Big Science Pushes Gay Marriage

Is it the business of science to convert people to support “gay marriage”?  Look what the AAAS just published.

A homosexual doctoral candidate at UCLA, with the help of a Columbia University political science professor, just published an advocacy piece in Science Magazine, dressed up as a controlled experiment, promoting gay marriage (the only “control” was support for recycling).  The experiment was noticeably lopsided, lacking any attempt to persuade people to support traditional marriage.  Now, all the science media are jumping in to celebrate the new “findings” on how to convert straight people to supporters of gay marriage using a short, scripted interview.  Laura Geggel says on Live Science, “Short Talk Can Change People’s Views on Marriage of Same-Sex Couples.”

The student, Michael LaCour, shown in a UCLA press release, hired his friends at the Los Angeles LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) Center as canvassers.  All of them supported gay marriage.  Half, reportedly, were straight; the other half gay.  The Science Magazine paper calls the LA LGBT Center their “partners” — “Canvassers were recruited and trained by the Los Angeles LGBT Center, our nongovernmental organization partner.”  Using scripted conversations, the canvassers went door-to-door to see if they could get opponents of gay marriage to change their minds.  According to the paper, many did.

LaCour and Green began by identifying California precincts that had supported the ban on gay marriage, eventually settling on an especially conservative area of Southern California. They then used voter rolls to invite every voter in those precincts, as well as their housemates, to participate in an Internet survey on politics, including only two questions about support for same-sex marriage….

The average length of these conversations was only 22 minutes, but the visits had dramatic effects.

In follow-up surveys three days later, the researchers found that attitudes were unchanged among the voters who discussed recycling and those who weren’t visited by the interviewers. But among those who spoke with canvassers about gay marriage, support had jumped eight percentage points.

“The change was equivalent to transforming a Midwesterner into a New Englander on the issue of gay marriage,” quipped Green, a highly regarded authority on research methods in the social sciences.

There’s no question about LaCour’s bias in this “experiment,” because the UCLA press release has him speaking of supporters of traditional marriage as “those who deny marriage equality” – a buzzphrase no conservative would ever use.  He also speaks of “prejudice” against gay marriage, but not of prejudice against traditional marriage.

With this success in his resume, LaCour wants to test other ways to push his leftist views.  “The issue LaCour and Green were studying was Americans’ support for gay marriage, but LaCour is in the process of replicating the results with another hot-button issue, abortion rights,” the press release says. “He hopes to eventually test whether a similar approach could shift people’s attitudes toward undocumented immigrants.”

Update 5/20/15: LaCour has been forced to retract the paper because he fabricated data. Science Magazine moved swiftly to announce the retraction after Green raised concerns about the data and requested the journal retract the paper. A follow-up study apparently got very different results, and LaCour has admitted to “misrepresenting some data,” although he has been sluggish in writing his own retraction. “In the meantime, Science is publishing an Editorial Expression of Concern to alert our readers to the fact that serious questions have been raised about the validity of findings in this study.” It’s not clear why it took six months for the fraud to come to light. PhysOrg relates that the fraudulent story had ripple effects around the world: “The article in Science received widespread news coverage in December, including articles by the AP, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.” LaCour is claiming that he “accidentally deleted the data”—a strategy from the Hillary Clinton playbook?

Hey, frogs in the pot, are you noticing how hot the water is now?

50 years ago, “gay marriage” was unheard of.  In fact, in the entire history of civilization, the concept would have seemed bizarre, if not evil.  Even in ancient Greece, where homosexuality and even pedophilia were rampant, “marriage” was always defined in heterosexual terms.  Just 10 years ago, Clinton and Obama were against it, and were supporters of laws against it, until they slowly “evolved” into supporters just a few years ago.  Over the years, homosexual couples had every right granted to them bit by bit, but lacked that special word, “marriage.”  Majorities in many states voted against gay-marriage initiatives, including liberal California.  Many of these laws were overturned by leftist judges, some of them openly gay themselves (talk about conflict of interest).

