New Mexico groups promote same-sex “marriage” as a benefit to kids, ignoring the evidence
SANTA FE, December 13, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – As the New Mexico Supreme Court mulls whether to order the state to permit homosexual couples to “marry,” three high-profile organizations have announced their support for same-sex nuptials, a move that garnered praise from homosexual activists.
The New Mexico Pediatric Society, the New Mexico Psychological Association, and the New Mexico chapter of the National Association of Social Workers all endorsed same-sex “marriage” Tuesday, arguing that kids being raised in homosexual unions deserve all the benefits that legal marriage brings to a household.
“Granting marriage equality is the right thing to do for New Mexico’s children and will strengthen and protect families who have lacked legal recognition for too long,” Alexandra Cvijanovich, president of the New Mexico Pediatric Society, said in a statement. “As pediatricians, we see how supportive parents — whether gay or straight — positively impact the development of their children. And there is no question that when their parents can marry, children are more protected legally and socially.”
Patrick Tyrrell of the New Mexico chapter of the National Association of Social Workers said, “The future of our society is entirely dependent on the quality of protective environments families offer our children today. Marriage equality helps ensure all New Mexican children receive this essential support and care.”
The thrust of both Cvijanovich’s and Tyrrell’s arguments is that marriage is good for kids, so same-sex “marriage” will be good for the children of those involved in the homosexual lifestyle. But the largest and most comprehensive study to date on the topic of children being raised in same-sex households found that having homosexual parents sets kids up for a host of problems later on.
According to the study, authored by Mark Regnerus, a sociology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, children raised in same-sex households actually fared even worse than children raised by single parents when it came to the risk of suicide and unemployment as young adults.
The study found that 12% of those raised by lesbians and 24% of those raised by homosexual men reported having recently contemplated suicide, compared to only 5% raised by an intact biological family or a single parent. And while 28% of young adults raised by lesbians and 20% of those raised by homosexual men reported being currently unemployed, only 8% raised by an intact biological family and 13% raised by a single parent reported the same.
A shocking 23% of those raised in lesbian homes reported having been molested by adults as children, compared to only 2% of those raised in an intact biological family. Among those raised by homosexual men, the figure was 6%, and among those raised in single-parent households, the number was 10%. Children raised by homosexuals were also much more likely than those raised by their married biological parents to report having been raped.
“To claim that there are few meaningful statistical differences between the different groups evaluated here would be to state something that is empirically inaccurate,” Regnerus wrote of the study’s findings, which provoked significant outrage among advocates of homosexuality. But other experts have called Regnerus’s study the “gold standard” among studies of its kind, due to its massive sample size and rigorous methodology.
Regnerus himself was so moved by the data that when the U.S. Supreme Court considered the Defense of Marriage/Prop. 8 case last summer, he and several other concerned sociologists filed an amicus brief with the court asking them to leave DOMA/Prop. 8 intact.
“Marriage is the legal means by which children are stably united with their biological mothers and fathers and poised for optimal development,” Regnerus and his colleagues argued. “Opposite-sex parenting allows children to benefit from distinctive maternal and paternal contributions. Given this, safeguarding marriage is a liberty to be accorded to children at least as much as to their parents.”
In recent years, an increasing number of children raised in homosexual households have come forward as young adults to say that their upbringing, no matter how loving, wasn’t all it could have been. They frequently lament the absence of a father or mother figure in their lives, depending on the sex of the pair who raised them.
One such person is Robert Oscar Lopez, who was raised by his lesbian mother and her partner from age 2 to 19. He rejects efforts by groups like the New Mexico Pediatric Society and the New Mexico Psychological Association to promote same-sex “marriage” as a panacea to the ills suffered by children raised in homosexual households.
“I have heard of the supposed ‘consensus’ on the soundness of same-sex parenting from pediatricians and psychologists, but that consensus is frankly bogus,” Lopez wrote in a June article opposing same-sex “marriage.”
“Pediatricians are supposed to make sure kids don’t get ringworm or skip out on vaccinations—nobody I know doubts that same-sex couples are able to tend to such basic childcare needs,” wrote Lopez. “Psychologists come from the same field that used to have a ‘consensus’ that homosexuality was a mental disorder. Neither field is equipped to answer the deeper existential dilemmas of legally removing fatherhood or motherhood as a human principle, which is what total ‘marriage equality’ would entail.”
Wrote Lopez, “The richest and most successful same-sex couple still cannot provide a child something that the poorest and most struggling spouses can provide: a mom and a dad. … But I am here to say no, having a mom and a dad is a precious value in its own right and not something that can be overridden, even if a gay couple has lots of money, can send a kid to the best schools, and raises the kid to be an Eagle Scout.”
Lopez argues that homosexual parenting is inherently selfish because it requires a biological family to break apart in order to make it possible in the first place.
“It’s disturbingly classist and elitist for gay men to think they can love their children unreservedly after treating their surrogate mother like an incubator, or for lesbians to think they can love their children unconditionally after treating their sperm-donor father like a tube of toothpaste,” wrote Lopez.
“It’s also racist and condescending for same-sex couples to think they can strong-arm adoption centers into giving them orphans by wielding financial or political clout. An orphan in Asia or in an American inner city has been entrusted to adoption authorities to make the best decision for the child’s life, not to meet a market demand for same-sex couples wanting children. Whatever trauma caused them to be orphans shouldn’t be compounded with the stress of being adopted into a same-sex partnership.”
Even some homosexual parents have begun to publicly acknowledge the limitations of their relationships with their children. In a June article for the New York Times, Frank Ligtvoet, a homosexual in a stable relationship, spoke of the sadness he feels for his adopted daughter, who sometimes calls him “Mommy” in a voice that makes it obvious she knows she’s roleplaying.
“My daughter says ‘Mommy’ in a funny way, in a high-pitched voice,” Ligtvoet explained in the piece. “Although I refer the honors immediately to her birth mom, I am flattered. But saddened as well, because she expresses herself in a voice that is not her own. It is her stuffed-animal voice. She expresses not only love; she also expresses alienation. She can role-play the mother-daughter relationship, but she cannot use her real voice, nor have the real thing.”
Missing from the debate over homosexual parenting, Ligtvoet argues, “is the voice of the adoptee — my daughter’s voice, that is. Her awareness of being a motherless child is not addressed. I don’t want to appropriate our child’s voice, but I want to speak up for her, and her older brother, and I want to acknowledge their feelings.”
