Children raised by same-sex couples do better in school, new study finds

Here we go again! Same old, same old crap. We read below:  "The researchers found that same-sex parents are often wealthier, older, and more educated than the typical different-sex couple." 

So better educated children have better educated parents.  So what else is new?  We have known that for a long time. The finding says NOTHING about the family type

I would like to have had a closer look at the original study but it is so far only a conference poster so a lot of detail is missing.  They presented their data in correlational form and appeared to have removed some confounding variables by partial correlation.  They did not apparently  do a full set of partial correlations, it seems.  Since a modern partial correlation program does that systematically, the omission looks suspicious. If they had done a stepwise removal of ALL confounding variables, I am pretty sure that there would have been no main effect left.  Family type would NOT have predicted educational attainment.

The statistics they do provide do however have one very odd feature.  The income of same sex families with children was more than twice as high as the income of same sex couples without children!  That is weird.  What is going on there?  What is behind that difference? Why do Dutch homosexuals fall into such starkly different groups?  Are children a trophy for Dutch homosexuals?  If so, that could greatly influence their treatment and make generalizations to countries outside Nederland very shaky

So the most authoritative finding in the area remains the well-known paper by Doug Allen, who DID control for parental education and found a greatly reduced High School graduation rate among the children of homosexual families.  Allen's data came from the Canadian census


Children of same-sex couples perform better in school than youngsters raised by a mother and a father, according to new research from several European economists.

The researchers found that children raised by same-sex couples had higher test scores in elementary and secondary school and were about 7 percent more likely to graduate from high school than children raised by different-sex couples.

The study by economists Deni Mazrekaj, Kristof de Witte, and Sofie Cabus of Belgian university KU Leuven used government data tracking all children born in the Netherlands since 1995. The Netherlands was the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001 and has generally been one of the most supportive nations for same-sex couples.

"The results indicate that children from same-sex couples outperform children from different-sex couples on standardized test scores at the end of primary education by 0.18 standard deviations," the researchers wrote in their paper. "Our results suggest that children from same-sex couples are 6.7 percent more likely to graduate than children from different-sex couples."

What’s unique about this latest research is that it follows all children born in the Netherlands from 1995 to 2005. The data includes information about the child’s educational performance as well as data on the child’s parents and family income. Prior studies of the children of gay and lesbian parents have often had a small sample size of only a few dozen youngsters or have used US Census Bureau data, which is only a one-time snapshot.

In total, this latest study tracked 1,200 children raised by same-sex couples and more than 1 million children raised by different-sex couples.

The researchers found that same-sex parents are often wealthier, older, and more educated than the typical different-sex couple. Same-sex couples often have to use expensive fertility treatments to have a child, meaning they are very motivated to become parents and tend to have a high level of wealth. This is likely to be a key reason their children perform well in school, the economists found.

"It is difficult for same-sex couples to obtain children, so they have to have a high socioeconomic status," said Mazrekaj, who presented the research at the American Economic Association conference in Atlanta in January. "Research shows that socio-economic status positively influences the school outcome of children."

When the economists controlled for income and wealth [not education??] , there were a much smaller gap between the test scores of children of same-sex parents and children of different-sex parents, although children of homosexual couples still had slightly higher scores.

Many prior studies have found no statistical difference in the educational performance or well-being of children from gay or lesbian couples, but this latest research was also able to control for the effects of divorce, which often has a negative impact on school performance and can skew results.

"Many children come into a same-sex family through divorce of a homosexual parent with a heterosexual partner and therefore did not grow up in a same-sex family," the economists wrote. "Divorce may exert an independent negative effect on school outcomes."

When the researchers looked specifically at children born and raised by same-sex couples, they saw the higher educational performance vs. heterosexual couples. The data from the Netherlands echo an [equally crappy] 2014 study from Australia that found children of same-sex couples are generally happier and healthier than their peers, possibly because gay and lesbian couples share parenting and home work more equally.

What a joke!  You just have to see the title of the 2014 study to see what a crock it is:

Crouch S, Waters E, McNair R, Power J, and Davis E (2014) Parent-reported measures of child health and wellbeing in same-sex parent families: a cross-sectional survey. BMC Public Health 14:635

The data was PARENT REPORTED.  In other words homosexuals SAID their kids were better off.  But they would, wouldn't they?  One wonders why anyone would bother to do such inconclusive research.  They obviously have a great need for affirmation

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The Return of Ancient Prejudices

Victor Davis Hanson
    
In the latter half of the 19th century and early in the 20th century, as Catholic immigrants poured in from Ireland and eastern Europe, an anti-Catholic wave spread over a mostly Protestant United States. The majority slur then was that Catholic newcomers’ first loyalty would be to “Rome,” not the U.S.

