Scholars Afraid to Say What’s True

The National Catholic Register notes that traditional-marriage advocates say social scientists won’t report how divorce, single parenting, and step-parenting hurt children:

Social scientists are concealing the harm that divorce, single parenting and stepfamilies do to children. Not only that, they are also hiding the benefits which even unhappy marriages bestow, not just on children, but on the couples involved.

So claim the heads of several organizations devoted to defending traditional marriages.

“It’s a very sad occurrence when people, for reasons of political embarrassment, won’t say what they believe,” said David Blankenhorn, head of the Institute for American Values. Blankenhorn worries that government agencies and other institutions will frame policies based on misreported scientific findings that disfavor the traditional family.

[ . . . ]

It is about more than protecting people’s feelings, says Blankenhorn: Political correctness is involved too in the suppression of findings.

Blankenhorn tells of being lambasted by the head of one family research organization back in the mid-2000s for using one of that organization’s studies to support an article he wrote for the Los Angeles Times against same-sex “marriage.”

“She didn’t claim I’d used the data wrongly. She just didn’t want her research associated in any way with being anti-same sex ‘marriage.’ She actually tried to forbid me from ever doing it again.” Blankenhorn says he used “blunt language” to stand up for his right to use the data as he chose.

Whenever I think about the conservative Christian academics who are afraid to stand up for what they believe , I think of David Blankenhorn. Although he is a liberal Democrat with whom I have many policy disagreements, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for his willingness to speak the truth in defense of children. Maybe one day all conservative Christians in the social sciences will be willing to follow his courageous example.

(Via: Family Scholars Blog )

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