stereotype threat). Ceci and Williams' study is interesting, but it is nowhere near as robust as Tierney (or even the authors themselves, though they're more circumspect about it) claims.

Most notably, the authors concede the existence of sex-bias in math intensive fields. And in general, they attribute much sex-differentiation to the "resources" available to the academics, which encompasses their position (junior or senior, or non-tenure track), teaching loads, and the prestige of the institution they teach at. But their hard delineation that differences in who gets these positions are attributable to "personal choices" (they agree that these choices might be "constrained", and their policy suggestions are centered around removing these constraints by, for example, improving work/life balance concerns) is difficult to warrant -- after all, that women are channeled to adopt social roles which are, at the very least, partially home-based may itself be attributable to implicit bias. And, once marginal candidates are filtered out, we might expect that the remaining women -- who are the most committed and probably the most talented (if we expect that exceptionally talented candidates are likely to face pressure to "stay in the game") -- should outperform their male peers, at least by a little bit. It's a bit weird to recognize that women are systematically ending up in low ranked position, but reject a hypothesis that implicit bias might play a role because the women who survive the gauntlet do slightly better than men at the final stage.

I also have no idea what Tierney even means in the following passage: "the taboo against discussing sex differences was reinforced, so universities and the National Science Foundation went on spending tens of millions of dollars on research and programs based on the assumption that female scientists faced discrimination and various forms of unconscious bias."

What work is "based on the assumption" doing here? If it simply means that the research seeks to take that theory and put it to an empirical test, Tierney can't have an objection -- that covers the Ceci and Williams study as well. That we have a well-developed theory explaining sex difference (implicit bias) is an excellent reason for running studies based on that theoretical orientation. Obviously, if the studies consistently were disproving the thesis, we shouldn't beat a dead horse, but the problem is that Tierney is flatly inaccurate if he thinks that's what is going on. If the claim is that we're doing research that presupposes implicit bias to exist, and uses that presumption as some sort of assumed-but-unproven axiom in another study, that'd be more problematic (except for the fact that, contra Tierney, there is a substantial amount of literature backing up implicit bias' existence), but I also can't think of any sort of research that takes that approach. The objection strikes me as incoherent.

I certainly understand the frustration some conservatives feel that the question of implicit bias against them in the academy is not given full hearing. I've been an acolyte of long-standing of the theory that implicit bias is a problem worthy of correction, and it very quickly became evident to me that, if I were to consider my position in any way principled, I couldn't discount potential anti-conservative bias in the structures I work in. But my frustration is that everyone seems to be using the concept opportunistically -- if liberals are dismissive of anti-conservative bias, conservatives are dismissive of the prospect of racist or sexist bias. The red flags (Daniel Patrick Monyihan! Taboos! Larry Summers!) are all here, and it's very difficult to take Tierney's complaint as a serious one insofar as he immediately turns around and starts deriding the very same field as political correctness run-amok in other contexts.

Avatar Racism

A new study finds that racism carries through in virtual worlds, with participants discriminating against darker-skinned avatars (H/T).

Basically, the study works like this. The avatar first makes a purposely unreasonable request out of a stranger. Then, when it is refused, they ask another, more moderate request (this tactic -- typically used in experiments such as this -- is done to try and increase response rates).

In one of the most striking findings, the effect of the DITF technique was significantly reduced when the requesting avatar was dark-toned. The white avatars in the DITF experiment received about a 20 percent increase in compliance with the moderate request; the increase for the dark-toned avatars was 8 percent.

The nice thing about studies like this is they can abstract away a lot of subtle, personal tics which can confound normal person-to-person studies. The behavior of virtual avatars can be standardized far more than can an individual person (or group of persons).

A more extensive summary of the study can be found here. The citation is: Paul W. Eastwick and Wendi L. Gardner, Is it a game? Evidence for social influence in the virtual world, 4 Soc. Influence 18 (2009).

Excuses Excuses

WASH: Well, I'm not sure now is the best time to bring a tiny little helpless person into our lives.

ZOE: That excuse is getting a little worn, honey.

WASH: It's not an excuse, dear. It's objective assessment. I can't help it if it stays relevant.

I think of this quote whenever I come across social scientists (not always conservatives) who are exasperated by critiques of their work that center around the continued presence of racism. From their perspective, it's easy to see why it'd get a little old. It's really hard to control for racism when the hypothesis is that it's an ingrained, structural part of our everyday existence. Sheer professional sanity makes one want to buy into the conservative mythos that racism can externalized to "times past", if only so that one can put together a viable control group.

From our perspective, of course, "racism" isn't an excuse, it's an objective assessment. And it's not our fault that the criticism remains relevant over time.

(This post is sparked by nothing but the desire to put a Firefly quote up on my blog).

