The Facts Don't Agree With You?
Make up your own! Despite the fact that there's plenty of good data (by my pal Judith Stacey and others) that shows there are no meaningful differences between children raised by gay vs. heterosexual parents, the funda-nutters are determined to keep claiming otherwise. They even set up a "research" "college" of just one employee and perhaps 150-200 members -- contrast that to the 600,000-member American Academy of Pediatrics -- and gave it a big name, the American College Of Pediatricians, in hopes of giving the employee's opinions an aura of respectability. Michael Kranish writes in the Boston Globe:
President Bush had a ready answer when asked in January for his view of adoption by same-sex couples: ''Studies have shown that the ideal is where a child is raised in a married family with a man and a woman," the president said.Bush's assertion raised eyebrows among specialists. The American Academy of Pediatrics, composed of leaders in the field, had found no meaningful difference between children raised by same-sex and heterosexual couples, based on a 2002 report written largely by a Boston pediatrician, Dr. Ellen C. Perrin.
But Bush's statement was celebrated at a tiny think tank called the Family Research Institute, where the founder, Dr. Paul Cameron, believes Bush was referring to studies he has published in academic journals that are critical of gays and lesbians as parents. Cameron has published numerous studies with titles such as ''Gay Foster Parents More Apt to Molest" -- a conclusion disputed by many other researchers.
The president's statement was also welcomed at a small organization with an august-sounding name, the American College of Pediatricians. The college, which has a small membership, says on its website that it would be ''dangerously irresponsible" to allow same-sex couples to adopt children. The college was formed just three years ago, after the 75-year-old American Academy of Pediatrics issued its paper.
That pediatric study asserted a ''considerable body of professional evidence" that there is no difference between children of same-sex and heterosexual parents.
The Family Research Institute and the American College of Pediatrics are part of a rapidly growing trend in which small think tanks, researchers, and publicists who are open about their personal beliefs are providing what they portray as medical information on some of the most controversial issues of the day.
Created as counterpoints to large, well-established medical organizations whose work is subject to rigorous review and who assert no political agenda, the tiny think tanks with names often mimicking those of established medical authorities have sought to dispute the notion of a medical consensus on social issues such as gay rights, the right to die, abortion, and birth control.
...In several interviews and e-mail exchanges, Cameron made no effort to hide his view of gays and lesbians.
He said his research is meant to warn that gays and lesbians and those sympathetic to them are people he calls ''death marketers." ''I am not sure how long they will take to destroy the US from within, but sufficiently weakened, the US will probably fall to another state before that occurs," Cameron wrote via e-mail.
''Those of us at FRI are determined to do our best to oppose these death activists. As you see, the Internet has given us far more clout than our limited budget and efforts could otherwise hope for."
I think I might start a "Family Research Council" and start making up facts and papers that show that the Heteros are evil and molest and torture their young. And that str8 marriage is ruining our country.
It will be proof for the weak that everyone should be gay and marry gay and only gays should have kids.
alex the sea turtle at August 1, 2005 9:46 AM
At least gay people have to really, really want kids to have them. That's a major point in their favor, parentally...and probably a good reason gay parents actually seem to be not just on par with hetero parents, but exemplary. Too many hetero parents have birth control accidents they call children.
Amy Alkon at August 1, 2005 11:22 AM
From what I've read over the last couple years, the scientific study on this issue has been flawed and politicized (in both directions). I believe we need good science before concluding either way.
Claire at August 1, 2005 12:38 PM
But, it hasn't. Not both ways. What's your example, Claire? Don't just generalize. If you're making an accusation, support it with specifics.
Amy Alkon at August 1, 2005 3:44 PM
One thing we can agree on is the fact that anyone (Gay or Straight) wishing to adopt a domestic child in this country has to run a gauntlet of inspections and regulations before the state will allow an adoption to take place. It may follow that a Gay couple is, in fact, better - qualified to be parents than some hetero couples who can conceive on their own.
