Allstate video glorifying same-sex parenting sparks backlash



The Allstate insurance company's feel-good video promoting two homosexual dads has prompted the conservative Christian American Family Association to start a campaign accusing the firm of "promoting a lifestyle that puts children at risk."
The AFA has already gathered 33,551 signatures on a petition to Allstate that reads in part, "Two men cannot replace the emotional nurture that only a mother can provide to a child. Studies show that children raised in homosexual environments tend to struggle emotionally, are highly susceptible to drug and alcohol abuse and suffer severe depression as young adults."
Objections from Canadian viewers of the video drew this response from  the insurer's "head office":
Allstate's commitment to inclusive diversity influences how we do business. It helps us connect with our customers and each other. Allstate is proud to support the LGBT community as we strive to provide the best products and services to protect all of our customers from life's uncertainties and ensure they're in Good Hands, regardless of gender, race, creed or sexual orientation.
Allstate did not address the issue of homosexual parenting's negative impact on children. The two-minute video is a response to Allstate's "Here's to Firsts" promotion, which asks the public to submit their own vignettes around the theme of personal watershed events. The two young homosexual men are seeing fawning over their toddling daughter in typical parental style, playing the piano with her, and presenting her to admiring relatives as they say things like, "As we held her we knew she was ours," and "she is us … and everyone who comes before us. … She plays on my mother's piano. She is carrying both our last names. It's the …  moments we have spent as family that have been the best over the past year."
But the rosy depiction of homosexual parenting flies in the face of what, according to the AFA, "studies predominantly show," which is that children do the best emotionally and intellectually when raised by their natural, heterosexual parents in marriage.
The AFA cites some studies to make its case. The first, based on the 2012 research of University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus, examined 15,000 adult children. The study showed that children raised by same-sex couples are far likelier than children raised by heterosexuals to have homosexual relations of their own, while they are less likely to be employed and more likely to be on welfare, to be depressed, to have been arrested, and to report feeling unsafe in their family of origin.
The Regnerus study is contentious. Its author was fiercely denounced by fellow academics for the study's methodology and his conclusions, but the University of Texas refused to impose the sanctions on him demanded by his critics.
The AFA also cited Louisiana State's Loren Marks's study that analyzed 57 other studies, all claiming to show that children of homosexual couples do just as well as those of heterosexual couples. Acccording to Marks, they are all skewed badly by such factors as the researchers' own pro-homosexual bias, by small sample sizes, and by non-random selection of sample homosexual families.
Less contentious is the 2013 study by Canadian economist Doug Allen, which he did for the Canadian government using Statistics Canada data from Canada's 2006 census. It examined only one variable: school performance. Its finding: children being raised by same-sex couples are 35 % less likely to graduate from high school than those raised by heterosexual, married parents, with daughters doing far worse than sons.



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