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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
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Why would you object to a similar national system?
Why are you more invested in the rights of adults to do what ever they want to their children without interference, than you are in making sure that all children have access to accurate information and the resources to keep them healthy and safe?
You can do that andhomeschool. Like @79 points out.
I think @79's post sums up everything I would hope for for homeschoolers. I suspect that being a Yankee has something to do with it.
Peace
It seems to me that the point here is not to shift attention to non-fundie homeschools and not to focus on whether or not the children from such homes are up to snuff for college admission. And I think it's plain to most herein that Dennis's defensiveness is classic in its self-indictment.
The point, at least it seemed to me, was that the fundamentalism itself leads to the ideological indoctrination and thus abuse of children. Inherently so. Because, as I understand this, the ignorance of the "Yeah, I know enough to replace formal education" is accompanied by something much more damaging and dangerous, which is trying to keep their children from encountering any other points of view.
And I don't care where a given belief system falls on the political spectrum; I think all children should be taught to mistrust any belief system that cannot be questioned, just as I think all children should learn to weigh competing belief systems. And, as I plan to tell my daughter over and over as she grows up, if a "family" can only be kept in place by the threat of force, it is hardly a natural one, let alone divinely ordained.
I'm with the camp that these folks' beliefs are inherently abusive, even if a given family doesn't take is so far as those nightmarishly crazy parents who beat their children to death as "discipline" (re: that book To Train Up a Child) or who refuse to take their children to medical professionals because they believe the sky bully will heal them.
What is it about this system in Maine that makes sure that children are kept healthy and safe? Are Maine's home schooled children more healthy and safe than in states without these rules? I don't see what part of it would keep them safe, even in theory. How exactly does a letter of intent and a test keep kids safe?
And then you have places like Germany, where monsters have kept kids locked in basements for decades, even though home schooling is banned altogether in that country. People who do actually decide to isolate kids and live off the grid -- nothing like typical home schoolers -- aren't affected by home schooling bans or home schooling regulation.
My basic objection is: You haven't identified what problem you're solving with Maine's system. What bad outcome is being averted by having parents submit a letter of intent and having kids take a standardized test? Are home schooled kids in Maine better off than the kids from those 11 unregulated states?
The only justification I hear is, "You CAN'T leave this unregulated! You can't have no oversight!"
Why?
"Because it's unregulated!"
Yes, it's unregulated. Why must be regulated?
"Because there's no oversight! CHILDREN!"
You're begging the question.
"Resistance to oversight is proof that you're up to no good!"
So the only justification for oversight is that anybody who doesn't like oversight must have an ulterior motive? Oversight has no reason of its own to exist?
"CHILDREN! CHILDREN! CHILDREN!!!!!!"
Guess what? Not everything in life must be regulated.
The health department doesn't inspect everybody's kitchen. People are feeding children -- CHILDREN!!!! -- food cooked with no oversight! Some people -- some CHILDREN!-- get food poisoning from food clocked at home. True. So? Something Must Be Done! Should I Google up every instance of somebody making their own kid sick with their nasty cooking habits. Collect the anecdotes and then campaign for a massive new home kitchen inspection bureaucracy. Why not? Can't leave it unregulated. Can't have no oversight. Think of the childrens.
I don't even know what good is supposed to come from identifying home schooled kids who don't pass a standardized test. Put them in school? The schools are already full of kids who don't pass standardized tests. The tests just tell us that, yep, they don't pass this test. Now what? Millions of kids every year fail to meet standards. Millions more than the 2 to 3 million home schooled kids in the US.
So a home schooled kid fails some test and you force them into school to join the ranks of schooled kids who are not meeting standards. And whom the school system does't know how to make meet standards. All you accomplish is take the responsibility for the failure out of the parent's hands and put it into the school's. No Child Left Behind was supposed to help everybody's kid meet uniform standards. How'd that work out?
How about first the school system figures out a way to make all its kids meet a uniform national standard, and then come and tell home schooled kids you've got the cure for all their ills? Whatever those ills are -- because still nobody has shown me a shred of evidence that home schooled kids have worse outcomes than schooled kids. If you ask me, the real problem is having poor parents. Address income inequality and your education problem is solved. Children of upper middle class parents have no problem competing with the South Koreans or Finns or whomever. Single parents and parents in poverty aren't home schooling; they're too busy working to get by. Home school kids from from the economic class that we don't need to be worried about to begin with.
And on top of that, you're basically going to ban unschooling. Unschoolers can't meet uniform national standards or meet a set of annual benchmarks. Far from it. That's the point, after all. But what are you saving the unschoolers from? There's untold thousands of adults who were unschooled out there in America now, and they're not unemployed failures. Are they? Show me evidence that these kids have worse outcomes than schooled kids, and I'll support doing something. But doing something for the sake of doing something? No.
Which leads to the crowning irony here. All this concern for children -- CHILDREN!-- is because of hysteria over right wing fundamentalists home schooling. Guess what? The Christianists love structure. They love The Western Cannon. They follow something called The Well Trained Mind. Look it up. Or else they follow The Common Core, an anti-Progressive set of rigid standards by conservative E.D. Hirsch. Throwing tests and benchmarks at right wing Christians doesn't phase them. They love drilling their kids to ace a test on a rigid set of rule-based, authoritarian facts handed down from on high. They follow The Bible! Hello?
The only people affected by benchmarks (read: testing) or standards (read: testing) or oversight (read: testing) are the secularists and hippies and unschoolers. The 30% to 50% of home schooling families who are freethinkers, who started home schooling a century ago and have returned to it during the last 20 years. You push all these thriving kids back into schools to be bullied and told they don't measure up, while all the fundies happily meet your top-down standards.
All for what? What problem are you solving here? Just show me that oversight fixes an identifiable problem and I'll recant. I'll hop on your bandwagon. I'm willing to be convinced, but you haven't shown that this new regulatory scheme helps in any tangible way.
Kids who are in public schools, with their enormous layers of bureaucracy and mandatory reporters are still abused almost at the parents' will. Ask any teacher whether they feel current "accountability" measures are helping or hurting their ability to teach their kids well. You will find it adds many layers of burden and weeds out few to none of the bad apples.
Kids who are already known to DCFS and under their direct supervision are still abused by their parents, often for many years. They might eventually be removed or they might not be, but it very often happens that DCFS supervision does little for the kids involved.