Anti-Semitism grew even more deeply rooted, marked by Ivy League quotas on Jewish applicants and exclusionary clauses against Jews in clubs and neighborhoods. It was no accident that the Ku Klux Klan often targeted Catholics and Jews as well as African-Americans.

In the late 19th century, with the influx of Japanese and Chinese immigrants arose the “yellow peril” scare, a racist distrust of supposedly workaholic automatons and unassimilable immigrants whose first loyalty was to their close-knit Asian communities and homelands, not the U.S.

Most of these injustices grew from both original prejudices (as evidenced by slavery) and fears of demographic change. An original population that was mostly British, Protestant and white gradually was augmented by people who were not northern European, often Catholic and increasingly non-white.

The stereotyped hatreds were battled by the melting-pot forces of assimilation, integration and intermarriage. Civil rights legislation and broad education programs gradually convinced the country to judge all Americans on the content of their characters rather than the color of their skins or their religious beliefs. And over the last half-century, the effort to end institutional bias against African-Americans largely succeeded.

But recently, other ancient prejudices have been insidiously returning. And this time, the bias is more subtle, and it can be harder to address than traditional racism against non-white populations. The new venom, for example, is often spread by left-wing groups that claim victim status themselves and thus, by their logic, should not be seen as victimizers.

Progressive senators such as Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) have attacked judicial nominees on grounds that they are Catholic, apparently because the Catholic Church and its affiliates officially disprove of abortion and gay marriage.

Feinstein complained that one appeals court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett, was a dubious choice because “the dogma lives loudly within you.” Hirono claimed that judicial nominee Brian Buescher was suspect because the Knights of Columbus held “extreme positions.” Harris whined that the public-service Catholic organization was an “all-male society comprised primarily of Catholic men.”

Recently, a number of newly elected congressional representatives — Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib — have voiced virulent anti-Israel bias that came off as anti-Semitic. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) compared Jewish settlers on the West Bank to “termites.” CNN pundit Marc Lamont Hill (who has since been fired) parroted the Hamas eliminationist slogan “Palestine from the river to the sea,” which is code for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Universities feel free to discriminate against Asian-Americans because their hard work and excellent preparation often leads to superb grades, test scores and application credentials. In other words, Asian-Americans supposedly distort progressive agendas of proportional representation, disparate impact and diversity by overachieving and being overqualified — purportedly robbing spots from other minority applicants.

Asian-American achievement also disproves the old canard that prejudice makes it impossible to find parity in the United States.

What is behind the rebirth of these old prejudices? In short, new, evolving prejudices.

First, America seemingly no longer believes in striving to achieve a gender-blind, racially and religiously mixed society, but instead is becoming a nation in which tribal identity trumps all other considerations.

Second, such tribal identities are not considered to be equal. Doctrinaire identity politics is predicated on distancing itself from white males, Christians and other groups who traditionally have achieved professional success and therefore enjoyed inordinate “privilege.”

Third, purported victims insist that they themselves cannot be victimizers. So, they are freer to discriminate and stereotype to advance their careers or political interests on the basis of anything they find antithetical to their own ideologies.

The Democratic senators who questioned the morality of judicial nominees’ religion likely would not treat a Muslim nominee in the same manner – although one could make the argument that contemporary Islam has had as many or more problems with gender equity than Western Catholicism has.

Calling any other ethnic group other than Jews “termites” might have earned Rep. Johnson congressional censure. And if professional football and basketball franchises turned away talented but “over-represented” African-American athletes to ensure greater diversity in the same manner that universities now systematically discriminate against Asian-Americans, there would be a national outcry.

What once helped to diminish ancient prejudices was the American creed that no one had a right to discriminate against fellow citizens on the basis of race, gender, class or religion.

And what fuels the return of American bias is the new idea that citizens can disparage or discriminate against other groups if they claim victim status and do so for purportedly noble purposes.

The more attitudes and agendas may change, the more they stay the same.

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Double Standard: Apple Gives Deep State Access To Roger Stone’s iCloud Account – Refused To Violate Privacy of San Bernardino Terrorists

Three years after Apple refused to give the federal government access to the devices used by the San Bernadino terrorists who killed and injured dozens in a mass shooting event, the company has given the office of the Special Counsel complete access to Trump advisor Roger Stone’s iCloud account, reports Apple Insider.