Dmac at August 1, 2005 3:57 PM
Sorry, Amy, you're right. I shouldn't generalize. As previously stated, I've read many articles pointing to "flawed methodology"; however, reading a Q&A interviewing your friend, Judith Stacey, apparently that is not the case and that the methodologies used are ones generally excepted in the field. I will have to do more reading, very interesting. I do agree with her on this, if I may quote her from: http://www.lethimstay.com/wrong_socscience_expert.html
"There's a real need for a study on adoptive parents, one that compares children adopted by gay parents with children adopted by heterosexual parents. To my knowledge, there has never been such a study. We also need more research on gay fathers—especially studies that compare gay fathers to heterosexual fathers and studies that include gay fathers who have children through surrogacy or other means. And it's critical to have studies with more diverse representations of lesbian and gay parents, specifically in terms of race, ethnicity, education, income, and nationality."
Claire at August 1, 2005 7:30 PM
See, there's a vast difference between a researcher like Judith Stacey, who seeks the truth, and a researcher who claims to seek the truth, but merely puts out propaganda. You can read a lot of stuff from the propagandists about the other side's flawed research -- but these are people who put their studies in peer reviewed journals. One of my friends submits stuff pretty regularly, and let's just say, the peer review process of a real journal, by real people in the field is pretty rigorous, and involves reworking data, rewriting the piece, and admitting to flaws in data. That's a pretty important part of the process -- admitting to a study's limitations -- pretty standard by people seeking the truth. Not by people putting out propaganda.
I do admire you for being honest about generalizing. I think it's really important not to do that, and to speak and write logically.
Amy Alkon at August 1, 2005 9:53 PM
There are precious few people researching gay parenting who don't have a political or social agenda. There are so many fields of research with much more important social implications that the mere selection of this subject says a lot about the researcher.
In general, gay parenting studies have been flawed because they've tended to make apples-to-oranges comparisons. Gay parents are adoptive parents, and we know damn well that adoptive straight parents show better marks in studies than straight biological parents due to the rigorous selection process that adoptive parents have to go through, demonstrating some sort of economic and relationship stability, for example.
Gay families at a minimum need to be compared only to straight adoptive families, with all the obvious factors such as income and education normalized.
And then you get into the relative rates of breakup, abuse, alcohol and drugs, etc. It's not at all clear how to address these because they radically influence the children and they aren't the same for straight couples vs. gay couples, or even the same for lesbians vs. gay men (lesbians are the most violent couples, followed by straights. Gay men are the least violent couples. But this is hard to tease out because of the politics.)
But having endeavored to correct all these factors, we've lost the main thing about the nuclear family that's made it evolution's darling: the biological connection between parents and children endows parents with insight into the child's character that adoptive parents can never have.
I certainly favor letting gay men adopt children who would otherwise be in single parent families or in orphanages, and I recognize that you can't effectively prevent lesbians from borrowing sperm, but let's not kid ourselves that such arrangements are anything but an extreme compromise from the ideal, the two committed, married, biological parents who care more about their children than they do about their dogs, their cars, and their houses.
And let me be the first to stipulate that there aren't nearly enough of such people.
Richard Bennett at August 2, 2005 12:34 PM
Lesbians often have kids via sperm donation, and some gays have kids via straight marriages before they come out to themselves and the world - especially in previous generations, since gay adoption is a relatively recent phenomenon. So all gay parenting is as conscious a choice as one might assume, and if you want to control for various factors in studies, you can't simply compare gay adoptive parents with straight adoptive parents - you'd have to match a variety of factors, like the age of the parents, socio-economic status, divorce, and so forth.
One thing that the fundies conveniently forget is that virtually all gays were raised by heteros, while kids raised by gays are no more likely to be gay themselves than the general population statistics. So on that basis, I guess it is actually hetero parenting that "turns" someone gay.
And Alex - you may have been kidding, but you don't have to make up any facts, because statistically speaking, most child molesters and abusers are straight, not gay.