Abusive parents have always taught their kids to lie to other adults ("If you tell them the truth, they will put you in foster care and not feed you...."), justify their own actions ("you deserve this because you won't respect me"), and teach their kids that this is normal behavior. Kids who are abused don't know any different, whether they go to a homeschool or a public school. Public school kids might be able to tell a teacher, but they usually think every parent is like this and it's expected.
Abuse has far more to do with the parents than it does with the schooling situation, and adding regulations seems to do little to stop it. It might make people feel better, like they are "doing something about it," but in real life, it winds up hurting those who were doing well and not helping those who weren't.
and due to the lack of original content from the twins, he's and girlfriend, I think someone doesn't remember the conversation we had that got me banned from polyamory dot com.
Allow me to explain without mentioning the names of the guilty. Quiverfull is the band tabloid writers who think they are some erudite professionals, they are gamers who have with family money who happen to be assholes.
I don't know Dan puts up with it, but just because he obviously cares about equal rites for all families doesn't mean he gives a shit if little siblings trash talk homeschoolers or organizaed religion.
The thing is, it is cowardly, and they way they are going about it it like saying all doms are abusers because of the handful that abuse. But you would surprised at how lax laws are for collecting money for a god cause. So it's not just about being a prick
But if you think this is not the same trustafarian blowhards that running the smear campaign on educating women about predators is victim blaming, than you are insulting your own intelligence.
Don't get me wrong, I hate bigots, I can't stand religious zealots who don't recognize their own hate, but the only thing I hate more is people who know better and do the exact same shit.
The ones I despise are the ones who protest vehemently and then turn around and pull this shit. The same people who abuse their rights as American Citizens when they engage intimidation, when they spread lies that they know damn well are not true or else so exaggerated you wouldn't recognize the story.
the least offence their piss poor journalism is guilty of, is finding one, ONE example blown way out of proportion and claiming that it is something all homeschoolers strife to be.
It's a joke. And the truth is this group is one of THE most controlling of all want to be dictators --- even if it is only presiding over on online community --- you should really hear some of their philosophy.
The demand every freedom and aspect of privacy above and beyond what anyone could possibly ever be, immune to written laws, senses of decency, and demanding respect from the very people they violate. Wait until it's all over and done, because these fools seriously don't quit and they seriously believe they are immune.
Everything they claim is based on lies that require cover up, every instance of proof is nothing more than having access to servers which anyone can have for less than $50 bucks a months
they are pros at agitating people, and that is it. They wouldn't even be good at that it they had to go cold turkey with abusing innocent people.
And if they were anything legitimate, they wouldn't have to lie.
The sad truth is that people are not so stupid these day, and if they didn't seriously take pleasure out of people struggling through emotional grief and pain, they never would have lasted this long anyway.
What of people get excited about instances they can get gullible people to believe fake new?
a real journalist would never risk a bullshit story, and a real editor wouldn't put with them. BUt what can you do, you can't get dire family, hell yu are aren't even allowed to decide to break up with a person.
the bottom line is they depend on lies and fallacy to get by. The only thing they have going for them, is the attack you for calling them of lies. "How dare You victim blame to twelve year old being forced into marriage, and being raped every night by their spouse.
IF this was happening, there be more than the tabloid crew slinging this news. All you have to do to verify where they claim they get the info from, it doesn't exist, and it is NOT in order to protect the victims.
They count on you not taking the time to get publicaly available county records, they are nothing but slanderous manipulators with no scruples. Look into anything they claim, if it's beyond some website, it doesn't exist, I guarantee it
Kids who are in public schools, with their enormous layers of bureaucracy and mandatory reporters are still abused almost at the parents' will. Ask any teacher whether they feel current "accountability" measures are helping or hurting their ability to teach their kids well. You will find it adds many layers of burden and weeds out few to none of the bad apples.
Kids who are already known to DCFS and under their direct supervision are still abused by their parents, often for many years. They might eventually be removed or they might not be, but it very often happens that DCFS supervision does little for the kids involved.
Abusive parents have always taught their kids to lie to other adults ("If you tell them the truth, they will put you in foster care and not feed you...."), justify their own actions ("you deserve this because you won't respect me"), and teach their kids that this is normal behavior. Kids who are abused don't know any different, whether they go to a homeschool or a public school. Public school kids might be able to tell a teacher, but they usually think every parent is like this and it's expected.
Abuse has far more to do with the parents than it does with the schooling situation, and adding regulations seems to do little to stop it. It might make people feel better, like they are "doing something about it," but in real life, it winds up hurting those who were doing well and not helping those who weren't.
there journoterrorist. Techy film hobbists and bored well to do. if its not bullshit they wont say it, they are profiteers no looking to help anyone
When everyone stands up, you won't even be able to exaggerate details
Thank you Dennis for standing up for truth, I am assuming you aren't part of controversy team, Seattle does the best staff that can look like bitterly opposing sides better than anyone. And you can't argue with success, I mean shit, when a writer can argue with himself or the ultimate scam, describe themselves and their behavior and have people but it, now that think about it, they do rank higher than tabloid writers, they just are quite as honest
Yeah, yeah, more ad hominem. That's why nobody comments on this blog any more. Instead of making an intelligent point, you guys just attack each other. So everybody bugged out of this place long ago.
No, I think I just wait til child protection services knocks of my door in a few weeks.
If you read @79, you see that the supervision also includes academic oversight. Is that a problem? Medical evaluations are included as well. Is that a problem?
Nobody says that Govt. oversight is going to be perfect, BUT, is it the best we can provide for the cost? I'm kind of tired right now, but your argument feels like "If we can't catch all the problems, why bother?". Do you seriously believe that the threat of community reprisal doesn't stop abuse? But, with the focus of the conservative right on "Fuck the doomed", why should I be surprised?
The Repubs used to be the "Law and Order" party, now they're the "Govt. Sucks" party. Even Raygun couldn't get elected these days...
Peace
That's a very good point. The Prussians invented compulsory education to instill loyalty to the state, and provide a supply of trained military officers and bureaucrats. Not because they were worried what was best for the children.
Although that still doesn't answer the original question: is there any evidence that the state is not well served by home schooled kids? Do they not go to college? Do they swell the ranks of the unemployed? Do they become criminals? Are they a burden to the state? Compared with schooled kids, is there any evidence that home schooled kids have worse outcomes? If such evidence existed it would be a strong argument to put a stop to the practice, or at least reform it with some kind of oversight.
