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The claims Mark Regnerus makes about his findings on gay parenting play into a pattern of conservative scholars and activists misinterpreting the data on LGBT families.
A study released this week suggests that, contrary to what years of academic research has said, children of gay parents actually fare worse than others.
According to the study's author, Mark Regnerus, a professor at University of Texas at Austin, the research "clearly reveals that children appear most apt to succeed well as adults on multiple counts and across a variety of domains when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father." Regnerus says that his study shows stark differences between such children and those with gay parents: the latter are more likely to be unemployed, consider suicide, use drugs, have an STD and fall victim to sexual abuse. Discussing his study in Slate, Regnerus writes that children of same-sex parents experience greater "household instability" than others, and that it could be too much of a "social gamble" to "support this new (but tiny) family form."
The trouble is, this is not what Regnerus' study shows. Not by a long shot. And the claims he makes play into a long-standing pattern of conservative scholars and activists misinterpreting the data on LGBT families.
While Regnerus critiques "same-sex couples" raising kids, his study does not actually compare children raised by same-sex couples with those raised by different-sex couples. The criterion it uses is whether a parent "ever ha[d] a romantic relationship with someone of the same sex." In fact, only a small proportion of its sample spent more than a few years living in a household headed by a same-sex couple. Indeed, the study acknowledges that what it's really comparing with heterosexual families is not families headed by a same-sex couple but households in which parents broke up. "A failed heterosexual union," Regnerus writes in the study, "is clearly the modal method" the most common characteristic for the group that he lumps in with same-sex-headed households. For example, most of the respondents who said their mothers had a lesbian relationship also endured the searing experience of having their mothers leave the household as the family collapsed.
In other words, Regnerus is concluding that when families endure a shattering separation, it is likely to shatter the lives of those in them. And this is news?
Not only is it not news, it keeps alive the mistaken impression that social science is on the side of anti-gay policy and law. Ever since same-sex marriage started to become a reality in the U.S., conservative groups such as the National Organization for Marriage and the Witherspoon Institute, which helped fund the Regnerus study, have cited research that it's claimed shows that gay parenting is a bad idea. In 2003, Maggie Gallagher, a co-founder of NOM, wrote in the Weekly Standard of "a consensus across ideological lines based on 20 years' worth of social science research" that children do better with a married mother and father. Writing in The Times in 2004, Pepper-
dine University professor Douglas Kmiec claimed that children who grow up in gay households "are more likely to be confused sexually" and to "face a heightened chance of being the victim of sexual abuse." Citing such research, opponents of same-sex marriage have settled on the talking point that "children need a mother and a father" to thrive.
The trouble is that no scholarly research, including the Regnerus paper, has ever compared children of stable same-sex couples to children of stable different-sex couples, in part because an adequate sample size is hard to come by. (Regnerus acknowledges he was unable to find an adequate sample size, but he went ahead and made the comparison anyway.) Like the Regnerus paper, all these studies show is that divorce and single-parenthood raise risks for kids. Indeed, the basis of the 20-year "consensus" is that two parents are better than one, not that parents have to be different genders.
Mark Regnerus' study on gay parenting is hopelessly flawed - Los Angeles Times
If we can find the gene and detect it in the womb, expect abortion of gay fetuses.
If we can find the gene and detect it in the womb, expect abortion of gay fetuses.
If there was a gay gene that could be found, the you would probably see many abortions of these gay fetuses. Of course, the increase in abortions would almost certainly come from the religious right who can't to even look at a gay person.
I'm surprised to see that. It took decades before we finally figured out that divorce was not optimal for children.
Among things Bush found disappointing: the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the failed response to Hurricane Katrina and the fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq [/SIZE][/B]after all.
Bush's Last Press Conference: Full of Disappointment - TIME
Republicans believed Bush when he lied, yet refuse to believe him when he tells the truth. Rather odd, wouldn't you say?
Truth does not matter to those who pervert it.
you mean for our rdean? no, truth does not matter for him.
WMD were found in Iraq.
