11 Times Dumb

Last week, in the interest of providing "fair and balanced" coverage of Texas' proposed gay foster parent ban, CNN gave airtime to Cathie Adams, a prim hatchet lady representing the Texas Eagle Forum. If it was 1963, you can imagine her ideological ilk being front-and-center in the pack of Dallas hate-fraus that attacked U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson during his visit there shortly before JFK was killed.

In arguing against allowing foster children to be placed in same-sex households, Adams repeatedly cited a study that children in same-sex households were 11 times more likely to be sexually abused than children in differently-sexed abodes. Since having a split-screen shouting match is what passes for cogent analysis in today's media landscape, no one at CNN bothered to make Adams explain where she got the "11 times" statistic.

Not surprisingly, a cursory examination of the statistic by noted socialist rag The Wall Street Journal debunks it as bullshit. Adams has since been forced to admit she overstated her case, but that admission won't reach nearly as many people as her initial falsehoods did.