I am not going to enter a discussion on the merits of the underlying argument because you have already acknowledged that you have no interest in doing so.
Returning to the meta discussion. Let us trace the course of the conversation in question:
neuland: ...focus on building a better foster / adoption system and encouraging people to use it
house9-2: wouldn't it be better to support the families as they are? help improve peoples lives instead of ripping families apart
textor: For what it's worth, children from at-risk families achieve better education when the father ends up incarcerated. So we can absolutely make a case for "ripping families apart" and against supporting "families as they are".
The only proposal being made here is a voluntary foster/adoption system with encouragement. This is then framed as "ripping families apart". While this framing is arguably unfair, it is within the bounds of reason so, giving it the most charitable interpretation possible, textor responds to "ripping families apart" in the context in which it was introduced and provided evidence that keeping blood families together is not inherently the best course of action. To be clear, at this point the conversation is about how much we should be supporting voluntary adoption; and textor is arguing that the idea is not as inherantly bad as house9-2 seems to be assuming.
Stepping up a level of meta:
>I refuse to have an evidence-based discussion about whether certain people deserve human rights.
This is what political correctness looks like. Literally. You are interested in what is politically correct, evidence be dammed. Further, no one in this discussion has argued for denying people human rights. Even further, every society on the planet accepts that we can violate "human rights" in some sense for the greater good. Eg. prisons deny people their human right of freedom; taxes partially deny the right of personal property.
At risk of entering into the merits of the original discussion, leaving children in poor home environment arguably denies them their human rights, including their right to: education security of person, and food.
How do we balance these conflicting goals? With evidence to inform us what our options are and what effects they will have with regards to our goals.
Going meta again:
> one that that is a blatant misuse of a study ...
It is not a blatant misuse; it is extrapolating beyond the facts of the original study. The first step of evidence based inquiry is to work with the evidence you have. This informs the questions you can ask, so you can look for the evidence you want to have [0]. Once you've done that, you can move onto making the evidence you want to have [1]. Each step of this process provides a foundation to build the next step.
And yes, the process is not as simple as I lay out. You need theory crafting. And once your theory starts to develop holes, it may be time to revisit an earlier step until you have enough of a foundation to make the later steps worthwhile (either because your foundation is strong, is the lower tiers are short of relevant evidence)
> ... toward ideological ends,
Please take a moment to rethink who is arguing towards ideological ends. In my experience, it is generally the person arguing against the concept of evidence; not the one trying to ground themselves in evidence.
>That shifts the Overton window to present such ideas as acceptable
And what about the overton window you are moving towards. Where it is accatable to blatantly argue that evidence should be ignored. Where the very concept of introducing evidence is morally abhorant. Is that the window you want us to live in?
>when in a civilized society they should not be.
Are you arguing that the very concept of seperating children from their parents has no place in civilized society? Child Protective Services might disagree with you. They do place strong emphasis on keeping families together where possible; but they acknowledge that sometimes conditions are so bad that it is unacceptable to leave a child in that situation. Where is the line that determines what warrents CPS to remove children from their families? Again, evidence is the best approach to find it, unless you want to remove children unnecessarily while leaving others in bad situations that they would be far better off out of.
Going meta again:
The discussion is not simply two extremes. Even if we agreed that one (or both) extremes was morally untenable, by seriously exploring the benifits of it, we can look for ways to obtain those same benifits by other means: such as turning school into a 'second home', as this the content of the original article, or voluntary foster care with active involvment of the birth parents in a non-primary-guardian capacity.
[0] And by want to have, I mean the evidence that answers the questions you want to ask; not the evidence that supports the conclusion you want to reach
[1] Again, in the sense of the evidence that answers the questions you want answered.