I considered looking for a less biased source discrediting the study than ThinkProgress, but people who wanna believe this sort of thing will do so regardless of anyone debunking it so didn't think it'd be worth the extra few seconds. But if genuinely interested, there were many other sources who reached the same conclusions.
I considered looking for a less biased source discrediting the study than ThinkProgress, but people who wanna believe this sort of thing will do so regardless of anyone debunking it so didn't think it'd be worth the extra few seconds. But if genuinely interested, there were many other sources who reached the same conclusions.
I'm surprised to see that. It took decades before we finally figured out that divorce was not optimal for children.
I agree. We should ban heterosexuals from getting married - they get most of the divorces!
I can't wait to see what kind of logical inanities come up with to explain this away:
Family Research Council
In a historic study of children raised by homosexual parents, sociologist Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin has overturned the conventional academic wisdom that such children suffer no disadvantages when compared to children raised by their married mother and father. Just published in the journal Social Science Research,[1] the most careful, rigorous, and methodologically sound study ever conducted on this issue found numerous and significant differences between these groups--with the outcomes for children of homosexuals rated "suboptimal" (Regnerus' word) in almost every category.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
There are eight outcome variables where differences between the children of homosexual parents and married parents were not only present, and favorable to the married parents, but where these findings were statistically significant for both children of lesbian mothers and "gay" fathers and both with and without controls. While all the findings in the study are important, these are the strongest possible ones--virtually irrefutable. Compared with children raised by their married biological parents (IBF), children of homosexual parents (LM and GF):
•Are much more likely to have received welfare (IBF 17%; LM 69%; GF 57%)
•Have lower educational attainment
•Report less safety and security in their family of origin
•Report more ongoing "negative impact" from their family of origin
•Are more likely to suffer from depression
•Have been arrested more often
•If they are female, have had more sexual partners--both male and female
The high mathematical standard of "statistical significance" was more difficult to reach for the children of "gay fathers" in this study because there were fewer of them. The following, however, are some additional areas in which the children of lesbian mothers (who represented 71% of all the children with homosexual parents in this study) differed from the IBF children, in ways that were statistically significant in both a direct comparison and with controls. Children of lesbian mothers:
•Are more likely to be currently cohabiting
•Are almost 4 times more likely to be currently on public assistance
•Are less likely to be currently employed full-time
•Are more than 3 times more likely to be unemployed
•Are nearly 4 times more likely to identify as something other than entirely heterosexual
•Are 3 times as likely to have had an affair while married or cohabiting
•Are an astonishing 10 times more likely to have been "touched sexually by a parent or other adult caregiver."
•Are nearly 4 times as likely to have been "physically forced" to have sex against their will
•Are more likely to have "attachment" problems related to the ability to depend on others
•Use marijuana more frequently
•Smoke more frequently
•Watch TV for long periods more frequently
•Have more often pled guilty to a non-minor offense
See, that's what the biased sources do.
They conduct "studies" that compare homosexual couple parenting with single parent parenting.
Homosexual 2-parent families rate about the same as single parent families...and both lag far, far behind 2-parent hetero families.
Read the material instead of just spasming.
See, that's what the biased sources do.
They conduct "studies" that compare homosexual couple parenting with single parent parenting.
Homosexual 2-parent families rate about the same as single parent families...and both lag far, far behind 2-parent hetero families.
Read the material instead of just spasming.
See, that's what the biased sources do.
They conduct "studies" that compare homosexual couple parenting with single parent parenting.
Homosexual 2-parent families rate about the same as single parent families...and both lag far, far behind 2-parent hetero families.
Read the material instead of just spasming.
How desperate are you to have your irrational hate and prejudice justified when this study's own author has all but retracted it?
See, that's what the biased sources do.
They conduct "studies" that compare homosexual couple parenting with single parent parenting.
Homosexual 2-parent families rate about the same as single parent families...and both lag far, far behind 2-parent hetero families.
Read the material instead of just spasming.
How desperate are you to have your irrational hate and prejudice justified when this study's own author has all but retracted it?
And she negged me for disagreeing with the results of the study. What is wrong with folks who neg people just because they disagree with them? Is that what the neg rep is supposed to be for?
