Creating "truth" through reciprocal citation practices dates back before the internet and cable news

A lengthy segment on The Rachel Maddow Show (I am a huge fan) last Thursday focused on the creation of "truth" through simply repeating falsehoods espoused by others and using those other sources as evidence of the facts asserted. Naturally, Fox News and the internet play large roles in the story.

The segment made me think of a phenomenon first identified by the sociologist Judith Stacey in a 1994 article in Social Text and later more fully described in her 1996 book, In the Name of the Family. The early 1990's saw the emergence of opposition to gay and lesbian families, single mothers, and any childrearing outside life-long heterosexual marriage based not on arguments about God and morality (that was so 1980's) but rather based on social science. Social scientists, historians, and other advocates who claimed they were centrists asserted that children needed to be raised in two-parent mother/father families. Deviation from that family structure, they argued, spelled doom for the mental, physical, and emotional well-being of those children and concommitantly for the well-being of society.

Through carefully tracing who was citing whom (in those pre-Google days), Stacey described the practice of reciprocal citation. "Through the sheer force of categorical assertion, repetition, and cross-citation of each other's publications," she wrote, "these social scientists seem to have convinced most of the media, the literate public, and Clinton himself that a fault-free bedrock of social science research validates the particular family values that they and most American claim to favor, but fail to practice."

After documenting the practice with numerous examples, Stacey concluded:

"It is not often that social construction, or more precisely here, the political construction of knowledge is quite so visible or incestuous as in the reciprocal citation practices of these cultural crusaders."

Rachel Maddow could give us a video montage, while Judith Stacey could only provide words on the page. The visual images are both horrifying and depressing. But even without today's tools of cable news and the internet, the force of reciprocal citation did great harm. It gave us, among other things, "welfare reform" and the Defense of Marriage Act.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger -- week three preview -- the defendants will make it about gender

The argument that children need to grow up with a father is not an argument aimed primarily at lesbian couples raising children. It's the argument at the core of the right-wing "marriage movement" whose agenda includes federal funding for a "marriage promotion" industry, restrictions on no-fault divorce, and increased stigma for births outside marriage. The primary tenet of this movement is that the decline of life-long marriage is responsible for all our social problems, a point of view that deliberately ignores poverty, income inequality, poor education, and inadequate health care, for example, as root causes of poor outcomes for children.

This movement gained traction throughout the 1990's, before any state allowed same-sex couples to marry or even enter civil unions. As the movement for marriage equality grew, it challenged opposition from these "marriage movement" organizations by saying, essentially, if you think marriage is so important for children then you should support same-sex marriage as better for the children those couples raise. To continue opposing same-sex marriage, these groups had to shift their argument from "marriage is crucial to the well-being of children and society" to "heterosexual marriage is crucial to the well-being of children and society," and to do this they had to talk about how much gender matters. It's not marriage, they now say, but marriage between a man and a woman. And then they refined the argument even further to stress the importance to a child of being raised by his/her married biological parents.

So as the defenders of Proposition 8 present their witnesses this week, expect testimony on gender differences to play a significant role. That makes the study published last week by Tim Biblarz and Judith Stacey especially timely. In How Does the Gender of Parents Matter?, published in the February issue of Journal of Marriage and Family, these two sociologists review all the research used to support the proposition that families headed by married, biological parents are best for children, and they reach a different conclusion. They conclude that the best scientific evidence shows instead that "compared to all other family forms, families headed by (at least) two committed, compatible parents are generally best for children." This is true, they conclude, "irrespective of parental gender, marital status, sexual identity, or biogenetic status."

They write, "Current claims that children need both a mother and father are spurious because they attribute to the gender of the parents benefits that correlate primarily with the number and marital status of a child's parents since infancy. At this point no research supports the widely held conviction that the gender of parents matters for child well-being." (emphasis mine). This is exactly what renowned child development expert Michael Lamb testified to last week at the Prop 8 trial. Expect pro-Prop 8 witness David Blankenhorn to testify how much gender does matter, although I wonder how he will qualify as an expert. He is certainly a writer and an advocate, but he is not a social scientist or mental health clinician or researcher. I am truly looking forward to his cross-examination, and I expect this latest Biblarz/Stacey article -- from a peer-reviewed professional journal -- to play a prominent role.

More opposition to Leah Sears

I was shocked at the Washington Post's above the fold front-page story last Sunday about Georgia Supreme Court Justice Leah Sears as a possible nominee for the US Supreme Court. I have blogged twice in the past about Justice Sears's unsuitability.

