Should Marriage for Same Sex Couples be Legal?

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There is a consensus among the leading professional associations in the field that children raised by lesbian or gay parents do not differ in any important respects from those raised by heterosexual parents.   Those associations include the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.   Reflecting the professional consensus, here is an excerpt from a brief filed by the American Psychological Association in Iowa’s highest court to support marriage for same-sex couples:  

[T]he abilities of gay and lesbian persons as parents and the positive outcomes for their children are not areas where credible scientific researchers disagree.   Thus, after careful scrutiny of decades of research in this area, the American Psychological Association concluded in its recent Resolution on Sexual Orientation, Parents, and Children: “There is no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental sexual orientation: Lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children” and that “Research has shown that adjustment, development, and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation and that the children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish.”

In short, the American Psychological Association concluded that it “is the quality of parenting that predicts children’s psychological and social adjustment, not the parents’ sexual orientation or gender.”

Despite the overwhelming professional consensus, some who oppose marriage for same-sex couples choose to ignore the facts.   Then they attempt to change the subject by wrongly using research comparing single-parent and two-parent families, rather than heterosexual-parent and gay-parent families.   The National Association of Social Workers has called such distortion of facts “disheartening and intellectually dishonest.”   To truly care about children, we have to care about facts.   Census data indicate that in 2005 over 270,000 children in the U.S. were living in households headed by same-sex couples.   In the words of the American Psychological Association, those children “will benefit if their parents are allowed to marry.”

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There is great irony in Lambda’s assertion that “some who oppose marriage for same-sex couples choose to ignore the facts.”   The fact is that there is no non-partisan social science research supporting the notion that all children need is two parents, regardless of sex.   None.   And there is no study anywhere comparing outcomes of children raised from birth by either two men or two women with children raised from birth by their own biological parents.   In contrast, there is a mountain of non-partisan social science research supporting the growing consensus among family scholars that children do best when raised by their own mother and father, and that the best odds for that happening is for the mother and father to be married.

Moreover, the “consensus” among certain professional organizations is a matter of political correctness rather than a reflection of the conclusions of the professionals themselves.   As the politically-invested, pro-same-sex marriage founders of the American Psychological Association admitted in Destructive Trends in Mental Health: The Well-Intentioned Path to Harm, the extant research on same-sex parenting is extremely biased, with researchers disregarding their own results when the data suggest negative impact on children’s outcomes.   They further pointed out that the psychiatric, psychological, and social worker organizations refuse to fund or publish any research that may jeopardize the validity of the organizations’ preferred positions.   Welcome to George Orwell’s 1984.

David Blankenhorn knows as much about the social science on children’s outcomes as anybody, and he considers same-sex relationships a positive good.   But in The Future of Marriage, despite his expressed desire to see same-sex couples treated with greater dignity, he adamantly opposes redefining marriage to include same-sex couples.   Why?   Because his intellectual honesty prevents him from giving in to the siren’s song of political correctness.   His commitment to the well-being of children will not allow him to ignore the still growing body of social science research finding that children do best with their own married mom and dad.   Two “moms” or two “dads” just aren’t the same.   A man in a same-sex relationship may have the ability to be a good dad, but neither he nor his male partner could ever be the mom every child needs.