Straights were told that if they just gave in, and let the gays have marriage, everything would quiet down and they wouldn’t bother us any more.  But then, supporters of Prop 8 in California were targeted for harassment.  We watched earlier this year as the well-qualified web expert and CEO Brendan Eich lost his job at Mozilla when his bosses learned he had donated $1,000 to the Prop 8 campaign years prior (Fox News).  We are seeing small businesses persecuted and fined if they do NOT cater to gay couples.  It may not be long before this website is condemned, and maybe shut down, for daring to mention that gay marriage is not a good thing.  Are you noticing how hot the water is now?

The LGBT people will stop at nothing but outright violence against anyone who dares question them.  In this “experiment,” they tried the gentle nudge approach.  If it works, LaCour wants to nudge conservatives away from other hot-button issues, like abortion and immigration.  Soon, it will be a crime to oppose the state’s required beliefs.  Thought crimes will be punishable by fines, imprisonment, or death.  If you don’t think so, look how fast this has all happened, and how history has shown what totalitarian regimes can do.

But aside from all this, look at what a sloppy “experiment” this was: no controls, no attempt to involve conservatives, no attempt to hire members of pro-family organizations as canvassers, no attempt to try to convince anyone to support traditional marriage, no criticism of the interviews by opponents of gay marriage, no attempt to include conservative, pro-family researchers in the team, no monitoring of the degree of coercion of the canvassers, and no consideration of possible fears of repercussion by interviewees if they answered “incorrectly.”  Look at how they shoved aside any concern over privacy rights by garnering information on how people voted, and specifically targeted conservatives.  This was pure advocacy, and now it has the imprimatur of “science” behind it, being published by the AAAS in America’s most prestigious “science” journal, Science Magazine.  (Both authors list their expertise as “political science.”)  Look at the Editor’s Summary: no calling attention at all to any of these flaws:

Dialogue opens the door to attitude change

Personal contact between in-group and out-group individuals of equivalent status can reduce perceived differences and thus improve intergroup relations. LaCour and Green demonstrate that simply a 20-minute conversation with a gay canvasser produced a large and sustained shift in attitudes toward same-sex marriage for Los Angeles County residents. Surveys showed persistent change up to 9 months after the initial conversation. Indeed, the magnitude of the shift for the person who answered the door was as large as the difference between attitudes in Georgia and Massachusetts.

We can expect to see the LGBT community shoving this paper in the face of pro-family conservatives, and using it in court to show the benefits of nudging the last remaining “deniers of marriage equality” to get with the program.  We can expect more persecution of churches and businesses who won’t obey the thought police.  We can, that is, unless the frogs get out of the pot and start making some racket, like a few states are pushing back against allowing boys in “gender neutral” girls’ bathrooms.  But beware, these LGBT people, many of them, are some of the most vile, foul-mouthed, vicious individuals you can imagine, filled with rage against the “hate crime” of denying marriage to homosexuals.  I know this from experience in Twitter debates and my JPL trial.  It is shocking what some of these people will say and do.  While making up a very small segment of society, homosexuals’ influence vastly outweighs their numbers.  It’s all part of a plan some rich homosexuals plotted years ago, as documented in David Kupelian’s book, The Marketing of Evil.

If you are one of those straight-bashers, let’s have a little dialogue, shall we?  Remember, the issue is not about hate or stopping your freedom, but just about whether the word “marriage” should be redefined in our time to mean something it never did before.  Is it wrong for me to disagree with that?  If you say yes, would you acknowledge that most atheists and evolutionists agreed with my position 50 years ago?  Does morality evolve?  If it does, then you have no claim to believe your position is morally right.  It’s all about power, isn’t it?  Are you prepared to live in a world where morality is defined by those in power?  Beware!

For those who accept Lacour and Green’s strategy for changing opinions, let’s see where that could lead.  How about an experiment on recruiting young people for ISIS?  How about an experiment nudging people to accept beheading?  How about an experiment to change people’s minds about cannibalism?  See our satire on Cannibal Rights and consider whether it is outlandish any more these days when anything goes.