Because other than that, it seems like a good deal for the state. Doesn't cost anything. Money's tight nowadays, and saving education dollars helps balance the budget.
In answer to your question:
What is it about this system in Maine that makes sure that children are kept healthy and safe?
Haley @79 told us that she is “required to have documentation from a pediatrician that my kids are safe, healthy, and well-fed.”
She also said that she could submit a portfolio of her children’s work instead of having them take a standardized test. The portfolio would be “reviewed by licensed teachers (a better option for kids with developmental delays or disabilities).”
And:
While she is free to teach these subjects any way she sees fit, she does have to prove on a yearly basis that her child is making significant progress in all of the academic subjects required by state law. It gives her the freedom to be creative with her teaching, but not so much freedom that her children will pay the price if she were to be inept.
Teaching is a job, and jobs have metrics and performance reviews. Asking to show that you are capable of doing the job of teaching a child through regular review of that child’s progress, and that you are providing them with accurate information is not unreasonable. Nor is it unreasonable, if indeed a homeschooler is deficient in a subject, to find that out, and provide them with resources so that they can do the best job possible teaching their child.
Regular review of their school work will show if they know that 2+2=4, and that there is such a place as Patagonia, which is kind of the point of getting an education. Being educated, not necessarily the setting in which that occurs.
Unschoolers also often give most/all control of education to their children. One of my best friends ran her own education from the age of 9 and went off to college at 16. It worked for her... but another family I knew who unschooled simply never did anything whatsoever (apart from using the older kids as free babysitters for the younger kids), and when they eventually did put the kids in school, I think the 14-year-old was at a 2nd-grade level.
I don't know entirely what I'm trying to say here, lol (it's late), except that I think unschooling would be very difficult to regulate and/or oversee. I feel like the line between "kooky eccentric hippies" and "neglectful parents" is one I'm not confident in outsiders to interpret. I'm not arguing against regulation/oversight - I like the Maine plan as outlined here - but I just don't know how well it would work in practice. (Yes, it would catch the kids who are 12 and aren't reading - but what would it do if the parents said "yup, Susan doesn't want to learn to read yet, and that's fine"?)
Importantly, "the degree of government regulation has no significant effect on the academic performance of home schooled children." I know the focus in these comments has been on regulating 'other' things besides academic performance. I find the notion that a doctor signing something saying parents are providing adequate nutrition and medical care being good oversight somewhat laughable. My kids see a doctor *maybe* once a year. Unless they were a rack of bones, or in late stages of untreated cancer, how is a doctor going to assess all of that in meaningful way in a 15 minute visit?
And yes, full disclosure: I homeschool my kids. My grade 7 student wrote the SAT last year and scored 1740 -- enough to get him into most colleges.
Importantly, "the degree of government regulation has no significant effect on the academic performance of home schooled children." I know the focus in these comments has been on regulating 'other' things besides academic performance. I find the notion that a doctor signing something saying parents are providing adequate nutrition and medical care being good oversight somewhat laughable. My kids see a doctor *maybe* once a year. Unless they were a rack of bones, or in late stages of untreated cancer, how is a doctor going to assess all of that in meaningful way in a 15 minute visit?
And yes, full disclosure: I homeschool my kids. My grade 7 student wrote the SAT last year and scored 1740 -- enough to get him into most colleges. I don't necessarily agree with every other homeschooler's methodology or ideology, but I do respect their right to homeschool their children. As Dennis said, there's no evidence their doing a worse job than the schools; indeed, my link above is evidence to the contrary. And, if you think that public school kids aren't being indoctrinated, bullied, peer-oriented, or poorly educated, think again.
Imagine if we were discussing rates of domestic violence in heterosexual marriages, another topic for which it's difficult to get peer-reviewed scholarly research because of the degree to which, by definition, domestic violence relies on coerced silence and isolation. Finding research subjects: how do you deal with the very reasonable attempt of an abuse victim to remain silent in attempts to not further incur an abuser's wrath? Interviewing research subjects: how does a scholar assess and then document Stockholm Syndrome? These are just two methodological problems that should plague the consciousness (and conscientiousness) of a serious scholar. (And pause to consider how more difficult these questions get for those trying to advance effective policy solutions.)
Imagine if the dominant focus of that discussion, instead, was to somehow prove that the overall prevalence of domestic violence was low enough to somehow argumentatively exonerate the majority of heterosexual marriages?
What percentage would be low enough for a person to imply, if not say outright, "Fuck that minority who are suffering, just so long as my group appears collectively blameless?"
Do you get that that's what this conversation is doing? If you're hell bent on "proving" that some acceptable percentage of fundamentalist home-schooled children are not experiencing abuse, you're effectively marginalizing those who have been.
Shifting the conversation to regulations state-by-state and whether or not said children out-perform the formally educated also strike me as similar dodges. This website is about *indoctrination* as abuse and helping those who've escaped find productive lives, emotional resolution, and loving relationships. Their suffering should be the point of focus, not the point of apology.
Since we also love "me-search" anecdotes around here, let me share my own experience on this. In my family, women were not allowed to wear pants or to drive. Domestic violence and alcoholism were and are rampant and any family member who challenges the politics of the family is ostracized--with a relish of cruelty and absolutism. My family despised all formal eduction and deemed women intellectually inferior to men by God's design, and thus lacked any real concern for children on the matter to even consider home-schooling (our family was a "keep the kids away from the men to not disturb them" model).
As a child, I somehow internalized this rigid authoritarianism/conservatism as perfectionism, so I excelled in public school and, as a result, was the first in the family to go to college and then onto a PhD at one of the best universities in the world.
If you label me a success story because of academic achievement--and it's confirmation bias that makes you psychologically need to do so in the first place--you would completely miss the point.
@127: you ask what a pediatrician can tell about the condition of a child in an office visit, to which I have to point out, considerably more than if they never see that child at all. And of course it's not just abuse that is looked for, but overall health and if the child is meeting growth and development benchmarks as well.
I understand that some homeschoolers here are feeling defensive, and as if their personal ability to do what is best for their children is under attack, but again, teaching is a job, and it not unreasonable to have a system in place to ensure that that job is being done as well as it can be.