Gateway Pundit reports:

According to the Washington Post, Apple objected to giving the federal government backdoor access to the shooters iPhones, claiming it would “set a dangerous precedent.”

“From the beginning, we objected to the FBI’s demand that Apple build a backdoor into the iPhone because we believed it was wrong and would set a dangerous precedent. As a result of the government’s dismissal, neither of these occurred. This case should never have been brought.”

Fast forward to present, and we see that Apple no longer seems to have the same privacy concerns it once did in 2015. Without any fight, they simply turned over Roger Stone’s iCloud passwords and God knows what else, because Orange Man Bad. The fact that Apple views a political persecution less of a hill to die on than protecting the rights of terrorists who killed and maimed dozens of Americans is quite telling.

More from the Washington Post on Apple’s refusal to turn over access to the San Bernandino shooters devices…

“If allowed to stand, the order in Apple’s case would have forced company engineers to create software to disable a phone security feature so that the FBI could try its hand at unlocking the device by cracking a numeric password. Apple quickly resisted, arguing that forcing it to create such software would violate the company’s constitutional rights and weaken privacy for users around the world.”

Which makes us wonder… what exactly was Apple threatened with by Robert Mueller and the Office of the Special Counsel for them to abandon their firm stance against turning over user data and access to federal investigators? Surely they didn’t reason that two mass shooters were more deserving of their tough stand against government overreach and backdoor programs? There must be some explanation as to how they could give the federal government the power to access our privately held devices and accounts at will right?

You may not like Roger Stone and you may not agree with him. However, he has been charged with non-violent process crimes that have nothing to do with Russian collusion. Robert Mueller’s team has yet to provide one scintilla of evidence that points to real Russian collusion, instead using his unchecked power and un-elected authority to exact political revenge on the people who stopped his pal Hillary Clinton from becoming President.

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Race-obsessed hate from the NYT

The “Grey Lady” serves as one of the nation’s foremost repositories of hate and boasts an all-star team of propagandists and virulently anti-Trump race-baiters.

Today, it’s longtime columnist Charles Blow’s chance to let loose with a primal scream of anguish and despair over Barack Obama being constitutionally term-limited and like so many of his media cohorts, he is directing his rage at supporters of President Trump.

In advance of the president’s address to the nation tonight at the State Of The Union, the NYT’s resident angry black man ripped the border wall as a “monument to white supremacy” during a Sunday appearance on CNN.

Just in case you haven’t noticed, it’s no longer simply enough to be smeared as a racist by the heinous bigots on the left who have now moved on to “white supremacist” as the rhetoric continues to become more inflammatory and race relations continue to be set back decades by fools like Blow and his fellow travelers.

New York Times columnist Charles Blow said on Sunday that a border wall on the U.S.-Mexico border would be a “monument to white supremacy.”

He also accused President Donald Trump of using the border wall for “theater” to bait “white people against people who are not white.”

“And so you keep sending more troops to the southern border because of the brown people,” Blow said on CNN. “You want to build this wall, you know, this monument to white supremacy, as a medieval wall along the border because it’s about brown people.”

Blow said that many people who are in the country illegally “came on legitimate visas” and “did not come over the southern border.” He added that “many of those people are not brown.” The Times columnist, who has on multiple occasions called Trump a racist, said Trump also wants to target the visa lottery program because the visa lottery benefits immigrants from African countries.

Blow also went on Twitter and said anyone who ignores or defends “Trump’s racism” is also “a racist.”

Blow’s bitterness towards white people has often been expressed in the pages of the Times where such wonderful columns such as “Why Blacks Loathe Trump”, “Trump: Making America White Again”,  “White Male Victimization Anxiety” and “Count Me Among the Mob” among dozens of others that would seem to be a better ideological fit on  Louis Farrakhan’s Nation Of Islam blog than the nation’s so-called newspaper of record.

If you are this obsessed, then it’s quite possible that the real racist is the one staring back at you in the mirror every morning.

The sinister shift away from Trump himself to those who support him seems to be borne out of a creeping dread that Democrats will once again implode in a national election so the radicalized left is turning toward demonization of ordinary patriotic citizens who they hope to suppress with their intimidation and thuggery.

One need look no further than how the Covington Catholic students were subjected to a vicious hate campaign by the media including Blow’s employer, the same paper that published a glowing portrayal of the black identity extremists who started it all with their anti-American racist and homophobic slurs.

Shame on the New York Times and CNN for providing this unhinged angry bigot with a platform from which to spew his vile hate speech.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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