It was always counter-intuitive that people unable to restrain themselves from the most degrading encounters with fellow adults could nevertheless be wholesome, protective parents to vulnerable, dependent children. But credulous North Americans accepted it on the authority of "experts" and journalists.
Dawn Stefanowicz has cataloged the acts of media complicity and academic legerdemain in her book about the children - including herself - raised by homosexual partners.
SILENCING THE PROBLEMS OF CHILDREN RAISED IN SAME-SEX HOUSEHOLDSBy Dawn Stefanowicz
Author,
Out from UnderQuoting propagandist Joseph Goebbels, "If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it..." For a long time, powerful media have been complicit with those trying to keep people in ignorance about same-sex parenting by silencing debate, and smothering freedom of speech. The impact on children who grow up with same-sex parents is being silenced.
Before my book,
Out From Under: The Impact of Homosexual Parenting, was published (see Book Review), Canada was in the midst of debating hate crime legislation and same-sex "marriage," I had testified in 2004 at the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs and was concerned that the inclusion of "sexual orientation" as a protected category under hate crime legislation would silence freedom of speech. I felt the public was being duped into believing that there were terrible crimes being committed against "gays" and "lesbians" by heterosexuals.
There are no solid statistics to support this. In addition, the media refuses to mention the significant number of same-sex domestic emotional and physical assaults within their subculture. As well, using the undefined term "hate" eludes the real issue: certain people wanting the sexual license and "human right" to do what they please without detraction or constraint.
By the way, the term "sexual orientation" includes sexual attractions or sexual practices involving a person, group of persons, animals, natural or inanimate objects, and legal or illegal sexual practices which are privately or publicly demonstrated. There are no restrictions based on age, blood relation, or gender. Therefore, pedophilia, incest, bestiality, sadomasochism, bondage, public nudity, and group sex can be protected under the expression "sexual orientation". These are sexual behaviours I was exposed to growing up with a homosexual father.
After my book was published, I contacted CBC, telling them I was available for interviews. I received no queries from them or from other mainstream Canadian media which I had also notified. Instead, the CBC and other Canadian mainstream media continued with their unbalanced content, failing to mention the problems caused to children by alternative homosexual households.
A few brave Canadian independent television shows, however, did interview me. It was not long before the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) was contacted with complaints of alleged hate and homophobia in connection with my interviews. When the CRTC couldn't find anything wrong with my tone or my comments, it then advised these family friendly media outlets that they must henceforth provide "balance" on their programming on the issue, i.e., include the other side's perspective on same-sex parenting, or else have their broadcasting licenses revoked.
This was outrageous since the mainstream media are pro same-sex parenting and are not required to provide so-called "balance" in their programming on the issue. The CBC, for example, uses our tax dollars to spew forth propaganda supporting same-sex parenting. However, small independent media which rely on sponsors and advertisers are required to provide programs providing both perspectives of the same-sex parenting issue.
As a result of the CRTC ruling, the media outlets which originally aired my story have not contacted me for further interviews. I laud the courage of these pro-life/pro-family stations which interviewed me initially on the truth about "alternative" parenting and subcultures which have opened a Pandora's box of sorrows for children. However, because they want to stay in operation with their licenses intact, they must now comply with the discriminatory hand dealt them by the CRTC.
Media Interviews Outside CanadaIn contrast to the disgraceful media censorship in Canada, I was in Ireland in October and spoke before good-sized audiences there, and had a dozen mainstream interviews. By the end of my tour, I was heard by over half of the population of Ireland. In addition, the Washington Times, Michael Medved Show, 30 Days (Fox), Janet Parshall's America and many other U.S. media have covered my book with vigor.
Australia and Hong Kong's print media also have interviewed me. But Canadian media continue to perpetuate the lie that there is no difference between children raised by homosexual and heterosexual parents. Consequently, innocent vulnerable children in Canada are being adopted by same-sex parents despite the fact that this is detrimental to them.
It is not that my story about homosexual parenting is unsupported. Dr. Steven Nock, research methodologist, at the request of the Attorney General of Canada, submitted an affidavit opposed to same-sex marriage in the Halpern vs AG case in 2000 in which he reported over 200 same-sex parenting studies which "contained at least one fatal flaw of design or execution; and not a single one of those studies was conducted according to general accepted standards of scientific research."
When clinical psychologists, Dr. Mark Lerner and Dr. Althea Nagai reviewed 49 same-sex parenting studies, all were found unreliable and the sample sizes too small for relevance.
When Sharon Quick, M.D., a paediatric anesthesiologist, and pediatric critical care physician and former assistant Professor in the Department of Anesthesiology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, reviewed 63 same-sex parenting studies, she found major design flaws, interpretive errors, and unsupported conclusions.
Interestingly, no heterosexual married couples were ever included in any of these studies so you cannot say homosexual parenting is equal or better. In almost every study, "lesbian" single mothers and "heterosexual" single mothers were compared.
The participants were cherry-picked by biased researchers, including "lesbian" participants with higher education and income levels while removing those with mental health issues or criminal records. In most cases, the parent spoke for the dependent child, and in a few cases where children were asked general questions, their responses were qualified.
Dr. Quick reviewed the
Technical Report (TR), published in 2002 in
Pediatrics, the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which was also used as evidence for the American Medical Association's policy statement supporting the practice of same-sex co-parent adoptions.
In the TR, Dr. Quick found that 57 percent of the references were inaccurately quoted. Unfortunately, some of these TR quotation errors have been carried on in the article, "The effects of marriage, civil union, and domestic partnership laws on the health and well-being of children," published in the July 2006 issue of
Pediatrics.The important life-long benefits for children raised in married father-mother home environments cannot be ignored. When Dr. G. Rekers, Professor of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science, Research Director for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Chairman of Faculty in Psychology at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine in Columbia, S.C. reviewed over two hundred cases of children from homosexual households, he found the children... experienced changing living arrangements, varied cultural values, premature exposure to expressed sexuality, addictions by parents and partners, physical health issues, lower life expectancy, multiple partners, varied gender identity expressions and role models. These traumatized the children.
Consequently, many children from alternative households seek therapy to deal with stress, depression, anxiety, sexual confusion, and suicidal tendencies.
Though I loved my father and cared for his partners, by nine years of age, two of my father's partners had committed suicide after breakups with my father. My father later died of AIDS in 1991. None of my father's partners/ex-partners are alive today.
Editor's NotesTo invite Dawn as a guest speaker or book her for an interview, please contact her at Commissioners Court Plaza, 509 Commissioners Road West, Suite #335, London, Ontario, Canada N6J 1Y5 or e-mail at dawnstefano@sympatico.ca.Due to space limitations, footnotes for this article were not included, but are available upon request.