As a former public school teacher for every "the public school couldn't provide the services my [friend|child|friend's child|relative} needed so [I|my friend| my relative] were forced to home-school and today they're just fine" story you've got, I'll wager there are twenty where it's nothing more than fearful parents quaking and hiding in fear of the public schools "corrupting" their child. The cases where the parent of the unfortunate home-schooled are actually competent to teach the child are even more vanishingly small - mostly because such polymaths are rare, even more so as stay-at-home parents. This is so because in most very low resource neighborhoods/zip codes/regions (read: lousy public schools) the highly skilled unemployed population is also vanishingly small. It happens, but it's statistically insignificant.
"Corruption" should be understood to be the influence of any outside information which might counter or undermine the parent's world view. I think people run into definitional difficulties here: what is abuse? Is it physical (corporal punishment?) or just neglect or is mis-education in and of itself a kind of abuse? Social isoloation? Every single home-schooled kid I've ever encountered had big adjustment issues once they hit the real world - many did so successfully, and I'm only providing anecdote, but this one seems ripe for study and I'd bet on the signal:noise being very very strong
There's a sick subculture in the homeschooling culture and your denial of it is sick as well.
Academic performance isn't the focus of this conversation. We're talking about child abuse when the home schooling advocates haven't derailed the conversation.
I'm worried about your kids being instructed by someone who can't discern a reliable and topical source.
Ignoring the plight of these children out of a resistance to homeschool oversight due to a personal reaction of "You're Not the Boss of Me! My Kids Are Fine!" is not only despicable, but ultimately doomed to backfire. Why not get ahead of the problem, and work for a meaniful set of tools to help homeschoolers get the best for their kids, before these stories reach critical mass and knee jerk laws, born of hysteria, get passed?
If it's impossible for parents to prepare their own kids for college and adult life, then where is your evidence that home schooled kids are failing? It doesn't add up? "Vanishingly small" chance of having the necessary skills, yet 2 or 3 million home schooled kids are doing fine? How is that possible?
It's obvious you don't know any home school families. Teens who want to take AP Calculus take approbate classes at community centers, community colleges, private tutors, online courses, or, if qualified, from their own parents. If I don't know how to knit and I want to learn, I don't melt into a helpless puddle. I go sign up for a damn knitting class. It's not that hard to guess how this works.
I keep repeating that real home schooled kids are not isolated and it's like talking to a brick wall. The reason they aren't isolated is that the whole range of educational opportunity is not sitting there in your kitchen. You have get get out of the house and engage with many, many different people in order for home schooling to work at all. Which is why home schooled kids are not socially awkward or limited in their ability to commentate. Quite the contrary: they're more outgoing and articulate than schooled kids because they have to be.
Finally, a point of agreement!
In light of this, what do you make of all the testimony on the website that suggests quite the opposite for the fundamentalist home-schooled, i.e. that children are kept at home precisely to keep them from engaging with "many, many different people" in order to limit (if not eliminate) said children's exposure to feminism, civil rights, gay acceptance and gay communities, basic small-l-liberalism (egalitarianism, plurality of ideas, democracy as consent, fairness, etc.), evolution, the science behind climate change, or other religious beliefs?
Again, you are begging the question. The question is, is there something to turn a blind eye to? Or merely anecdotes?
Nobody favors turning a blind eye to "a significant subculture with in Homeschooling that tends towards isolation and miseducation". You and your pals have been challenged to show any kind of evidence that there is a significant subculture perpetrating these crimes. I can show you parents who put their kids in school who are isolated, and who abuse and neglect their kids. There are known risk factors for abuse and neglect: poverty, substance abuse, single parenting, etc. As identified by the APA, the CDC and many others. These risk factors exist among schooled and home schooled kids. Its the actual risk factors that should draw scrutiny, not incidental factors like schooled or home schooled, gay or straight, red hair or not red hair.
"Why not get ahead of the problem?" you ask? WHAT problem? I beg you: show me what problem. What is reaching a critical mass? How is that you internet warriors are the only ones aware of this supposed problem? Why aren't professional child protective services agencies aware that home schooling is a risk? Or the CDC? Or the APA? Or anybody? How can you be so right about this yet the "problem" you believe exists is an undetectable phantom?
You are the mirror image of the fanatical Christianists that you despise so much. You sound like those who ranted that legalizing gay marriage would lead to all kinds of imaginary doom. That letting gays raise kids would lead to sex abuse. The courts calmly challenged them, as I am calmly challenging you, to simply show objective proof that this minority ought to be disqualified from parenting. And in spite of all the howls of "sick subculture" and other insults, they came up empty handed. You pick out anecdotes about abusive home schoolers they same way the right wing picked out anecdotes of gay pedophiles. It was bigoted slander then and it's bigoted slander now.
The more you spew insults the more obvious it becomes that insults are all you have. You don't have the facts to justify your prejudice, and so you try to smear anybody who stands up to you.
If sending your kids to school were the cure for prejudice, then the 98% of kids who go to school would be free of prejudice. All 98% of them would eschew creationism and other superstition. How's that working out? The number of creationists walking around today is far more than the 2% who were home schooled -- and of course only a portion of home schoolers are religiously motivated, and only a subset of religious home schoolers are fundamentalists.
I can show you examples of atheists in small towns dominated by religion who had to pull their kids out of public school to escape bullying and forced religious proselytizing. There's nothing magical about public schools: all kinds of bad outcomes happen to schooled kids. How many examples of tolerance for bullying gay kids to the point of suicide has Dan Savage shown to you? How many gay kids had to be pulled out of your wonderful public schools to save their very lives?
Which brings us back, again, to the same old question: do you have a shred of evidence that home schooled kids are more likely to be prejudiced against gays or deny climate change or believe in creationism than schooled kids? You have a bag of anecdotes, but to me they're no better than the anecdotes put together by the Christianist ex-gay movement. Cherry picked evidence, which might perhaps be valid for some individual cases but is no basis for generalization.
Hi, new troll!
Homeschooling is bad because it isolates kids from society at large, which provides them with different views and modes of living, as well as (duh) teaches them that there are a wide variety of people in the world.
Please make five angry replies to my comment, like with everyone else! Can't promise I'll read them though.
And you are wrong by the way: I know many home schooled kids. I taught a number of them when they reached the realistic ends of what could be accomplished at home and needed to transition to a public high school for their final years in order to be fully prepared (mostly to take subjects - often college level - their parents were unprepared to teach). I know several today, but not as a teacher. My opinions - perhaps unscientific - are based on my direct experiences.
I'm with you on them needing to be out and participative in their communities, but then @136 said this a lot better than I did: how do youaccount for the very large subculture which is focused primarily on keeping outside (often "liberal") information out?
