Playing Fast and Loose with the Evidence

In some circles being a bit selective with the evidence can be risky business. But when it happens in certain social and political arenas, it tends to just become the accepted way of doing things. Indeed, our social engineers have made an art form of this. Ideologues who have revolutionary social changes in mind are quite happy to selectively use information and facts to promote their schemes.

They seldom let facts and the evidence get in the way of pushing their agenda. Indeed, they often have to rearrange information and misinterpret facts in order to get away with their radical agendas. This is happening all the time, and sadly these ideologues are well entrenched in the bureaucracies, and are funded by our tax dollars.

Plenty of examples of this can be presented. A recent one concerns a report put out by the Victorian Law Reform Commission entitled “Assisted Reproductive Technology and Adoption: Final Report”. It argues that our laws should be widened to allow singles and lesbians to get access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART), and even calls for same-sex adoption rights.

I have examined the lengthy process leading up to this final report elsewhere. (See these two papers: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2004/01/19/playing-against-a-stacked-deck/ and
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2005/05/17/whose-interests-are-being-served/ ) There I have documented the bias, the agendas, the selective use of evidence, and the refusal to listen to what it admits are “a significant number of submissions” that argued against granting ART access to singles and lesbians, and instead argued for putting the interests of the child ahead of the agendas of adults and activist minority groups.

It seems that the VLRC has simply gone through the motions, pretending to be conducting a disinterested and impartial inquiry, when instead it appears to have been pushing an agenda all along, with the result we have here being fully expected, fully predictable. Indeed, these folk have not really changed their tune from day one. For years now they have argued ad nauseam that family structure makes no difference to the outcomes of children, that “families come in many shapes and sizes” and that it is “the quality of relationships and processes within families” that really matter. This is simply so much politically correct nonsense. The social science research on this is so overwhelmingly clear that there is very little discussion left.

Over thirty years of research into this area, resulting in over 10,000 international studies have made it perfectly clear that family structure does absolutely matter, and the very best thing we can possibly do for our children is to ensure they are born and raised in a biological two-parent family, cemented by marriage.

The evidence on this is very, very clear indeed. But it seems to have been altogether ignored by the VLRC. They have simply taken little or no heed of it whatsoever, and have instead relied on homosexual activists and biased findings to confirm their own preconceived opinions.

As but one example (see my other two documents for more examples), throughout the almost five years that this inquiry process has been going on, the VLRC has very heavily relied on Dr Ruth McNair as both advisor and consultant, drawing heavily on her research, recommendations and writings. Yet never once during this entire period, in all the documents produced, have we ever been informed that she is a longstanding lesbian activist, with clear vested interests in the outcome of this process.

The easiest way to get a take on this one-sided piece is to come up with an analogy. Suppose the Victorian government thought it a good idea to hold an inquiry into the effects of cigarette smoking. Suppose it spent a lot of taxpayers’ money going through the motions of seeking public input on the issue. But what if, unbeknown to most, the people doing the inquiry were largely in league with the tobacco industry, made use of tobacco industry personnel as their chief consultants and advisors, and drew most of their ‘findings’ from pro-tobacco industry sources. And on top of that, they did not publicly identify that their chief advisors and consultants were in fact acting on vested interests, being part and parcel of the tobacco industry.

Most people would rightly be outraged by such a sham and waste of taxpayers’ money. Yet this is not unlike what has happened here. What we have is a group which from day one seems to have had a clear agenda in mind, a group that is already known for its activist and leftist leanings, utilising members of the homosexual community or their supporters as their chief advisors and consultants, to come up with what looks like a pre-ordained outcome.

This group has advertised widely in the homosexual community, has actively targeted the homosexual community, and has utilised homosexual activists every step of the way in this process. So we of course should not be surprised that this report reads very much like a manifesto from the homosexual community.

It seems to be all about pushing the homosexual agenda, and granting homosexuals access to ART, adoption rights, and all the public and social acceptance possible. They could have saved a lot of our tax dollars if they just said on day one: this is what we want, and this is how we are working toward that end. For that is where we seem to have ended up, five years later.

A final report primarily produced by and for the tobacco industry on the effects of cigarette smoking would be tossed straight in the bin by any serious and responsible government of the day. Perhaps that is what the Victorian government should consider doing with this piece of advocacy work.

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