What the Science Says

My post on marriage and language sparked a stellar debate with "Sally" in comments over a wide gamut of issues concerning gay rights. It concluded when I agreed to read some of the critical evaluations of the scientific evidence I had been heavily relying on. Specifically, I decided to read Brigham Young Law Professor Lynn Wardle's article "The Potential Impact of Homosexual Parenting on Children" (1997 U. Ill. L. Rev. 833). While I think he scored some points, ultimately I found his critique unpersuasive. Allow me to explain why.

First of all, I think Professor Wardle made a valuable addition to the literature in this article. We shouldn't accept scientific "findings" unquestioned, and Sally was absolutely right when she reminded me to be particularly cautious when said findings uphold our own deeply held beliefs. The other important thing to note is what Professor Wardle is not arguing: he does not believe that homosexuals should be excluded as a class from adopting or gaining custody over children. In addressing two arguments for allowing homosexual adoption of children, that "public policy should encourage formation of families, even nontraditional same-sex parenting families, because two parents (even of the same gender) are better than one," and "parenting by an adult who is engaged in a homosexual relationship may be the best option for a particular child," he admits that these

two policy arguments are variations of a common theme - that in the world we live in, persons who engage in extramarital sexual relations, including homosexual relations, may, in some cases, provide the best available parenting alternative for particular children. This argument recognizes that all parents are imperfect and acknowledges the tremendous failures of the alternatives to parenting (e.g., the abuse of institutional care, the limbo of foster care, and the tragedies of other governmental substitutes for in-home parenting, the disadvantages of single-parenting). It is hard to disagree that, despite the possible harms children may suffer from the extramarital sexual behavior, including homosexual behavior, of their parents, if the best interests of children is followed in all cases, there undeniably will be, and have been, some cases in which a parent engaged in extramarital sexual behavior will offer, and has provided, the least detrimental practical parenting alternative.

Thus, this article does not quarrel with the last two principles above or that there are and will be in this imperfect world exceptional cases in which less-than-ideal parents and less-than-perfect custody and adoption arrangements are the best options for a particular child or children. (842-43)

I do disagree with Wardle's rhetoric on the matter. Given the state of our adoption system, I doubt such "imperfect" cases are all that "extraordinary," nor do I feel that, even if there homosexuality is an "imperfection," it would constitute a negative factor more grievous than many other more typical negative factors that afflict heterosexual families. I also think it is facile to group a monogamous homosexual relationship in the same category as extramarital sexual behavior. Though technically this is accurate, it is a product of legal rules beyond the control of the parties (many whom would surely marry if given the chance). I hardly think the same harms apply to children in families with extramarital affairs as with those living in families with committed homosexual affairs (which yes, are technically "extramarital"). This conflation is a critical flaw throughout Wardle's article, but we'll get there later. Suffice to say, Wardle does not advocate categorical exclusion for homosexuals gaining custody of children (as is being advocated in Texas, was the subject of the Howard decision in Arkansas, and remains the law in Florida), but rather a rebuttable presumption against them, and a relatively weak one at that:

States should adopt a rebuttable presumption that ongoing homosexual relations by an adult seeking or exercising parental rights is not in the best interest of a child. The presumption should be rebuttable by a mere preponderance of the evidence. Unless rebutted, this presumption should be considered as one of the many nonexclusive "best interests of the child" factors that are weighed by courts deciding parenting issues. This presumption should apply in any case involving significant parental relationship with the child, including custody, adoption, and visitation.

It was also distressing to see Professor Wardle quote the profoundly discredited Dr. Paul Cameron. I do not know the credentials of most scientific experts opining on this issue; my default setting is to assume they are credible unless shown otherwise (for both sides). Dr. Cameron, however, is someone I do recognize as basically an ideological hack, kicked out of the APA and condemned by the ASA for consistently misrepresenting sociological research. Although Wardle only cited Cameron six times, it still reflected poorly on his judgment as a researcher and scholar.

Wardle does score some points when criticizing methodological flaws in the pro-equality research. Part of this, I feel, is due to the small availability of subjects--there just aren't that many homosexual parents available to study. More generally, however,

"the types of methodological flaws that Wardle discusses in his article (such as small sample sizes and lack of diversity in the samples) are by no means limited to the study of gay and lesbian families. [...]producing a representative probability sample can be expensive and difficult. Respondents chosen randomly will typically be diffused across the entire area inhabited by the population, rather than concentrated in areas easy for the researcher to access...
[...]
[furthermore,] there are ongoing efforts to address some of the methodological problems noted by Professor Wardle." [Carlos A. Ball, Janice Farrell Pea, "Warring With Wardle: Morality, Social Science, and Gay and Lesbian Parents," 1998 U. Ill. L. Rev. 253, 274-76]

As Wardle's article is from 1997, I'd assume there have been some advances in the literature which may shed light on these questions (any links to them would be greatly appreciated).