On a lighter note, I heard an interview with John Waters on NPR, and he said that, in his view, not having to get married or have kids used to be one of the advantages of being gay. These days, though, he gets invited to gay marriages on a regular basis and "gays are having more kids than Catholics!"
Melissa at August 3, 2005 5:27 PM
Richard, do you have any data to support your contention that evolution favors nuclear families because bio-parents have special insight into their children's character? I haven't seen any studies, but I think that the reason might just as likely be that mothers of infants and toddlers need a hunter-gatherer to bring food to the family unit and fight off saber-toothed tigers.
Based on my admittedly limited experience (knowing several adoptive families at close range), I think that an adoptive parent can have just as much insight into the child's character as a bio-parent. Most character traits don't take special insight or experience to spot - it's just not that hard to figure out you have a stubborn vs. a complacent child. If anything, bio-parents might try to put the kid in a family mold that doesn't fit - not being accepting of a shy child in an out-going family, for example.
Moreoever, just because the family tends to have X trait doesn't mean the bio-parents are any better equipped to deal with that trait than adoptive parents would be, even assuming they are better at spotting it. In fact, it might be just the opposite - you might not react well to traits common to your family-of-origin when they appear in your child.
So while I agree that two parents and an intact family unit are ideal for child-raising, I don't agree that hetero marriage is a necessary component. Even more important in my book are parents who educate themselves about child development and educational issues and who actually parent their kids - i.e., imposing age-appropriate expectations and discipline, not just trying to be their kids' friend or otherwise abdicating the parenting role. Without any data other than empirical observations, I'm certain that a single gay mom who meets those factors will do a far better job of parenting than hetero married couples who lack these traits - even the ones who value their children above all else.
Melissa at August 3, 2005 6:23 PM
Melissa, I can see that you haven't raised children. I don't say this to insult you, just as an observation about the issues you raise.
When you have children, you find that their brains seem to be wired like yours or the other parents in many significant respects, and you notice them going through phases and issues in their development that you went through yourself. If you're anxious in crowds, say, and your child is anxious in crowds as well, you see that and you're able to help your child with it because you've been there. If they aren't, it's no big deal and you don't force you kid to be anxious in crowds, unless you're bonkers. Same goes for other traits and conditions such as ADD, high IQ, overweight, or whatever.
But anytime we talk about evolution we're essentially hand-waving because we don't have good data.
Similarly, we don't have good data on children and family structure all the way down to the various configurations of gay and lesbian households because it really hasn't been studied in any meaningful way. Amy says: "Despite the fact that there's plenty of good data (by my pal Judith Stacey and others) that shows there are no meaningful differences between children raised by gay vs. heterosexual parents..." but she's lying. Read the article she links and you'll see that Stacey admits nobody has done a single study comparing gay families to straight adoptive families.
That's the tip of the iceberg and we aren't even there yet.
That being said, my intuition is that we're going to find that gay men make excellent parents, especially for girls, and lesbians make pretty horrible parents, especially for boys. But we'll see when we have some meaningful data in 20 years or so.
Richard Bennett at August 4, 2005 3:05 AM
Richard, Amy's not "lying"...as usual, you're a big baby using abrasive language. read the word ADOPTIVE. It's specifically ADOPTIVE families she's talking about. She did do a study that said children of gay parents are more likely to experiment sexually with same sex partners. This doesn't mean they'll "become" gay. Either you are or you aren't gay. But even if gay parents did produce gay kids, what of it? What's wrong with being gay? Except that there are a lot of prejudiced assholes irrationally clinging to their bibles, Korans, and what have you, who have a problem with it? As long as you're having sex with somebody -- which surely puts a big dent in the amount of people with road rage -- I'm happy for you.
Amy Alkon at August 4, 2005 4:02 AM
Your friend says that we don't have good data on children raised by gay families, and that's correct. Read my previous comment for explanation.
You misrepresented your friend's statement.
Richard Bennett at August 4, 2005 12:27 PM
BTW, if "lying" is too strong a word, replace it with "wishful thinking".
Richard Bennett at August 4, 2005 2:23 PM
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