Two Lesbians Raised a Baby and This Is What They Got…

How recent are the last two charts? A year wasn’t provided.

Re the emotional appeal. I wrote about that at my blog: http://christianstate.wordpress.com/2011/12/01/on-rhetoric-in-the-debate-on-marriage/

i really appreciate the sensitivity of this post–you take on a touchy subject, and you do it gracefully. but as another commenter pointed out, you are relying on statistics in incomplete ways. 1st and most importantly–the sample sizes you’re looking at when you compare homo- and hetero- relationships are wildly different. its one thing to say 29% of homosexual-parental kids are abused. what is the sample size? is that 29 total kids out of 100 looked at? or is that 2900 out of 10,000? there are SO MANY MORE kids from straight relationships (from personal experience, i know maybe 29 kids total with gay parents and i know LOTS of gay people with kids), there is absolutely no meaningful comparison of percentages YET. its a relatively new thing for homosexual couples to be able to raise kids together. people zach’s age are about the first to be coming of age for whose parents this was even an option. ALSO, all the statistics on fatherhood are flawed because they fail to take into account other risk factors. absentee fatherism is disproportionately correlated with low socio-economic status–a HUGE risk factor for kids period, whether or not they have two parents. most homosexual couples are of disproportionately higher socio-economic status. a more effective study would compare fathered and father-less kids within a single tax bracket, for instance. statistics can be made to say anything you want. i wish i knew statistics to support a different position, but i don’t have time to look those up. i could go, on though, with alternate readings of the same facts you presented, and have no confidence that these studies are not problematic and flawed in their own ways. (they could be–i would just need to see more detailed sets of numbers proving these researchers looked further into other possible explanations).

Statistics are not definitive proof of anything. instead, i speak from a place of love, open-mindedness, and acceptance. i look at this young man and see a guy who was ABSOLUTELY shaped and influenced by his mothers, by his family to become as gentle, articulate, compassionate, and charismatic as he appears. he is that young man not in spite of his family, but because of it. we are all products of our upbringings. my parents got divorced when i was in middle school. my best friend’s stayed married til her mom died. my fiancee’s parents are miserable and still married. we are all shaped by our upbringings. each of those circumstances is different. each of us had father figures who were differently involved in our lives, some of us are not close to our father’s even when they were present. all of us have lots of extra-parental adult role models, who shaped and nurtured our development. we are all good people. being raised by a lesbian or gay couple is merely one of the variants.

what matters more is love, intention, and support, and no gay or lesbian couple has kids without those things. No gay or lesbian couple accidentally brings a child into this world. Whether their relationships work out or not, whether they are perfect parents or not, they are never accidental parents. Their children are wanted and planned for. Ultimately, it boils down to a question of faith and values. We don’t use statistics to determine whether or now straight couples can define their relationships or raise their children. you could do statistical analyses like above and show that smart people and rich people have more successful, less abused kids too, but that doesn’t mean that poor or dumb people can’t have kids or can’t make choices about how to spend their lives. at the root of this issue is still the question of whether gay people are inherently different, inherently worse. that’s a question of values. for me, love and openness trumps hate and judgement.

Thanks for tackling this one. It doesn’t matter if one hundred percent of children raised by homosexual couples were like this young man and there was no infidelity among married homosexual couples at all. It still would not meet God’s standards of what marriage should be.

I really hope you have permission from Tim Daley at the Family Research Council to repeat all the misleading facts he presents in his non-peer-reviewed study.

First, you present two tables that are ten and seven years old, comparing marriages against an unspecified form or relationship.

Then, you combine statistics from several population, of which either you or Daley have interpolated data to freely suit your point: (ORL Backgrunder never mentions the 2.8 percent, nevertheless it took me ten minutes to known how you/Daley unscientifically inferred it.) At the same time, you omit to mention about the Swedish study being about how low the marriages rate in the general population, in view of which the authors of the study are marveled at the high gay marriage rate.

Next chart, and you present three bars with three sources, never specifying how is that they can be interpreted together. At least the Wiederman study NEVER addresses LGBT issues whatsoever.

Finally, the best of bit of catholic prejudice, you cite Paul Cameron, who has been rejected from EVERY professional association of social sciences, who has been found misquoting, misrepresenting and altering other people’s work by the authors of the works themselves, and who has been found lying regarding LGBT topics to advance his discriminatory efforts.

You are presenting false and tweaked information, likely taken, without source mentioned, from equally and objectively biased individuals who make a living out of demonizing other human beings.

How very Catholic of yours.

Wow. Citing an article written by the leader of a known hate group tht used falsified data. That’s been proven an refuted and retracted by the journal itself. That’s an interesting approach. It’s basically slander, which is exactly what this article is.

I’ve read this blog twice wondering if it was satire, or if the views expressed were actually real. I’m going to assume the latter, although it pains me to acknowledge that someone could be so horribly unjust.

First, let me say that the data that has been presented is inaccurate and at least one study that was based on not only data that was poor, but on data that was actually intentionally falsified.