I sent a letter to the Post, which they did not publish, so I'm posting it here:

Leah Sears doesn’t belong on the US Supreme Court, and it’s not because of her relationship with Justice Clarence Thomas (Front page, May 10, 2009). It’s because she used her position as Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court to further an ideological position that bodes ill for her judgment. Justice Sears is a board member of the Institute for American Values, an organization whose publications consistently argue that family forms other than a married mother and father threaten child well-being and the very fabric of society. Last year, she arranged for the Georgia Supreme Court to co-host a two-day, public conference with IAV, thus giving an official, state imprimatur to a highly contested viewpoint with enormous implications for public policy. The conference excluded eminent researchers and academics whose views diverge from those of IAV about what causes bad child outcomes and where to look for solutions. The program was dominated by opponents of gay and lesbian parents and/or marriage for same-sex couples. Justice Sears had no business aligning her court with one side of a controversial family policy agenda. That disqualifies her from serving on the US Supreme Court.

Georgia Equality spoke out against Justice Sears today because she is planning to "join" the Institute for American Values when she leaves the court, but she is already a board member of the organization, so I would say she joined them long ago! Thank you, Jeff Graham of Georgia Equality, for getting great press coverage on why Justice Sears does not belong on the Supreme Court.

Not Leah Sears on the US Supreme Court!

Just a day after my post on the right-wing "marriage movement" conference at the Georgia Supreme Court, an article by Justin Jouvenal at salon.com named Leah Sears, the court's Chief Justice, as a possible contender for a seat on the US Supreme Court.

This would be a disaster for LGBT families. As a board member of the Institute for American Values, Leah Sears is a core part of a movement that blames every social problem on the decline of life-long heterosexual marriage. One of IAV's most recent publications argues that fathers uniquely matter in the lives of children. This is a classic component of the argument made against parenting (and marriage) by lesbian couples, as well as single mothers. Yet a universally acknowledged expert on fathers, Dr. Michael Lamb, who has done decades of research on fathers, concludes otherwise. Read a summary of Lamb's testimony in the recent challenge to Florida's ban on adoption by lesbians and gay men.

On the subject of gender and parenting, here's how the judge in that case summarized Lamb's testimony:

Dr. Lamb opined that the assumption that children need a mother and a father in order to be well adjusted is outdated and not supported by the research. According to the witness, there is no optimal gender combination of parents; neither men nor women have a greater ability to parent. Additionally, today, two-parent households are less attached to static roles than in the past. Moreover, there is a well established and generally accepted consensus in the field that children do not need a parent of each gender to adjust healthily.

Take that, Leah Sears. But take it someplace other than the US Supreme Court.

THE RIGHT-WING "MARRIAGE MOVEMENT:" IDEOLOGY MASQUERADING AS EDUCATION AT THE GEORGIA SUPREME COURT

Thanks to Nan Hunter for alerting me to an astonishing "marriage movement" event, a "summit on marriage and family" co-hosted by David Blankenhorn's Institute for American Values and the Georgia Supreme Court. I am horrified that a body with the power to rule on the well-being of children with LGBT parents, namely a state supreme court, is giving its imprimatur to one of the most vocal organizations in the country that opposes legal recognition of same-sex couples and parents.

How did this happen? Well the Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, Leah Sears, is on the board of directors of the Institute for American Values! She is on record espousing the core position -- as wrong as it is -- that the decline of life long heterosexual marriage is the cause of all our social problems. Sears is leaving the court next year, so she needn't fear criticism for associating the Georgia Supreme Court with a political agenda. (And the conference program says this is the "first annual" conference of its kind; okay, that's scary!)

But maybe more significantly, Chief Justice Sears may well think this conference isn't subject to criticism for furthering a political agenda. The "marriage movement" rhetoric that the decline of life-long heterosexual marriage is responsible for all our social problems has such mainstream support -- after all our federal government funds "marriage promotion" -- that to some ears it sounds like a statement of fact.

There will be one speaker who supports marriage for same-sex couples, Jonathan Rauch, but he actually accepts every tenet of the "marriage movement" except the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage. So no one at this conference will present a different view about the cause -- and therefore the solutions -- to our social problems. In fact, luncheon speaker Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, whose 1993 "Dan Quayle Was Right" Atlantic Monthly article first laid out the ideology of the "marriage movement" (and was soundly critiqued by NYU sociologist Judith Stacey), appears poised to link the nation's financial crisis to the decline of marriage! Why didn't I guess that would be coming?

And just in case there's any question about this conference's agenda on gender roles, there will be continuous screenings of the DVD Hardwired to Connect, which emphasizes differences between boys and girls.

These folks are dangerous. Read a comprehensive critique of their positions in chapter 4 of my book.