What is the influence of homosexual couples on kids?
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| Gay Couple with child (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
One new study by Prof. Loren Marks, takes a hard look at the scientific basis for the APA's repeated claims that science has proven that having gay parents makes "no difference" to a child. He concludes that the existing body of scientific research is amazingly weak: small samples, few comparison groups, few outcome measures studied, and, most importantly of all, the data is not nationally representative. It's not based on a random sample.
From a scientific point of view that's a flaw that cannot be overcome. Without a random sample, you simply cannot say whether the children with gay parents you are studying are typical of all such children or self-selected outliers.
That's why the second new study is so significant. The New Family Structures Survey is the first new survey of young adults that is large, nationally representative, and looked at more than 40 varied outcome measures, from the chance a young adult has been arrested, is unemployed, is depressed or suicidal, has relationship problems, or has had multiple sex partners, to how good he or she felt about their family growing up, and whether he or she was sexually abused. On 25 of these 40 outcomes, adult children who reported that one of their parents had had a same-sex romance during their childhood, fared worse.
Overall, 1.7 percent of all American adults between the ages of 18-39 reported either their mom or their dad had a gay romance. Very few of them lived with their fathers during that time. 91 percent lived with their mothers while she had this romantic relationship. But most of these relationships turned out to be fleeting.
The researchers interviewed more than 15,000 people and found just two young adults who had been raised from birth by two moms.
This tells me something really important: gay marriage is not about helping children. The "Modern Family" we see on TV and relayed in the media is vanishingly rare. We aren't seriously contemplating gay marriage because it will protect the children.
Does this new study prove gay parents harm their children? No. Does it tell us how children fare, on average, when raised by two moms from birth? No. We still can't say that from scientific evidence because we don't have good data.
But together these two studies do tell us Judge Walker was wrong. They show us the claim that science has disproven and ruled out of court the idea that children need a mom and dad is just bogus. The attacks on these studies and their authors will continue—because attack, attack, attack people who disagree is what the gay marriage movement does at this point.
