Just to keep our discussion in context, the question being discussed is whether extending marriage to same sex couples is a step forward or a step back. The particular proposition that we are examining in that context is the following claim made by Subgenius:
The simple example is how same-sex relationships currently impact family law combined with the fact that the overwhelming majority of studies that conclude with same sex couples being less effective and less beneficial for a child when compared to the child's biological parents.
(emphasis added)
Despite his claim, Subgenius has not cited a single study that concludes that same sex couples are less effective and less beneficial for a child as compared to a child raised by biological parents. Not one. The first rule of understanding what a study says is that a study can't study what it doesn't study. Seems simple, but people (including Subgenius) forget that. And not one of the studies he cites claims or attempts to compare the outcomes for children raised by same sex couples with children raised by biological parents. Not. One.
What Subgenius does is take statistics from studies that don't examine the question at issue and apply them to same sex parents. The problem is, as reading any study in this field will show, there are all kinds of correlations and possible causations that affect all of the different variables. Teasing out what is important (everyone agrees income/wealth is significant) is very difficult. And if we are going to extrapolate conclusions from one study to a group that has not been studied, we have to be very careful to make sure we a making apples to apples comparisons.
The second thing to keep in mind is that we aren't talking about extending the child-parent relationship to gays/lesbians. Gays and lesbians already parent millions of children in the U.S.
https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubs/f_gay/f_gay.cfm We're talking about whether to extend marriage to same sex households. And if you believe that children of married parents do better than children of cohabiting parents, then you should already be wondering why it makes sense to withhold the benefits of marriage to those millions of children being raised by gay and lesbian parents.
So, on to Sub's specific arguments in his last response to me. I'll leave it to the reader to puzzle out which of us ignores the facts.
on the notion of married vs. unmarried
"Research suggests that children in cohabiting families are at higher risk of poor outcomes compared to children of married parents partly because cohabiting families have fewer socioeconomic resources and partly because of unstable living situations."
http://www.clasp.org/admin/site/publica ... s/0086.pdf
Again, this is a policy paper that did not evaluate any differences between same-sex households and opposite sex households. But it does say that children raised by married parents fare better than children raised by cohabiting parents. This is an argument FOR extending marriage to same sex households, allowing a class of cohabiting parents to become married parents.
here is your conveniently omitted clarification of what you surely thought was a "score" above
"Since many children raised by gay or lesbian parents have undergone the divorce of their parents, researchers have considered the most appropriate comparison group to be children of heterosexual divorced parents."
http://www.clasp.org/admin/site/publica ... s/0086.pdf
Not sure what Sub's point is here. Note that what the quote doesn't say is that children who have gone through divorce are better off with straight parents than gay parents. All it says is we need to treat like to like. As we know that divorce is associated with negative outcomes for children, we can't compare children of non-divorced opposite sex parents to children of divorced same-sex parents.
and then finally (for the win)....the most revealing conclusion....that is inclusive of all sexuality and circumstances....
"Research indicates that, on average, children who grow up in families with both their biological parents in a low-conflict marriage are better off in a number of ways than children who grow up in single-, step- or cohabiting-parent households."
http://www.clasp.org/admin/site/publica ... s/0086.pdf
That Sub sees this as a "win," simply demonstrates that he doesn't understand (or doesn't want to understand) what he is reading. Again, he ignores the first footnote of the paper is is citing from:
The reference to biological parents is to distinguish between biological/adoptive parents and step-parents. Most studies that include data on adoptive parents include them in the biological-parent category. Adopted children have very similar outcomes to children raised by both biological parents. Zill, N. (1995, May 10). Adopted Children in the United States. Testimony before the Human Resources Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee, U.S. Congress.
(emphasis added)
In other words, biology has nothing to do with it. Childen of adoptive parents do just as well as children of biological parents. Again, this argues for extending the marriage relationship to same sex parents so that the children they are raising experience the benefits of marriage just as children of opposite sex parents currently do.
Now to Regnerus's study. If you want to understand why the study is useless for drawing conclusions about gay parents v. straight parents, you can read a good dissection of the study here.
http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2012/06/10/45512 Or, you can just look at the graph that Sub copied. Note the categories: BIF, LM, GF. What is being compared? BIF=Biological Intact Families. That category only includes biological parents that did not divorce while the child was being raised. Placement in the other two categories was based on the answer to this question:
“From when you were born until age 18 (or until you left home to be on your own), did either of your parents ever have a romantic relationship with someone of the same sex?” Response choices were “Yes, my mother had a romantic relationship with another woman,” “Yes, my father had a romantic relationship with another man,” or “no.” (Respondents were also able to select both of the first two choices.) If they selected either of the first two, they were asked about whether they had ever lived with that parent while they were in a same-sex romantic relationship. The NFSS completed full surveys with 2988 Americans between the ages of 18 and 39.
Get it? LM (Lesbian mothers) and GF (gay fathers) include divorced parents. And the vast majority of the LM and GF categories consisted of divorced parents. What Regnerus didn't do is compare Intact Biological Parents with Intact Gay Parents and Intact Lesbian Parents. What the data does suggest is that the "intact" part is important -- not the straight v. gay part. Again, the implication is that, if one is sincerely interested in the welfare of children, one should advocate for helping gay parents keep their relationship intact by extending marriage to those relationships.
And the sad part of what Sub cited is this:
61% of children of lesbian mothers reported themselves to be "entirely heterosexual"
90% of children of Intact Biological Family reported themselves to be "entirely heterosexual"
71% of children of gay fathers reported themselves to be "entirely heterosexual.
This data strongly supports the conclusion that nurture has a large effect on sexual preference and discredits the claim that people are born gay.
Yep. What's really going on here is Sub afraid that "teh gay" is catching. Is it really surprising that children raised by a gay or lesbian parent would tend to see shades of gray in sexual attraction as opposed to a black and white division? The fact that being raised by a gay or lesbian parent results in a more nuanced opinion about sexual attraction says nothing about whether the attraction itself is biological in nature.
Sub cited some new stuff this morning that I'll go through later. In the meantime, here's a study that did compare same sex adoptive parents to opposite sex adoptive parents.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... ts/263893/ETA: Subgenius complains that I've ignored his other arguments. I don't think that's accurate. However, it makes no sense to evaluate his claims about "experimenting with children" until we have an idea about what the studies to date would say about such an experiment. Frankly, I doubt Subgenius actually cares about "the children" -- his hatred of all things gay simply oozes from his posts. If he really cared about "the children," he'd be advocating changing same sex cohabitants into same sex married couples.
“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