I don't know that abuse rates are higher - I agree with your skepticism about that. That's why I alluded to a definitional problem. I don't think the public schools do a great job of identifying and intervening in abuse situations and I don't know that the incidence is higher in the self-selecting home-school population than in the general population - I'd be skeptical of this. I do know, however, that the object of what I believe is a majority of home-schoolers - keeping the outside world at bay - is futile since eventually the kids get out beyond. Moreover, an awful lot of them later reject all of their upbringing in the process of rejecting the BS. The fact that such a website as the one in the story even exists is a demonstration proof of that, even if the numbers are low.
Hey, Maddy, if you really believe that "fundamentalism itself leads to the ideological indoctrination and thus abuse of children" then why don't you go pass a law saying fundamentalism is child abuse? Ban fundamentalism. Throw the parents in jail and take their kids away. What better way to teach children to "mistrust any belief system that cannot be questioned"?
Just one reply: home schooling doesn't isolate kids. You'd know that if you knew one thing about home schooling. You'd know that if you knew one home schooling family. Calling me a "troll" is yet another personal insult used to hide your lack of facts to support your accusations. You got nothing so you're bluffing, and it pisses you off that I'm here calling you on it.
But then according to you there's no proof these things happen and when confronted with evidence to the contrary that those kids aren't, and I quote "real homeschool kids".
I have made it clear that I do not oppose homeschooling, but to ignore the bad elements that exist in your community is foolish at the very least.
Yeah, I think what happens with teachers like you is you get the home schooling failures. Parents try home schooling, and for any number of reasons, it doesn't work out. Maybe the kids need more structure. Maybe the parents don't have the motivation. Maybe the family has other pressures: poverty, domestic troubles, job loss. You name it.
They give up home schooling and start school and theres a rough transition period. So teachers like you see all these formerly home schooled kids who don't just smoothly slide right into the school environment and you generalize from that. But consider, the majority of home schooled kids succeed, and you don't see them in your classroom. Your anecdotal evidence is coming from a skewed sample.
And then of course any kid who moves to a new school has trouble. The whole (misguided) rationale for the Common Core is to make it easier for kids to move around the country and seamlessly enter classrooms in a new city or state.
I'd even question your assessment that the former home schoolers you saw lacked social skills, even accounting for the fact that they come from unsuccessful home schooling families. Kids who move from one state to another are shy and withdrawn in the new school, often for considerable time. Why should formerly home schooled kids be any different?
Which, once again, is verified by the research on home schooling that can't find any social disability among home schooled kids. Some studies even suggest they have better social skills, more emotional intelligence, and greater independence from peer pressure.
I could make a web site called "gingers anonymous" and collect stories about abuse among kids who had red haired parents. That doesn't prove red heads make bad parents. I've said repeatedly that I know some home schooled families have abuse, and some have bad outcomes. But that doesn't make home schooling an actual risk factor for abuse.
Data would make it a risk factor, and the data points elsewhere.
"No amount of evidence"? But you've provided zero evidence! Except some anecdotes of abuse, and false teaching. I can give you anecdotes about kids being taught false information in schools, too. I can give you anecdotes about teachers abusing kids. Put two simple words into Google News: "teacher charged". Your eyes will pop out of your head with tales of one teacher after another gone very, very bad.
Do these stories alone prove anything? No. It cuts both ways.
Claiming I'll accept no evidence is false. All I'm asking for is evidence that shows that the rate of abuse is significant. It's the same question you'd ask if someone tried to say gays are pedophiles or red heads abuse kids. Yes, some gays are pedophiles, and some red heads are abusers. But we don't profile them until, at the very least, we see proof that they do so at a rate higher than the norm.
Again, I. Do. Not. Oppose. Homeschooling.
But, again, it is a job and requiring that those performing that job show that they are competent is not unreasonable.
And again, there are fundamentalist Christians who do use it as a tool to isolate and miseducate their children. They are part of your community. Pretending that they are not, is foolish, and dismissing those who have been victimized by that warped brand of your ideology is callous and obtuse.
You're saying the government shouldn't provide oversight on homeschoolers because despite the fact we know the home schooling system is being used to protect abusers, we don't have the specific bit of evidence that would convince you that it necessary. You're a pretty evil person.
Not all home schooled kids are isolated, definitely! I was for a few years of my life, but later on I was put in homeschool groups like choir/drama/etc, and then later on again I went to community college & then college. A lot of my friends were the same way - for some, their parents tended to keep them away from anywhere except church & safe homeschool groups, but they did learn social skills there, and for others, they were given a broad range of experiences, like volunteering, military-auxiliary training for kids, sports, dance, etc.
Other homeschool kids I knew, though, were completely isolated. I only knew them through home-church.
My point is that there is a wide range of homeschoolers and a wide range of homeschooling experiences, and that not only are some kids completely isolated, but others are heavily controlled (only 'safe' spaces where they won't hear anything their parents don't want). When I cut my hair and went to college I became persona non grata with some homeschool families because I was a bad example to their girls (unfeminine, independent). When my parents got divorced we were instantly dropped by a looooot of people.
I just don't think you can blanket say "real home schooled kids are not isolated".
" They are part of your community."
Fundamentalists are part of the homeschoolers community, or part of the community at large to which Dennis belongs?
Mr. Dennis,
You keep saying we have no examples of... Homeschoolers that work in a system of Govt. oversight? You mean like @79?
I keep repeating Lissa's points because I agree with her: Home schooling is fine, BUT the same rules for public education oversight should apply. If you are whining about the standardized tests that everybody going through public education must take part in (thus standardized), why? Does testing what comes out of your better-than-public educated students taint what they've learned? For that small segment of privately educated students the tests just represent an opportunity to show how well they're doing. Homeschooling (like breastfeeding) is a great option to raise healthy children.
Peace
Okay, let me take a crack at the "why regulation" question you keep asking by drawing a parallel:
We have a Fennec Fox. Fennec Foxes are the smallest naturally occurring canids. They are indigenous to the Sahara and Sub-Sahara regions in Northern Africa. My little male is of average size and weighs about three pounds. As I am sure you can infer from his size, he is not a danger to me or to anyone else.
The federal government (USDA) regulates the breeding of Fennec Foxes and an international treaty (CITES) regulates their movement across international lines. Additionally, most states regulate the possession of Fennec Foxes (think "minimum standards of care with random inspections to ensure those standards are met.") They are also often regulated at the county level.
