Gay marriage and same sex parents have found new support from President Obama. But Christian groups are pointing to scientific studies that claim homosexual parents do not function as well as heterosexual parents.
As previously reported by The Inquisitr, President Obama wants the Supreme Court to overturn a gay marriage ban. This past week, President Obama filed a legal brief with the Supreme Court that discussed Proposition 8, the California legislation from 2008 that banned gay marriage. According to the Examiner, as part of this legal brief the Obama administration also defended gay parents:
“As an initial matter, no sound basis exists for concluding that same-sex couples who have committed to marriage are anything other than fully capable of responsible parenting and child rearing. The weight of the scientific literature strongly supports the view that same-sex parents are just as capable as opposite-sex parents.”
This statement marks a dramatic policy shift for President Obama even on a personal level. According to ThinkProgress, back in 2008 Obama’s position on gay marriage was very different:
“I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian…it is also a sacred union. God is in the mix.”
This might be why the legal brief stops shorts of asking the Supreme Court to consider the constitutionality of marriage bans beyond the context of Proposition 8. This has led the New York Times to say that the legal brief falls short:
“We don’t know why the administration did not take that step. Perhaps it was to allow Obama to go on asserting that the issue of same-sex marriage should generally be left up to the states. We hope the justices recognize the broader truth that the Constitution does not tolerate denying gay people the right to wed in any state.”
According to The Christian Post, some Christian groups are pointing to Dr. Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas, who conducted the largest, most rigorously controlled study in history and found that kids of same-sex parents are unlikely to be as well adjusted compared to children of heterosexual families:
“The results of the NFSS [National Family Structures Study] research revealed that the ‘no differences’ claim-the claim that children raised by parents in gay or lesbian relationships fared no worse and in some cases better than children raised by intact biological parents-was not true. On the contrary, the children of these households, on average, did worse than children raised by their biological, still-married parents.”
Another study by Dr. Douglas Allen claims kids of straight parents perform better in school than children reared by LGBT parents. Regnerus summarized his findings for an article in Slate, writing:
“Even after including controls for age, race, gender, and things like being bullied as a youth, or the gay-friendliness of the state in which they live, such respondents were more apt to report being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law, report more male and female sex partners, more sexual victimization, and were more likely to reflect negatively on their childhood family life, among other things. Why such dramatic differences? I can only speculate, since the data are not poised to pinpoint causes. One notable theme among the adult children of same-sex parents, however, is household instability, and plenty of it. The children of fathers who have had same-sex relationships fare a bit better, but they seldom reported living with their father for very long, and never with his partner for more than three years.”
The Examiner points out that the “study was subjected to a [University of Texas] review for possible scientific flaws [and] Regnerus was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing.” American Thinker says that “its politically incorrect conclusions, based on data from nearly 15,000 adults,” led to accusations of gay-bashing and scientific misconduct.
But even a bisexual father named Robert Lopez says that Mark Regnerus’ “tone was respectful, his curiosity well intended, and his courage commendable.” Lopez was the son of lesbian and this is how he described his reaction to the scientific work of Mark Renerus:
“Of course it is hard to be raised in a household that is unusual and unlike the homes of one’s peers. Just like kids raised in orthodox religious households, kids who are home-schooled, foster kids, or kids who are so wealthy that they are reared by paid nannies, the children of homosexuals have atypical household environments and face challenges in understanding their peers and getting their peers to understand them. Their challenges may result in difficulty adjusting socially, which is what Professor Regnerus discovered in his study. Far from seeing his research as insulting, I see it as affirming. For the first time in my 41 years of life, someone finally acknowledged that the way I grew up was hard and it wasn’t my fault.”
Do you think that gay, homosexual, or LGBT parents can raise children as effectively as heterosexual parents?