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.
