GAY TRUTH

The Medical Journal of Australia recently published an article claiming research shows that children of LGBT parents are as successful emotionally, socially, and educationally as their peers raised by heterosexual parents. The timing is essential; having scientific data to back up one side or the other had the potential to sway the vote in the postal survey. The article titled, “The kids are OK: it is discrimination, not same-sex parents, that harms children” was widely shared online. Thirteen authors from Melbourne’s Murdoch Children’s Research Institute demonstrated a “consensus of the peer-reviewed research,” and yet the data was skewed in favour of the LGBT community. The article states : Some research has indicated that children with same-sex parents do better than other children. In addition to equivalent social and educational outcomes, these studies conclude that children raised by same-sex couples show better psychological adjustment, and greater open-mindedness towards sex

Margaret Somerville is Professor of Bioethics in the School of Medicine at the University of Notre Dame Australia . I wish that I could support same-sex marriage and I have "moral regret" that I can't. When we feel ethically bound to take a position that we know will cause hurt to others, we should - and I do - regret the hurt that causes. If same-sex marriage involved only adults it would be much easier to agree with legalizing it. One hopes its advocates are correct that it would send a powerful message from society as a whole that discrimination against homosexual people and ill-treatment of LGBTIQ persons or a failure to respect them is abhorrent. But marriage doesn't involve just adults; it also involves - and, arguably, primarily - children. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights defines marriage as a compound right: men and women "have the right to marry and to found a family." The "right to found a family" makes marriage the soci

A new study released earlier this month in the journal Depression Research and Treatment contributes to mounting evidence against the “no differences” thesis about the children of same-sex households, mere months after media sources prematurely — and mistakenly — proclaimed the science settled. One of the most compelling aspects of this new study is that it is longitudinal, evaluating the same people over a long period of time. Indeed, its data source — the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health — is one of the most impressive, thorough, and expensive survey research efforts still ongoing. This study is not the first to make use of the “Add Health” data to test the “no differences” thesis. But it’s the first to come to different conclusions, for several reasons. One of those is its longitudinal aspect. Some problems only emerge over time. Professor Paul Sullins, the study’s author, found that during adolescence the children of same-sex parents reported marginally less