Focus on the
Family liars or idiots?

Focus on the Family can not seem to accurately interpret a psychological survey to save their lives.

Sense Monday, two different psychological researchers have complained that their works have been misrepresented and misinterpreted by James Dobson's group.

On Monday, Elizabeth Saewyc, an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia, criticized Focus on the Family for drawing unreasonable conclusions from her research. Her work centered around the higher than normal suicide rates of teenage lesbians. Focus on the Family concluded that the higher rates should be attributed to pro-gay advocates telling gay teenagers that they were born that way. Saewyc responded in a statement to the Canadian press by saying, "the research has been hijacked for somebody's political purposes or ideological purposes and that is worrisome."

In their own defense Focus on the Family released an article to the Canadian press invoking research done by Dr. Robert Spitzer from Columbia University. His work also studied the higher than average suicide rates amoung homosexuals. Spitzer responded to Focus on the Family's conclusion that the higher rates of suicide were linked in any way to gay-advocates promoting a born-gay theory by saying, "Although a third of the subjects in my study reported having had serious thoughts of suicide related to their homosexuality, not one of them blamed the gay rights movement's advocating a 'born-gay' theory of homosexuality as the cause of their suicidal thinking."