Some exotic animals are even more regulated than Fennec Foxes. For example, if I wanted to keep an endangered cat, in addition to both being subject to all state and county laws and to needing a USDA license, I would also need a USDI license. If I was found to be in violation of the terms of my USDI license, I would be subject to roughly a $60,000 fine and up to five years in prison.
All of this to protect small animals.
Now, do the majority of people who keep small exotic animals mistreat them in any way? Absolutely not. My facilities and standard of care exceed those of my local zoo and my local zoo is one of the top rated zoos in the country. But even so, we are all still subject to all sorts of rules and regulations. And we cheerfully welcome random inspections because we know that it is the best way to make sure small exotic animals receive proper care and to ensure that they are not mistreated.
So tell me this: do you honestly believe that children should receive less protection than animals?
Some kids in school are isolated. Lots of them -- all of them even -- if you read any YA novels. Isolation seems to be the #1 theme of teen fiction. And some red haired people are isolated. Some gay people are isolated. You have no evidence that being a home schooler makes you isolated. You guys think you have a hypothesis that says that the nature of home schooling leads to isolation, but I've shown you that in fact the nature of home schooling works against isolation.
Now it's your job to get some data that says isolation is more prevalent than among schooled kids and families. No data? We call that prejudice. Can't see past your prejudice? We call that bigotry.
@150
Where did I say there are no examples of home schoolers that work with oversight? Can you quote me?
I said you have zero evidence that the regulation scheme in Maine is necessary. Zero evidence that it's doing anything useful. You haven't shown any evidence that home schoolers in the 11 states with no regulation are worse of than those in Maine.
@152
I don't know anything about foxes. If you came to me and said, "We must regulate foxes!" my first question would be, "What problem are you going to solve by regulating foxes?" I'd also perhaps ask if countries or states that regulate foxes are better or worse off than those who don't regulate them.
I could use the same argument you're using to demand that the health department inspect every home kitchen. For the CHILDREN! Or I could say CPS needs to check up on the children of red headed parents. I could ask, "Do you honestly believe that children of red heads should receive less protection than animals? Animals!"
It's actually the precise argument that right wingers tried to use to say that we shouldn't let gay people get married and raise kids. Read Judge Walker's ruling against Prop 8. If you want to deny rights to a particular minority, or subject a minority to additional scrutiny, or give them extra burdens, you need to show cause. Asking gay couples to file thousands of legal documents that approximate marriage is an undue burden. Asking home schoolers to jump through hoops is an undue burden. If you want to make them jump through hoops, you have to show proof it is necessary.
I can't figure out how you guys can be so positive you're so right when you don't have any data to back it up. You're exactly like the fanatics who are convinced that gay parents are up to no good and you bristle when anyone says it's your job to prove it. You accuse anybody who doesn't share your prejudices of evil motives instead of taking a look at your own assumptions.
You just called dreadnought07 a liar. She was home schooled and described her experience and the experience of other homeschooled kids she grew up with. You just used YA fiction ( o_0 wtf? ) to dismiss that lived experience and characterized her as a bigot.
Wow.
Oh wait. She must not be a "real" homeschooled kid.
Since in the case of @79 being in ME, what she describes is the Law. No one is going to openly present themselves as defying said Law, and therefor I can't provide a comparison. However, I CAN present an example of said Law not being of undue hardship (@79), and that is the best I can do.
If you find the Law as it exists unreasonable just because you have no comparison to what things would be like otherwise, or whether the it entails the most efficacious approach, I can't provide proof one way or the other. I do NOT dispute the right and potential benefits of homeschooling, I simply don't like abandoning the fraction of a fraction of home schooled students that don't receive an adequate education because their instructors aren't held to a minimal standard of competence.
I am not a lettered expert in primary and secondary education, though having a couple of children does give me an understanding of how difficult a task it is (and how useless a graduate level knowledge can be without the ability to adapt it to beginners). My experiences (with my children's educators) have ranged from unsatisfactory to awesome, but on the whole effective. Ultimately, the answer to the question of whether I could've done a better job myself is absolutely not. Can I cherry pick and complain about the places things fell short for my children? Of course. But I have to grade the system as effective, and the Romney implemented standardized testing program as bearing that out.
Peace
I have a deep resentment of fundementalists and I feel so bad for kids who are brought up that way. The truth is that there's no data to show that homeschooling is linked to higher abuse rates. I have serious doubts that regulating the homeschool process would make a bit of difference for those who are. Instead of throwing up a bunch of hoops for homeschool families to jump through (even the "bad" homeschoolers can jump through hoops, by the way, negating the necessity of those hoops in the first place), maybe we should invest in outreach and support.
The bigger argument here is an interesting one. How much control should parents have? Who makes that call?
As I've stated above, I'm not an expert in homeschooling. That being said, any Koch funded outfit (such as your think tank) would almost certainly cause me to have serious doubts about the bias presented in their "wares".
Peace
@30
homeschoolers don't need to prove jack to anyone, if they are not being abusive, which the authors of every link in this post have wayyyyyyyy too many conveniently not mentioned underlying motivations.
When revenge in the major motivator, I don't think such persons should have any say what so ever when others are seriously laboring toward a solution.
Because all it does is waste everybody's point.
You hate Christians, I'll jot that down and we'll reconvein when you need help with an asshole Christian, because then we have some common ground that is workable, because I hate assholes too. But because I don't Christians for practicing their religion, and because this is America, just so you know, I will 99.9999% of the time not be on your side for more govt. intrusion into any citizen's life
and that my claim will hold true no matter what so tabloid or pseudo-tabloid, weekly or even daily published newspaper. For the most part, it because their reason for publishing has absolutely nothing to do with reporting of facts so that people can make informed decisions.
Media and Jots are responsible for a significant portion of a lot of what's wrong with America, which is the root of the world's problems
Now then!
Your argument contains a pretty severe logical fallacy.
You are suggesting that regulating home schooling would be imposing unique (and possibly punitive) regulations on a minority. And you think it's unfair to impose unique (and possibly punitive) regulations on a minority. And you're right, imposing unique (and possibly punitive) regulations on a minority IS unfair.
But
People who want to teach children in a school setting are already regulated. Every single teacher in every single public school in the United States is subject to a whole slew of regulations. So subjecting homeschooling teachers to regulation would NOT be unique to that minority.
