Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Fact-checking the interview
by J. Adrian Stanley
Editor's note: This story was updated at 8:40 a.m. on Thursday, June 9, to correct errors related to Focus' total support and revenue in 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Daly: Research shows, by and large, that children do better when raised by their married, biological parents.
Indy: Recent research shows that children growing up with same-sex parents do better than kids with a single parent.
A 1994 study by Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur of Princeton University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, respectively, found that kids who did not live with both biological parents were about twice as likely to be poor, to have an out-of-wedlock child, to have behavioral or psychological problems, and to drop out of high school. Other studies have yielded similar results, showing kids are healthier and have better outcomes when they live with both biological parents.
However, recent work by Timothy Biblarz of the University of Southern California, and Judith Stacey of New York University, has cast all that research in a different light. The pair reviewed 81 studies spanning the past 20 years, and found that the studies did not effectively prove that children of same-sex couples did worse than children living with biological parents, because most of the studies never addressed the issue of gay couples head-on.
Upon re-examination, the two professors concluded that children of same-sex couples performed similarly to kids raised by biological parents in a range of areas from mental health to peer relationships to self-esteem, gender identity and school achievement. Both sets of kids, however, outperformed peers with a single parent.
Indy: Focus laid off 20 percent of its workforce while paying for pricey political ads.
In November 2008, Focus laid off 149 workers and cut 53 vacant positions, reducing its local workforce by nearly 18 percent. That was just weeks after Focus outsourced 46 jobs. In 2010, Focus laid off another 110 workers.
According to reports in the Gazette, Focus spent $500,000 in 2008 to support Proposition 8, California's ban on gay marriage. In 2009, Focus spent $98,500 to support the efforts of Stand for Marriage Maine, a coalition that sought to overturn that state's legalization of gay marriage. In 2010, Focus spent another $2.5 million on a Super Bowl ad featuring Tim Tebow, which sought to discourage abortion, although that money was raised separately, specifically for that purpose.
Daly: Focus' budget began a downturn in 2009, before founder James Dobson departed, as giving dropped in the recession.
According to financials on Focus' website (focusonthefamily.com), at the end of its fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2008, Focus' total support and revenue was $152 million. That figure dropped to $139 million in 2009 and $114 million in 2010. James Dobson gave his last radio broadcast for Focus in early 2010.
Indy: Most Americans now support same-sex marriage.
A Gallup poll this year found that 53 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage. Among those age 18 to 34, 70 percent support gay marriage. In 1996, nearly two-thirds of Americans were opposed to legalizing same-sex marriage.
Daly: Devoutly Christian couples have a lower divorce rate.
Brad Wright, a University of Connecticut sociologist and defender of the Christian faith, notes that a study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that people who are religious have a divorce rate of about 42 percent, which is better than unaffiliated Americans, who have a 50 percent divorce rate. However, he found that six out of 10 evangelicals who don't attend church had been divorced or separated, compared with just 38 percent of those who go to church every week.
Indy: A few years ago, Colorado Springs got a "D" for its divorce rate.
In 2004, Men's Health magazine indeed graded Colorado Springs with a "D," based on the number of divorces and divorce lawyers here, as compared with the rest of the U.S., and how long people have to wait to finalize a divorce. In 2010, using stats on failed marriages, the stringency of divorce laws, the percentage of divorcees in the local population, and the number of licensed marriage and family therapists, Men's Health upgraded us to a D-plus.
Daly: There are 1.2 million abortions a year.
In the United States, at least, this figure appears to be high. The Center for Disease Control's most recent statistic, from 2006, shows there were 827,609 legal induced abortions.
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