Same-sex marriage CXVI...

Good luck -- those are elusive studies indeed. Don't suppose there's an overactive imagination involved here?

Lightwizard, I'm trying to stay open-minded to this. You are NOT helping. You are being VERY naughty. You WILL be spanked.

Okay here's some links, some more objective than others, but none I believe with a dog in the fight. I haven't been able to come up with the right ?'google code' to get to the studies directly, but numerous studies are cited in some of the articles here.

I have a call in to daughter in California who is the statistical genius of the family and may have access to more data bases than what my search engines can find. I believe one was done here in the states, one in the UK, one in Sweden, and one in one other European country that I can recall. But LW is right. These are really elusive. I just have to find the right keyword(s).

Family Institute
http://www2.duq.edu/familyinstitute/templates/features/csmf/children.html

Kids do better in two-parent homes
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/710/context/archive

Sneer not at Ozzie & Harriett
http://www.keepmedia.com/ShowItemDetails.do?itemID=33836

Dan Quayle was right
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/civilization/cc0039.html

Eric Digests
http://www.ericfacility.net/ericdigests/ed355314.html

Marriage Equality - California
http://www.marriageequalityca.org/parenting_articles.php#article3

Marriage Watch
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/001061.html

Why children need mother love and father love
http://www.family.org/cforum/fosi/marriage/ssuap/a0027554.cfm

Some research reports
http://fatherfamilylink.gse.upenn.edu/research/recent/2001a.htm

Role of fathers
http://www.civitas.org.uk/hwu/fathers.php

Marriage and child poverty
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Family/CDA02-04.cfm

Australian study
http://www.aifs.org.au/institute/pubs/RP30.html#implications

Crime and family disruption in US cities
http://www.children.smartlibrary.info/NewInterface/segment.cfm?segment=1594&table_of_contents=1505

Family data base
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/familydatabase/results.cfm?Key=160

Asian families
http://www.arthurhu.com/index/family.htm

Gay Lesbian adoption - a third view
http://www.abolishadoption.com/gay.html

Funny thing about stats: you can find them to support pretty much any position you like.

It took me less than five minutes to cut and paste the following links. My list of links is not as long as the one above, but I have the feeling if I stayed on it, I could generate a list that would fill pages and pages of this thread and bore everyone to death.

I'm hoping the point is made.

Lesbian and Gay Parenting http://www.apa.org/pi/parent.html
"… the results of existing research comparing gay and lesbian parents to heterosexual parents and children of gay or lesbian parents to children of heterosexual parents are quite uniform: common sterotypes are not supported by the data."
----------------

Raising Children - Good parents are good parents -- gay, straight or lesbian
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/02/17/ED152339.DTL
" A highly consistent body of empirical work has failed to identify significant differences between lesbian mothers and their heterosexual counterparts or the children raised by these groups."
-----------------

Supreme Court of the State of Missouri http://www.amptoons.com/blog/001061.html
"Scientific investigation has consistently found that children raised by lesbians or gay men are comparable to children raised by heterosexuals and that lesbians and gay men are as good parents as heterosexuals"
--------------------
The Social Science Case: Gay Parents and Their Kids Are Just As Healthy and Happy http://www.amptoons.com/blog/000435.html
" no difference between the two groups of children in the areas of emotional and behavioral problems. (See Brewaeys). At least seven other studies that examined children's psychological well-being found the same result; no study has found otherwise."
-------------------
A Conversation with Professor Judith Stacey, Professor of Contemporary Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. http://www.amptoons.com/blog/000435.html
"Florida and other states have used so-called experts in social science who try to discredit the studies you cite (and the ones we summarize in this book). They claim that these studies used flawed research methods and resulted in flawed findings. What is your response?

The studies that have been conducted are certainly not perfect?-virtually no study is. It's almost never possible to transform complex social relationships, such as parent-child relationships, into adequate, quantifiable measures, and because many lesbians and gay men remain in the closet, we cannot know if the participants in the studies are representative of all gay people. However, the studies we reviewed are just as reliable and respected as studies in other areas of child development and psychology. So, most of those so-called experts are really leveling attacks on well-accepted social science methods. Yet they do not raise objections to studies that are even less rigorous or generalizable on such issues as the impact of divorce on children. It seems evident that the critics employ a double-standard. They attack these particular studies not because the research methods differ from or are inferior to most studies of family relationships but because these critics politically oppose equal family rights for lesbians and gay men."





IMO, that last statement pretty much says it all.

.

All this is opinion (biased by their agenda -- read the "abouts") and what are the dates of these sources? Where are the comprehensive studies by reliable and credentialed sources? No worldwide studies by every country show up as claimed. A paltry offering on an embarassing level.

angie, it is true we can find stats to support any point of view we wish to believe. The old saying that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics seems to gain more credibility every day.

My purpose here was to find objective sources who did not appear to want things to come out one way or the other, but wanted honest answers. Some of the links I provided didn't quite get there but cited other useful sources. Some appeared to be completely objective and geared to come up with reasonable opinions and perhaps solutions.

I still do not have links to the national scientific studies that have been done, but when my daughter returns from DC, I hope she can find those for me.

I'm afraid I know enough heterosexual couples who have been divorced, are not particularly good parents, or are downright terrible parents. I guestion all the sources for bias -- just spot checking, two of the Foxfyre "studies" are by advocates of right wing religious groups. Are they apt to bend any statistical information or outright lie. I'm afraid so.