Nor would it be punitive, and here's why: the regulations that public school teachers are subjected to are not in place to punish teachers. They are in place to establish a standard of care and to ensure that teachers adhere to that standard. And history is full of examples of why it is important to establish laws and regulations to protect the least among us.
So while we could argue back and fourth all day about whether or not the regulations applied to public schools are beneficial, the fact remains that they exist. And ceasing to allowing home schools to be exempt from those regulations wouldn't be punishing a minority; it would be applying the laws evenly.
(As an aside: your Prop 8 example is a non-starter. Prop 8 was about banning gay couples from marrying, not making them get a marriage license like everybody else. No one is suggesting that homeschooling be banned, just that people who do it get a "marriage license" first.)
Guys, you're both dicks.
Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for your thoughtful observation, and topical contribution to the discussion. Your opinions are important to us, and we appreciate your input!
Thank you again
Yeah I have a dick. So?
Peace
When someone tells me "this horrible shit happened to me", I don't dismiss it as "some scary story". I listen and I try to understand. Because I'm a free human.
You don't want us to listen, nor to understand, because you're not a free human, you're a spokeperson.
Be honest and tell us what is your vested interest in fundie homeschooling.
Are the homeschooling parents you know lefty, urban, highly educated, older parents? Because that's not the same demographic as the rural, fundamentalist Christian families these children reporting their experiences come from.
I have some internet contact with parents who are raising kids this way--homeschooling 6 or 8 kids, some with special needs, in small towns, with strong Christian faith. Simply from the parents' descriptions of their lives, the kids don't get much contact outside the family and church. It's not like the urban homeschoolers I know, with clubs and sports and resource centers; instead, these kids' lives are narrowly circumscribed, by their parents' intention.
The parents give every appearance of trying to do their absolute best for their kids. But just imagine--parenting, teaching, caring for 8 kids, 24 hours a day. And your neighbors think you're crazy for homeschooling, so you can't develop deep relationships with them. You're pretty sure that the dominant culture is wrong about a lot of things, so you're suspicious of a lot of the info you see. Your church is a resource, but it can be complicated to admit to people there that you're struggling. And when your kids have challenging behavior, you don't have a principal's office to send them to to get them out of your hair while you cool down. Your behavior-management advice isn't coming from the school psychologist, it's coming from online forums--and we all know what a *fantastic* source of rational advice those are. And meanwhile, the baby isn't sleeping at night and the toddler is chewing on electrical cords and you're worried the second-grader is dyslexic and the teenager says she hates you--all the normal, incredibly hard stuff. All at once, all the time.
Seriously, sit down and imagine this. If you can picture doing this, for the 30 years or whatever it takes to raise all those kids to adulthood, and *not* screwing up the kids, then you don't know shit about what parenting actually involves.
Hell, I wasn't homeschooled, and our family could have used a little more safety net too. Raising non-fucked-up kids is HARD. It takes a village, as they say. Seems like helping families do their best for their children is something we can all agree on, right?
Thank you. You put it both more succinctly and eloquently than I did in my many attempts above.
Why is it that you have to sit down and imagine all this screws up kids? How come you're so positive this is happening to all these kids because of home schooling, yet you're the only one who knows about it? How come CPS professionals can't detect it? How come you know about it but the CDC and the APA can't find any evidence that home schooling is causing this problem? You're painting some nightmare scenario and your imagination is running away with you. Yes some home schooled kids live in horrible homes, but so do some kids with gay parents and some kids with black parents. If you want to target a minority, you need to show cause.
You realize the states with the most regulation of home schooling are Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Vermont? And the states with the least regulation are Alaska, Oklahoma, Texas. Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah... Rural states. Christian evangelical states.
Yet in a small town "your neighbors think you're crazy for homeschooling"? Your small town neighbors won't talk to you because you're a fundamentalist Christian?
The people in small towns who are isolated are atheists, Muslims, gays -- maybe you should pass a law saying anybody in a small town who doesn't fit in should have their kids taken away? Or at least have CPS on their doorstep?
What I would to is lay the blame where it belongs: small-minded prejudice that rejects families for being different. Don't blame the victim, blame the oppressive social order that demands conformity.
It's nice to imagine that every school has enough psychologists on staff to give all this great advice to every family that needs it. Perhaps you're picturing a very wealthy school district? If every school did have that level of resources, you'd probably be able demonstrate lower rates of abuse and neglect among schooled kids than home schooled. One reason many parents choose home schooling is that the only school option that have is an underfunded, overstretched school that is failing the kids already there. In many cases, even bad home schooling can't do worse than their failing schools. Home schooling didn't create that problem and regulating home schooling won't fix it.
The reality is that the schools of the 99% are not that great, and that's one reason why schooled kids aren't measurably better off than home schooled. Making home schooled families jump through hoops doesn't address that problem. It makes underfunded schools worse off by pushing home schooled kids into school, while adding no funding. It wastes money that should be spent helping families with real risk factors for abuse, not imaginary risk factors.
But like most reasonable people, if anybody were to show that home schooling families were at greater risk than average of neglect or abuse -- or a subset of home schooling families in a given context, like a small town -- then I'd be the first to support directing additional resources to detect that abuse and prevent it. But I wouldn't send CPS after the children of gay parents or black parents or home school parents based on anecdotes collected on a web site.
Also we don't have to imagine anything. Homeschool Anonymous not only gives us some information on the plight of some homeschooled kids badly served by the process, but also links to other blog, websites and support groups of other refugees from fundamentalist groups who used homeschooling to control and isolate their children. And hey! What about dreadnought07 right here in comments! They gave their story too!
But I forget, for you there is no evidence, unless there is and then it's all just lies from people who weren't "real homeschool kids".
You still owe dreadnought07 an apology.
Would you please quote what I said which I need to apologize to dreadnought07 or anyone else for?
The only straw man here is the silly accusation that anyone is denying that any home school kids were ever abused. One may acknowledge that abuse has occurred among a minority without advocating discrimination against that minority. Asking home school parents to face extra scrutiny is discrimination.
Suggesting that CPS is the logical agency to address this isn't a straw man. CPS is the generic name for the agency that deals with child abuse. Because that seems to be the most urgent issue that many here want to respond to -- forget about (unproved) academic deficiencies -- what we're hearing is "something must be done about the child abuse problem."
