By Debbie Schlussel
Why did USA Today censor part of an article on gays that was negative toward them? I think we know why. More on that later, below.
The censorship relates to an article on one of the myths we constantly hear from gay activists as a reason they should be adoptive parents: relatively high income. We’re told that gays are mostly professionals with two incomes, no kids, and lots of money to spend.
But a gay-friendly study commissioned to show that gays are societal victims of poverty and affected by California’s ban on gay marriage, actually shows that they’re also not actually necessarily financially sound parents (in addition to exposing kids to the gay lifestyle–which is really the main issue). At least, that’s the case for lesbians. Rosie O’Donnell is not the norm (in addition to her being, well, not normal).

Lesbian couples are more likely to be poor than married heterosexuals, and children of same-sex parents are twice as likely to live in poverty as those of traditional married couples, a new report shows.

UCLA’s Williams Institute, which studies gay issues, says its report out today is the first to analyze poverty among gay and lesbian couples.
The report is an analysis of the most recent data on same-sex unmarried partners from the 2000 Census and two smaller surveys that include questions on sexual orientation. Together, it argues, they debunk “a popular stereotype (that) paints lesbians and gay men as an affluent elite.”
Unlike the upper-middle-class gay characters on TV’s The L Word and Will and Grace, “There are clearly many poor lesbian, gay and bisexual people,” says co-author Lee Badgett, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The data she used include the 2002 federal National Survey of Family Growth and the 2003 and 2005 California Health Interview surveys.
The data were adjusted to account for differences in race, education and geography but do not reflect the impact of the current recession, Badgett says.
Even though single mothers are most likely to be poor, Badgett says, the study did not focus on single lesbians and gay men because most population surveys don’t ask about sexual orientation unless respondents volunteer that they are living with a same-sex partner.

The above portion is obviously from the on-line version of an article linked above, which appeared in today’s print version of USA Today, but this sentence–which appeared in the print edition–was deleted from the online version:

However, because most states do not recongize same-sex marriage, gay couples receive welfare and food stamps at higher rates than married heterosexuals whose incomes are combined to determine benefits, the study says.

The study does indeed say that. So why did USA Today censor this out of the online story?
It’s a rhetorical question. There is nothing noted in the “corrections” section of the paper, and it’s quite clear USA Today wants to censor the information about gays unethically doubling up on public assistance and entitlement programs.
USA Today clearly “plays for the other team” in its “reporting.”
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Among other things, the Williams Institute study also found that:
* Lesbian couples have a poverty rate of 6.9%, heterosexual maried couples–5.4%, Black lesbian couples 21.1% (except the Williams sisters);
* One in five children living with same-sex parents lives below the poverty line. In traditional maried famlies: less than one in 10.