Finally, this morning, Sub launches into a fourteen point Gish Gallop consisting mainly of straw men, red herrings, and non-sequiturs. Where there's substance, I'll respond.
9. Your own citation about "millions of children" above further states "Nonetheless, social workers and even some gay men and lesbians considering adoption wonder if it is in the best interest of a child to be raised by homosexual parents. " a concern not found when considering heterosexual parents.
Wow! Wondering if something is true is evidence that it is true! Who knew?
All one has to do is go to the next page of the website where the substance of the wondering is discussed.
10. your claim "This is an argument FOR extending marriage to same sex households"...illuminates your post's lack of comprehension of the posted studies. Cohabitation, same-sex or otherwise, as a precursor to marriage is found to be detrimental to the majority of marriages. And since data has already been provided for the overwhelming preference of LGBT for cohabitation when given the opportunity to marry....
Okay, this is new: the effect of cohabitation on marriages. Given Sub's track record at describing the state of scientific literature, I'd need to see references. Also, I've already addressed his "data" on rates of marriage and shown why data he presented (even if accurate) don't support his conclusion. But let's suppose what he says is true, just for grins. Let's assume the average outcomes for children are better when parent's don't cohabit before they marry and that the rate of marriage for same sex parents is lower than that of same sex parents. Is that a valid reason to withhold the right to marry from same-sex couples who want to marry? Even if the rate is lower, there will be a set of same-sex couples who will marry and then raise children within the marriage. And, if he's right about the effect of marriage, those children will be better off. So, it should be a no brainer: extending marriage to same sex couples won't effect children being raised by straight people, won't effect children being raised by gay people who don't choose to marry, but will improve outcomes for children raised by same sex couples who choose to marry before raising children.
11. The point about divorce...your reference about millions of children living with LGBT parents is primarily due to the fact that one of those parents is the biological parent and mostly divorced the other biological parent. Thus their sexuality (or rather retardation of mature sexual development) has created the detrimental condition for the child.
Let's see... A same sex couple who wants to marry should be punished because some other gays and lesbians conformed to societal pressure and stigmatism and married opposite sex partners and then had failed marriages. Complete non-sequitor. If extending gay marriage to same-sex couples would result in more children being raised by married parents, then what gay and lesbians have done in the past is irrelevant.
12. The adopted children reference...how come when a study makes a claim detrimental to the LGBT position you raise the "apples to apples" flag? but when a study makes a claim that could support your claim, there are no apples to be found? For example, you claim that since "adoption" has very similar outcomes to "biological parents" that adoption must surely be extended to LGBT parents? All the study has found, because of your often reminded "available data", is that opposite sex married couples produce similar results. Not an endorsement of LGBT anything.
Sub completely misses the point here. He cites studies for the proposition that "married biological parents" are best at parenting, and then equates "biological parent" with "natural father and mother" without looking at how the studies actually divide people into various groups. As one of the papers he cites explains, most studies include non-biological adoptive parents in the category of "biological parents." Why? Because the children of both groups have similar outcomes. And that means that the "biological" part isn't the important part -- it's the nature of the relationship. And indeed, another of Sub's papers shows that high conflict relationships between biological parents result in outcomes similar to single parent households. So, whatever it that is associated with better outcomes, it is NOT the biology part.
14. You are grasping at straws on the Regnerus study. The facts are abundantly clear when one reads it. Just because you post criticism from LGBT sources does not negate the fact that peer reviews have validated the conclusions and the fact that this study does not endorse LGBT. Your post's strategy seems to be like an argument using FOX news against MSNBC and vice versa.
Notice that Sub doesn't even attempt to address the problems I described with the Regnerus study. It's because he can't -- the study does not support the proposition that same sex marriage would be bad for children in the slightest.
Now, I do disagree with certain critics of the study over the issue of academic misconduct -- I think it was flat out wrong to accuse Regenrus of misconduct. Frankly, I think his university ought to have told the accusers to shove it because there wasn't sufficient basis for even conducting an inquiry. Regnerus and other the other researchers in this field face an acknowledged problem with definitions. How does one, exactly, determine when a person is raised by a "gay parent?" It's very tricky, and will heavily influence the results of the study. I think what happened here is Regnerus tried out a novel classification process. But he was blinded to some extent by pre-existing beliefs about same-sex marriage. When the results looked different from previously conducted research, he attributed that to the quality of his data without scrutinizing his own classification system. This is a trap that scientists fall into all the time. What is supposed to save them from this trap is peer review.
in my opinion, Regnerus was a victim of lousy peer review. As the Andrew Wakefield measles study shows, bad and even fraudulent papers can survive peer review. In this case, the peer review process didn't work, which is a black mark against the reviewers and the journal. That's why the real test of a study is the larger "peer review" it receives after publication. And, to the extent it tries to draw conclusions about straight parents v. gay parents, the study is a failure. To his credit, Regnerus has agreed to do the right thing and release his data. I suspect that means we'll see many good quality papers to come based on the data he was able to compile with his funding.
[/quote]15. Wow, your reference to the Atlantic article is so unbiased...forget that Peplau has openly supported GLAD, likes to sell books, is steeped in spoon-fed California liberalism, is gay, and is much like someone using Dr. Phil as support. Nice science there...try again.[quote]
Again, no substantive criticism of the study at all. Just a personal attack on one of the authors. This is, in fact, probably the most apples to apples study we have: comparing same sex adoptive parents with opposite sex adoptive parents. Again, no evidence that the sexual orientation of the parents affects the outcomes.
To sum up: the question is whether extending marriage to include same sex couples is a step forward or a step backward. What does the data say? As the literature describes an association between marriage and well-being of the married couple, extending the availability of that relationship to same sex couples is a step forward for those who elect to marry.
For children, extending the marriage relationship to same sex parents will allow more children to be raised by married parents, which is associated with more stability and better outcomes. There is no factual reason to believe that letting more children be raised by married parents will have any detrimental effect on them whatsoever. Nothing supports the notion that being gay makes one an inferior parent. Giving more children the opportunity to be raised by married parents is a step forward.
But moving beyond the data: isn't gay marriage just like eugenics? Seriously? Do I really have to explain that letting two men or two women who love each other the way I love my wife get married just like I did is different than controlled breeding of humans to eliminate "unfavorable" genes? We don't base the existence of civil rights on the effect that having those rights may have on others, even if they are children. For example, we don't prohibit gun owners from getting married on the basis that many children get shot in homes of gun owners. No matter how high quality parenting is overall, half of the parents will have children with a worse outcome than the average (okay, the median...) no matter what scale we use to measure outcomes. And even more will fail to match the outcomes of the "best" subgroup one can create. So, unless we're prepared to let the government decide the characteristics of the "best" parents and prohibit all others from getting married, the "think of the children" argument is a red herring.
Marriage is a basic human right. There is no principled,fact-based reason for withholding that right from same-sex couples. A few paragraphs in some peoples' holy book written thousands of years ago is not a principled reason for withholding that right, any more than it was a principled reason for withholding that right from people of different races decades ago. Eliminating bigotry, whether based on religion, tradition, or misinformation, is a step forward.
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951