I guess you could invent some other euphemism for CPS to call the agency that targets home schooling families for extra scrutiny to uncover hidden child abuse. But what's in a name? If their job is to sniff out child abuse, then we call that child protective services, or CPS.
What if somebody created a website called Gay Parents Anonymous and cherry picked all the worst stories they could find of gay parents abusing kids? Couldn't we cite all sorts of reasons why being gay would lead you to be isolated? We could actually say homophobia causes mental health problems and therefore makes them bad parents. Is that kind of victim blaming is acceptable? Would we then say, "Something Must Be Done about the gays!" Or shouldn't we rather say, "Yes, some gay parents go wrong, but we shouldn't go out of our way to check up on gay parents because having gay parents is not a known risk factor for child abuse?" Would we then have to endure accusations that we're denying that any kids of gay parents were ever abused? Would be be called apologists for a sick gay counterculture, so secretive that nobody can prove it's very existence?
The best response fundamentalist parents is to ensure we treat everyone equally. Trying to stamp out quiverfull families or harass fundamentalist families is only going to reinforce their sense of persecution and justify their extreme teachings. You'll drive them further underground, and ironically isolate their kids more than you imagine they're isolated now. Showing that an enlightened society treats all groups equally — even a despised minority — deflates the whole Christianist worldview.
But...
Yes, Dennis is dismissing the testimonies and networks on those websites out of hand in some posts while rationalizing away in others. But his attempts to use sociological data to argue that these accounts of suffering over overblown, over-counted, or misreported means that he still is successfully diverting people away from the very topic at hand.
Take, for example, bringing up child protective services. He's not acknowledging--at all--that the ideological value system of rigidly fundamental families can foster abuse in ways not easily accounted for or countered by social institutions authorized to intervene. Large numbers of people internalize these value systems unaware, uncaring, or too afraid to examine the pain and suffering those value systems cause. That's why I mentioned Stockholm Syndrome in one of my earlier posts. To make another point, those who do see these belief systems for the fascist fear-driven sex-phobic spiritual cudgels that they are risk real ostracism and life-long pain in coming forward and speaking out against them. (To put it more personally, he also owes me an apology for dismissing my story out of hand; I was disowned by my militia-right openly-white-supremacist hyper-patriarchal anti-science family. Even if it turns out that I'm just 1 data point out of 10,000, I wouldn't want that percentage of children to suffer as I did.)
We cannot have, and Dennis knows it which is why he keeps mentioning it, an open society if we feel entitled to send in social workers and threaten removing children to foster care just because we don't like what a given family believes (or denies) or teaches (or avoids teaching) their children. Personally, I think the anti-vaccine and a-gendering and home-birthing folks on "our side" can be as dangerous to their own children as these folks in many ways, but I'm not going to be advocating ripping those children from their homes any time soon as any meaningful or moral solution to any belief system I personally reject. To turn this conversation into that is not only a straw man, it's also an intellectually dishonest diversion that attempts to misuse liberalism against itself.
And, again, nothing in the original post was about government regulation of home-schooling, academic studies of home-schooling versus the bias-driven cherry picking of political organizations with a stake on one or another side of the issue, or comparing the test scores or college admission rates of the home-schooled to other young adults. Those are all important discussions, but they are being advanced in this forum to get away from the topic at hand, which is the belief system these people hold and impose on their children and the efforts of some of those children to heal as adults.
As RCA put it in @169, these adults aren't complaining about inadequate trigonometry lessons.
To end with an explosive aside, this conversation reminds me of many a classroom in graduate school where the focus of any conversation on race was driven by a need to prove the whites in the room innocent. Where even saying "white privilege" had college undergraduates turn into toddlers storming, spitting and raging that the word "privilege" means that the professor was calling them a KKK member. Or where a conversation on domestic violence or rape had to stop, again and again and again, to note the simple truth that "No, not all men are batterers or rapists," or endless debates about whether or not the statistics are accurate or men are falsely accused and destroyed as a result. (It's amazing how a subset of men suddenly become fanatical about accurate statistical models when rape is the topic at hand.) Again, I ask, what "What number [of women raped in their lifetimes] would be acceptable to you so we can move on?" These are all bullshit defense mechanisms, not sincere attempts at conversation. It's simple: a rejection of compassion or empathy.
And that? A rejection of compassion or empathy? That is the fundamental point of disagreement between myself and my former family.
Care to quote anything I said which "dismissed" the anecdotes out of hand? Where did I say they were "overcounted"? They're not counted at all, that's the problem. That's why they're overblown: without a count relative to the population, anecdotes don't tell you what you need to drive social policy. To be truly fair, you need to start correcting for other factors, like substance abuse, poverty, job loss, mental illness, and so on. When you correct for the relevant factors, you learn whether home schooling is actually a risk or merely an incidental detail. If fundamentalism is a risk factor, is it a larger or smaller risk factor if the kids are in school? Anecdotes alone won't tell you the answer.
You can brainwash kids and still send them to school. Do I need to list all the cases of children who were abused for decades without their teachers ever suspecting? Forget about all the cases where the teachers themselves were the abusers and nobody had a clue. We can start adding up those anecdotes if that's what it takes. Or you can raise kids totally off the grid, as abusers in places like Germany have done, and the pervasive bureaucracy is none the wiser.
That's why this kind of outrage-by-anecodte falls down. Not only do you start harassing innocent people, you actually start neglecting those most in need of help because you're on a witch hunt, instead of practicing enlightened, data-driven public health.
The comment at 154 agrees with everything I've been saying: some kids are isolated. Some isolated kids are home schooled, some are schooled. And so if you want to target home schooled families for special surveillance, then you need to show cause.
What do you think you're going to accomplish by making this about butthurt? What are you going to accomplish by making this about me? Do you think I'm going to get any apologies for all the accusations that I'm here to cover up for child abuse? That maybe I'm one of them?
It's all so much ad hominem. Even if you succeed at proving that I'm a "bad, bad man", so what? Are you going to get the legislature to pass a new home schooling regulation because some guy on the internet is not nice?
No matter what you think about me, you're not likely to change one thing about they way home schooling is regulated or not regulated without any data to cite. Sure, maybe you can rile people up and pass some ill-thought law based on anecdotes, but the courts have not greeted such laws with open arms. Look at what happened to Prop 8 -- they had no data to justify their attacks on gay families, so the courts struck it down.
Yes, I'm concern trolling as far as that goes, but it remains true: you've got a tough row to hoe if you try to push this cause without any data on your side.