James Dobson Has Two Mommies Who Are Very Angry With Him

When news that Vice-President Cheney’s daughter Mary was pregnant and planned to raise the child with her lesbian partner of fifteen years, Heather Poe, the media began to salivate at the thought of infighting between conservatives over the issue of gay parenting. Time magazine (of “You” fame) cajoled Focus on the Family’s James Dobson into writing a guest column, which starts:

A number of social conservatives, myself included, have recently been asked to respond to the news that Mary Cheney, the Vice President’s daughter, is pregnant with a child she intends to raise with her lesbian partner. Implicit in this issue is an effort to get us to criticize the Bush Administration or the Cheney family. But the concern here has nothing to do with politics. It is about what kind of family environment is best for the health and development of children, and, by extension, the nation at large.

With all due respect to Cheney and her partner, Heather Poe, the majority of more than 30 years of social-science evidence indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father. That is not to say Cheney and Poe will not love their child. But love alone is not enough to guarantee healthy growth and development. The two most loving women in the world cannot provide a daddy for a little boy–any more than the two most loving men can be complete role models for a little girl.

But the “social science” Dobson quotes has gotten him into trouble with the very scientists he quotes in the article. The video at right, produced by Truth Wins Out (a gay rights advocate group) interviews Dr. Carol Gilligan about how Dobson manipulated her research to support his claims. Eric Ervin of Southern Voice writes:

Dobson cited the works of Yale professor Dr. Kyle Pruett and New York University professor Dr. Carol Gilligan. In letters to Dobson obtained by Truth Wins Out, a gay rights advocacy group, Pruett and Gilligan demand that he stop using their research.

Gilligan said in the letter she was “mortified to learn that you had distorted my work this week in a guest column you wrote in Time magazine.”

Pruett said he was also disgusted by Dobson’s column. “You cherry-picked a phrase to shore up highly (in my view) discriminatory purposes,” he said.

In response to the allegations, Focus on the Family released a statement through spokesperson Nima Reza.

“In the cases of both Drs. Gilligan and Pruett, the question is not, ‘Did Dr. Dobson apply their research only to political stands they agree with?’ but rather, ‘Is the essay true to what these individuals have written?’” Reza stated. “We believe that it is.”

The text of Gilligan’s letter reads:

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.

From what I understand, this is not the first time you have manipulated research in pursuit of your goals. This practice is not in the best interest of scientific inquiry, nor does bearing false witness serve your purpose of furthering morality and strengthening the family.

Finally, there is nothing in my research that would lead you to draw the stated conclusions you did in the Time article. 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.

Sincerely,

Carol Gilligan, PhD, New York University, Professor

Kerry Eleveld of The New York Blade has some excellent reporting on the controversy:

Given the level of distortion that Dobson engaged in to make his point, one question that comes to mind is, What responsibility did Time have to present the nature of Dr. Pruett’s and Prof. Gilligan’s work accurately?

Time spokesperson Ali Zelenko said Time editors did fact-check the piece. “But Dobson’s views on this subject and his interpretation of the evidence are his own,” she added.

But Kelly McBride, Ethics Group Leader at the Poynter Institute, which teaches excellence in journalism, said that even an op-ed piece such as Dobson’s should not misconstrue research.
“Even if it’s an opinion, if you’re asserting something as fact as part of your opinion, you have to be right,” said McBride, adding that this mistake is not peculiar to Dobson. “Journalists frequently overstate or misstate conclusions of scientific research or social-science research,” she said.

McBride said that Dobson could have worked with editors to characterize the conclusions of the research accurately but then develop his opinion based on those conclusions—so that it was clear to readers that the research said one thing but Dobson was concluding something different. “That’s a writing technique, a persuasive argument technique that is commonly used,” McBride said.
Time did publish a counterpoint piece online after they were contacted by Family Pride, the largest LGBT family advocacy group.

Dobson and other conservatives (such as Dennis Prager, et al) have repeatedly hailed the nuclear family as natural and/or divinely ordained, and that any other arrangement is patently ‘unnatural.’ Such claims belie the fact that ‘extended families’ have been the norm throughout the course of human evolution, and that the ‘nuclear family’ became popular in America around the same time as the invention of the nuclear bomb.

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