‘Stereotype, Attack and Stigmatize those Who Disagree’: Employing Scientific Rhetoric in Debates about Lesbian and Gay Parenting

In this paper, I explore the controversy surrounding lesbian and gay parenting within psychology, focusing on the rhetoric with which ‘authoritative’ accounts of lesbian and gay parenting are produced. Both ‘advocates’ and ‘enemies’ of lesbian and gay parenting have used what Celia Kitzinger (1990) has dubbed the ‘rhetoric of pseudoscience’ to preserve the scientific integrity of their research while, at the same time, undermining the credibility of their opponents’ findings. Authors engage in the rhetoric of pseudoscience when they attempt to persuade that a piece of research is bad science and that its results, therefore, cannot be taken seriously: they highlight (among other things) flaws in the methodology and the bias and political motivation of the researchers (Kitzinger, 1990). In the light of recent debates about the merits of essentialism and social constructionism in lesbian and gay psychology (e.g. Dickins, 1999; Kitzinger, 1999; Rahman, 1999), I consider the (political) costs and benefits of using science and scientific rhetoric.