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Originally Posted by Gilda
Yes that was an interesting op ed piece, which cites a single critic of the research from "my side" and makes vague reference to "people behind the scenes". I tend to put little credence in what unsourced "people behind the scenes" say. I agree that more study needs to be done, which is really the point of that article.
However, an op ed piece and one cited critic are hardly "largely in question". In fact, the majority opinion of the major medical and psychological community on that research is that it does provide evidence that children of homosexuals fare about as well as those of heterosexuals.
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An "Op ed piece and one cited critic"? I'm thinking you simply skimmed over the article.
http://marriagewatch.org/publications/nobasis.pdf
A short abstract taken from a 149 page study done on the matter.
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Marriage Law Project Publications
No Basis: What the Studies Don’t Tell Us
About Same-Sex Parenting
— Robert Lerner, Ph.D., and Althea K. Nagai, Ph.D.
Full Text (PDF - 479 KB)
Executive Summary
It is routinely asserted in courts, journals and the media that it makes "no difference" whether a child has a mother and a father, two fathers, or two mothers. Reference is often made to social-scientific studies that are claimed to have "demonstrated" this. An objective analysis, however, demonstrates that there is no basis for this assertion.
The studies on which such claims are based are all gravely deficient.
Robert Lerner, Ph.D., and Althea Nagai, Ph.D., professionals in the field of quantitative analysis, evaluated 49 empirical studies on same-sex (or homosexual) parenting.
The evaluation looks at how each study carries out six key research tasks: (1) formulating a hypothesis and research design; (2) controlling for unrelated effects; (3) measuring concepts (bias, reliability and validity); (4) sampling; (5) statistical testing; and (6) addressing the problem of false negatives (statistical power).
Each chapter of the evaluation describes and evaluates how the studies utilized one of these research steps. Along the way, Lerner and Nagai also offer pointers for how future studies can be more competently done.
Some major problems uncovered in the studies include the following:
Unclear hypotheses and research designs
Missing or inadequate comparison groups
Self-constructed, unreliable and invalid measurements
Non-random samples, including participants who recruit other participants
Samples too small to yield meaningful results
Missing or inadequate statistical analysis
Lerner and Nagai found at least one fatal research flaw in all forty-nine studies. As a result, they conclude that no generalizations can reliably be made based on any of these studies. For these reasons the studies are no basis for good science or good public policy.
Four Appendices follow. Appendix 1 is a bibliography of the studies and related publications. Appendix 2 is a table that summarizes the evaluation of each of the studies with regard to each research step. Appendix 3 (by William C. Duncan) is an overview of how these studies have been used in the law. Appendix 4 (by Kristina Mirus) describes how the media has covered these studies.
Marriage Law Project, Washington, D.C.
January 2001
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http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.c...ract_id=276907
The abstract of the article co-authored by Judith Stacy, a staunch advocate of gay marriage.
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Whereas opponents of lesbian and gay parent rights claim that children with lesbigay parents are at higher risk for a variety of negative outcomes, most research in psychology concludes, somewhat defensively, that there are no differences at all in developmental outcomes between children raised by lesbigay and heterosexual parents. This paper challenges this defensive conceptual framework and analyzes the ways in which heterosexism has hampered intellectual progress in the field. We discuss limitations in the definitions, samples, and analyses of the studies to date. Next we explore findings from 21 studies and demonstrate that researchers frequently downplay findings of difference regarding, in particular, children's gender and sexual preferences and behavior that could instead stimulate important theoretical questions. We propose a less defensive, more sociologically-informed analytic framework for investigating these issues that focuses on;
1) The role of parental gender vis a vis sexual orientation in influencing children's gender development;
2) The role of selection effects produced by homophobia that may intervene in the relationships between parental sexual orientations and child outcomes; and
3) The relationship between parental sexual orientations and children's sexual preferences and behaviors.
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You have an incomplete comparison there: "a child does better". You've left off the other end because the studies you are referring to don't compare heterosexual families to those headed by same sex couples, and thus are not valid evidence in this debate (and contain their own flaws, but that's a separate debate). Those studies that do make such comparisons conclude that no harm has come to the children of homosexual parents.
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A child does better in families in which a mother and father is present-- That we already know. Now, concerning your second point, I have to ask what studies are those? Opponents and proponents alike agree that the current studies comparing heterosexual couples to homosexual couples are drastically flawed, yet you embrace them anyway, continuing to use them as the basis of your argument. That makes very little sense.
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You ignore the crux of my argument there. If one of the core purposes of marriage is to provide a stable environment for the rearing of children--and I agree that that is one purpose, though hardly the only one--then don't those children being raised by homosexual couples deserve the same familial stability and legally protected relationship with both of their parents as those being raised by heterosexual couples?
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And now you're ignoring the crux of my argument. The core purpose of marriage is to provide a man and woman a stable environment in which to rear children.
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First, I've never claimed anything was "true" or that the studies "prove" anything. I've consistently said that the evidence shows that children of homosexuals turn out fine, which it does.
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If you don't claim them as "True", then for what purposes do you continue to cite them?
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My therapist was telling me during my last meeting that there's some new anectodal evidence that gay male couples are actually better parents than lesbians or heterosexual couples, though the sample sizes are a bit too small, and it may be due to factors not primarily related to their sexuality. In essense, because gay male couples have the most difficulty becoming parents of any of the studied structures, they have to be much more committed to the idea of being parents than lesbians or heterosexual couples, and thus begin with the advantage that unwanted parenthood has been selected out. That's a tangent, though I did find it interesting and passed it off to one of the gay male couples at church who have two boys of their own. Adorable kids, too.
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Single parents can raise better kids than heterosexuals, too. That means very little in the way of social implications. Basing any type of conlusion off of such a small sample size is going to give you skewed-- Or even intended-- Results.
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Fourth, disproving one claim does not mean that the opposite is true. All of the studies on point that I've seen support the conclusion that children of homosexuals are about as healthy as those of heterosexuals. More study is needed, definitely.
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I might have misread, but it seems to me as you were posting links in hopes to disprove the notion that gay parents raise socially different children than heterosexuals, but I could be wrong.
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You object to gay marriage on the basis that one of the core purposes of marriage was providing a stable environment for the rearing of children. I fail to see how allowing gay marriage would in any way interfere with that purpose for marriage, and think it would actually support it. Heterosexual couples would still have the stability provided by marriage, and homosexual couples and their children would have it also. More stability for families, not less.
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Correction: I oppose gay marriage under the basis that the purpose of marriage is to provide a man and a woman a stable environment for rearing a child. Of course, if I didn't believe marriage was between a man and a woman I would have no opposition to your original statement.
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For the record, I'm a Christian, and Grace and I were married, twice actually, once by a Unitarian minister (for us) and once by a Shinto priest (for her family), and our marriage is recognized and accepted by the UU church of which we are members.
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I'm not going to get into religion, but you must realize that the UU is considered-- For a lack of a better word-- As radical among the Christian community. Good luck having your marriage recognized by the majority of them.