Regardless, even if the assertion were true, which I must stress – they are not, it is not a valid reason to deny marriage to a group of people. I can point to thousands of studies showing that poor people are more likely to commit adultery and have higher divorce rates. Similarly, their marriages are far shorter than the average marriage. Their children do similarly less than stellar, having far more psychological problems, lower grades, and higher incidence of drug abuse. These are all facts. Based on the arguments above, we should definitely ban poor people from marriage. We could use the poverty line as the cut-off, but numerous studies suggest that people do better if they make more than $45,000 per year, and I’d say that’s the bare minimum needed to raise a family.

You might claim that this would be extraordinarily unfair. Poor people deserve the same rights as anyone else in America. But they do have the same rights. They can make more money and marry a rich or middle class person just like everyone else.

In case you are wondering, I do not *actually* believe that we should deny marriage to poor people. Nor do I believe we should deny marriage to gay couples. We are all just trying to live our lives and do the best we can with what we’ve been given.

The information presented in this blog does not make the case that gay people should be denied marriage. The only thing it does is to prove that there are way too many people that are prejudiced.

The fact that you can have that video posted and still wish to infringe on the rights of others is terrifying. You are awful.
You consider your privilege to have your particular Catholic sensibilities, (which are not shared amongst all Catholics anyway) unchallenged to be more important than the rights of others to enter into partnerships indicative of their love for one another and to raise children.

says the known child molesting Christians.

this is BS on a monomaniacal level. You know if I own a brothel I wouldn’t want any of those undesirable churches popping up in our street. Think of the children.

Who wants their children exposed to churches and priests.

The Christian Church has made child abuse an industry.

shudder

Parenting and Child Development in Adoptive Families: Does Parental Sexual Orientation Matter?
published in the August 2010 issue of the journal Applied Developmental Science

Here is a descriptive write up of the study as well as a link to the study itself. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2010...
Here some key points from the article-

“All this is rooted in “the deeply entrenched belief that children need one male and one female parent for optimal development,” the authors write. Numerous studies have affirmed the parenting skills of lesbian parents — less is known about the capabilities of gay male parents — but the studies have been criticized for using self-reported data or for lacking comparison groups of heterosexual couples.

There are no such deficiencies in the current study, titled “Parenting and Child Development in Adoptive Families: Does Parental Sexual Orientation Matter?” It was penned by U-Va. researchers Rachel Farr and Charlotte Patterson and GWU scholar Stephen Forssell.

They studied the development of preschool-age children adopted at birth by 27 lesbian couples, 29 gay male couples and 50 heterosexual couples, most in the D.C. and Mid-Atlantic region. The researchers gathered data on child development from parents, teachers and care-givers. Their hypothesis: The development of both child and adult would hinge more on each couple’s parenting abilities — stress, cooperation, laundry skills — than on their sexual orientation.

And that is what they found. Same-sex parents, and their adoptive children, fared just as well as heterosexual families. It’s worth noting that this study apparently represents the first time that independent reports from teachers on children’s development and behavior have been considered alongside the self-reported data from the parents themselves.”

Take Away from article = Same-sex parents, and their adoptive children, fared just as well as heterosexual families.

I wrote this response to the video for the Huffington Post: http://huff.to/rs33rG

Hmm, I think we’ve crossed into a grey area that’s like no other. Here’s my view on the “marriage as a sacrament” position…

I’m a firm, very firm, believer in ‘seperation of church and state’. My husband (of a same-sex marriage) is an Atheist and I am an Agnostic. We have a 3 year old daughter who is not baptized because we both feel she should choose her own spiritual path instead of it being choosen for her like so many other parents do. We do not go to church (obviously) and we do not practice any type of religion in our household. I agree with seperation of state and church because it seems so many religions think that because they are Catholic, or Christian or what have you that everyone else should be, too. The whole “my religion is the right religion” drives me crazy. Preaching, pushing, and try to convert often ends up ugly and in my opinion brings more hatred, destruction, and judgement into the world. Laws and guidelines of the state should not be controlled by such chaos. Including the law of marriage.

*enter grey area here*

Most people assume that marriage is itself a religious passage. And it may be. In YOUR religion. But here’s the thing most people seem to forget. Not everyone believes in your religion. Including my husband and I. Yet we are married. Why? Because marriage to us is a bond FOR US, and not for some higher being (should one exist). Its our promise to each other that we wanted recognized by the state. Which we were able to do, because the state is seperated from church and did not tell us “well you’re not a believer so you can’t get married”. I feel this should be the same for same sex couples. If same sex couples want to make a promise to each other and have that recognized by the state, then they should be able to do so. The fact that they can’t because “its not acceptable or right” doesn’t make sense to me. Right and acceptable to who? The church? What happened to seperation of church and state? There should be no question about this in my opinion. Another example of religion trying to take the upper hand in an otherwise simple situation and messing everything up into one big ball of confusion. Catholic, Athiest, Agnostic, Christian, Jewish, Gay, Straight, whatever you are, the truth is we are all human, and should be on a level playing field. Equal rights for all just makes sense. Doesn’t it?

I like your article v much, so I’ve just reblogged your article on my blog site!