As far as a rightwing champion, read what Andrew Sullivan writes:

Last month in New York, a court ruled that a gay lover had the right to stay in his deceased partner's rent-control apartment because the lover qualified as a member of the deceased's family. The ruling deftly annoyed almost everybody. Conservatives saw judicial activism in favor of gay rent control: three reasons to be appalled. Chastened liberals (such as the New York Times editorial page), while endorsing the recognition of gay relationships, also worried about the abuse of already stretched entitlements that the ruling threatened. What neither side quite contemplated is that they both might be right, and that the way to tackle the issue of unconventional relationships in conventional society is to try something both more radical and more conservative than putting courts in the business of deciding what is and is not a family. That alternative is the legalization of civil gay marriage.


Balance of article link:

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/homosexuality.php

But I don't think that is even an issue in this thread LW. I don't see anybody saying that gays don't need a legal layer of protection providing right of inheritance, hospital visitation, shared insurance etc. enjoyed by married couples. I am clearly on record as favoring that.

My only issue with 'gay marriage' is in the belief that the heterosexual marriage is the best possible scenario for raising children. I believe, and I think the preponderance of the evidence shows, that children, both gay and straight children, do better with a mother and father in the home. Men and women parent differently, and I think children benefit from the balance.

I would never agree to laws prohibiting gay people or single people or heterosexual same-sex couples from adopting children. I just don't want a law that would not put married heterosexual couples at the the head of the list.

I am all for civil unions for ANY people who wish to form themselves into family units with all the legal protections and obligations that would entail.

I just want them to pick a different word for it and leave marriage alone.

The preponderance of what evidence? There is no preponderance of evidence.

A law putting heterosexuals at the head of the list would be
discriminatory just as putting homosexuals at the head of the list would be.

And you're suggesting that homosexuals should not be "at the head of the list" for having children by serogates or by artificial inspemination. Sounds like China to me. How do you propose to control that?

Andrew Sullivan is proposing gay civil marriage, not unions. Of course, a law could be written which would not force any church or cleric to perform the religious ceremony. There's plenty of those around who would now do it anyway.

Well you appear to not be convinced LW, and I would guess your mind is made up and nothing will convince you.

I definitely think the law should be discriminatory regarding children and that children should be in a home with a loving mother and father whenever that is an option. When that is not an option, then of course you go with the next best option.

If you do not believe that, you of course are entitled to your opinion.

So you are an advocate of discrimination -- I would never have guessed.

Just to make one thing clear: do you also want gay couples to be forbidden of raising children, or do you think that these couples should be discouraged, or do you think neither of that should happen?

Neither should happen Rick. I think the evidence is pretty clear gay people can do a very good job of rearing children as can single parents, gay or straight. If you read up through the thread, I was clear that I would oppose any law that attempted to make it illegal for gay persons to adopt children.

I think the evidence is clear, however, that men and women parent differently and that children do benefit from having both a loving mother and father in the home. In the case of adoption, a heterosexual couple should have preference in adopting children over gay couples or same sex heterosexuals or single people. If that is not an option for the children, then of course we go with the next best thing.

But Foxfyre, not all heterosexual parents are good in raising children (it seems), while - personally - I know at least one lesbian couple who are doing it perfectly. Where and how can you draw the line? How can you decide concerning adoption that a gay couple is always a worse scenario for a child than straight parents? You can fall back on statistics, but reality can be much different. Assume that your links concerning gay parents are true (this sounds like I already have concluded that your links are not true, but that is not the case), than still this is an average, these are statistics. If you really want to protect children, would it than just not be better to give all parents a test to conclude whether they are "capable" to be good parents? Or can we not research that? And if, is that not too much paperwork, or discriminating? My point: how can you really conclude that a child would - according to the statistics - be better off with straight parents? Every case is a different case. And if we go back to the adoption part: I think gaycouples would feel really hurt when they would find out that certain straight couples, who are maybe less capable of raising children, get a child, and the gay couple not, just because they have a different sexual orientation (and by that dealing with the assumption they are "less capable" to be good parents). Is that not discriminating? Again: where and how can we draw a line?

Nobody is suggesting all things are equal with any group Rick. You may qualify anything I've said on this thread with the qualifier: "Assuming that all people considered are competent and good people. . ."

My opinion remains changed. Assuming that all people considered are competent and good people, I will not favor any law that some legislature or judge will be able to use to put gay couples, same sex heterosexual couples or single people at the head of the line or on equal footing with traditional married couples to adopt children.

And I respect your opinion, but I do not share it :wink: Meanwhile, I'm getting the idea we are all saying the same things over and over and over again...

Saying things over and over again is the way to make them come true. At least, that's one theory.

It's a theory held, a person might assume, by any number of religious right websites and newsletters who share and pass back and forth all sorts of dependable information on what credible science has revealed, like how human and dinosaur left their tootsie prints together in the very same old river bed. Or about how Darwinian evolution has been turned downside up by punctuated equillibrium. Or about how study after study shows, just as clear as a glass of water from Lake Ontario, that children raised by gay couples are sad and lonely, if not rapists and child molesters and 7-11 sticker-uppers.

And they are really great studies. And we know that because all the sites and newsletters say they are really great studies, the full ton of them.

And religion has nothing to do with this. Because religious faith, particularly the best faiths, are open-minded if they are anything at all. It's truth they are about, first and foremost.

And that's why we KNOW beyond any shadow of a doubt that if...just a hypothetical here, the facts we of course know to be different...that if the studies showed that gay parents actually raised children who were more happy and productive than normal kids, then those faith groups would be square on the side of a constitutional ammendment against heterosexual marriage, because they are in it all just for the kids' wellbeing. Nothing to do with fixed ideas at all. That's a liberal lie.