However, while some of his accusations are legitimate, some of the objections are rather silly. Wardle says that many of the homosexual families studied were "model" families, well-educated, upper middle class, with stable incomes, while "poor...uneducated, or troubled" homosexuals are left out. However, the point of these studies is to determine whether or not homosexuals, in absence of other disabilities which might affect their ability to be good parents, are possessed of inherent problems which might disable them from adopting or gaining custody over children. In this respect, it makes more sense to try and isolate the variable and eliminate other factors which are not unique to homosexual families at all (IE, "troubled" persons are likely to have issues with children regardless of their sexual orientation).

One consistent and problematic aspect of Wardle's critique is his constant conflation of homosexuality with another, unrelated relational issue. For example, he writes that:

Finally, it is reasonable to be concerned that ongoing parental homosexual sexual behavior is harmful to children because that seems to be the lesson of the most relevant and analogous human experience - the experience of extramarital sexual relations generally. (855)

But as I wrote above, this analogy isn't relevant at all--and it's Wardle who inadvertently indicates why:

Extramarital sexual behavior is associated with such harm to children as the breakup of their parents' marriage and the destabilizing, child-harming consequences of divorce. Parental extramarital relationships wound children, shaking, sometimes even destroying, their faith in marriage and in personal commitments of fidelity and intimacy. It hurts a child to learn that one parent has been unfaithful to the other. That pain is very real and very wrenching. Parental extramarital relationships also provide a dangerous model for children, serving to pass intergenerational self-destructive behavior on to children. The message of intergender and intergenerational carelessness, and family-sacrificing selfishness not only hurts, but also may have a programming effect on children. The lesson of sexual self-gratification at the expense of familial fidelity conveys a tragic message about both family commitments and responsible sexual behavior in our society. In these days of so many harmful, even deadly, sexually transmitted diseases, the risks may be physical as well as emotional. (855-56)

Not a single one of these problems apply to committed and monogamous homosexual relationships which a) do not break up a marriage, b) do not undermine the principles of loyalty and commitment c) do not provide a dangerous model for children (except, perhaps, insofar as they legitimize homosexuality, which would be a circular argument) d) are not any more "selfish" than any other committed relationship and e) do not have any raised risks of STDs. Of course it is true that for unfaithful homosexual couples, these issues do come into play--but then, they also come into play for unfaithful heterosexual couples. I would argue that the legal system already has the tools to evaluate and dispose of these cases.

He makes a similar slight of hand when talking about the need for dual-gender parenting. Virtually all of his research is a comparison to single-parent homes, not dual-parent homosexual homes. This is critical for several reasons. First of all, much of his argument focuses on issues are more acutely felt by single-parent homes than two-parent homosexual homes, but are theoretically overcomable, such as time availability and economic wherewithal. Second, there are inherent problems within single-parent homes that simply don't exist in homosexual houses--not that he doesn't try and connect them.

But the significance of the disadvantage of growing up without both father and mother in the home should not be trivialized, either, especially in this difficult time of our social history. Individually, the child must cope with the loss of example, counsel, and experience that living with the missing-gender parent would have provided, and must overcome the sense of loss, abandonment, and deprivation (often feelings of devaluation, inadequacy, and anger) caused by loss of the second-gender parent. Socially, the community may be burdened, not just to provide some quasi-parental experience with missing-gender adults for the growing child to compensate for what the missing-gender parent would have provided, but also to bear the adverse behavioral consequences often associated with single-gender parenting. (863-64)

Note how he shifts seamlessly from the experience of most single-parent homes (where the "loss" is literal, in the form of death or abandonment), to the experience of most homosexual homes, where the loss is more abstract and never ingrained in the experience of the child.

Never is this false equivalence made more clear than in this passage:

Children make the transition through developmental stages better, have stronger gender identity, are more confident of themselves, do better in school, have fewer emotional crises, and become functioning adults best when they are reared in two-parent, dual-gender families. As family sociologist David Popenoe puts it:

social science research is almost never conclusive... Yet in three decades of work as a social scientist, I know of few other bodies of data in which the weight of evidence is so decisively on one side of the issue: on the whole, for children, two-parent families are preferable to single-parent and stepfamilies.

As even a cursory reread of Popenoe's remarks indicates, he says nary a word about dual-gender homes, merely dual-parent homes compared to single-parent and step-parent families. For the reasons stated above, neither family formulation is comparable to a committed, monogamous homosexual relationship.

There are quite a few other, minor arguments in Wardle's article, and I also have my own minor objections to them. But I think I've hit upon the meat of the argument presented. As I said, Wardle does score a few points, regarding some methodological flaws in the scientific literature presented. Ultimately, however, I find his own position to be marred by its own flaws which severely undermine his advocacy.