UT Expert Study: Mom & Dad Still Best, “Risks” for Gay Parenting

Gay lobby groups were hoping that discussion about gay parenting and the impact on children was settled, off-limits, and supported by “social science” and the academic community.  Thanks to a comprehensive study by a professor at the University of Texas and another study calling into question previous research on gay parenting, this issue has been kicked wide open and is attracting wide media attention both locally and nationally.  Essentially, academia told the homosexual lobby that gay parenting presents many “risks”, and that its previous “scientific” studies are not only flawed, but wrong.

The homosexual advocates will likely never be able to shut the door again.

We all know that children do best being raised in an intact family with their mother and father in a lifelong commitment.  While this is clearly God’s design and is understood as commonsense by many, new research continues to confirm this reality as numerous academic studies have done before.

The well-established truth that children fare better being raised by their parents was summarized by Sociologists Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur (from their book Growing Up With A Single Parent). These scientists concluded that “If we were asked to design a system for making sure that children’s basic needs were met, we would probably come up with something quite similar to the two-parent ideal.”

But while the benefits of the married, two-parent household is firmly settled, the recent battles over same-sex marriage has raised the question about how children will be impacted by this new gay social experiment.  The gay lobbying groups have been quick to provide an answer by asserting that children raised by same sex couples show no differences in outcomes as compared to the traditional model.  Their desperate lobbying attempts were based on recent studies by social scientists which claim children raised by same-sex parents do equally well and in some cases better than children raised in a traditional family.  Homosexual advocates were quick to use these hard-to-believe studies as a basis for changing long standing marriage laws, and these studies have also been used by activist judges to overturn state’s constitutional amendments supporting traditional marriage (see California).  The gay lobby groups were hoping this issue and debate over gay parenting was settled, over, and closed.

Two new groundbreaking studies in Social Science Research (here and here) cast serious doubts on this dubious proposition.  The first study by LSU professor Loren Marks shows that the studies purporting to show benefits to same-sex parenting  have small non-representative samples, are not accurately comparing results to marriage-based intact families, and do not accurately measure the true impacts on children (among other major problems) . In summary, the current “studies” are simply unreliable.

The second article, garnering much of the media attention, is by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus.  His study, in contrast to the previous discredited studies, is based on a large random sample of young adults and studies a wide range of 40 developmental outcomes based on their family type.  Specifically, it compares how young-adult children of a parent that has had same-sex relationships compare to other family types – including intact biological families whose parents remain married.

Regnerus’s findings shatter the so-called conventional wisdom on this issue and as Regnerus states “the empirical claim that no notable differences exist must go.” In a majority of the development outcome measurements children raised by their married biological parents had better outcomes than children raised by homosexual parents.  Children of homosexual parents are more likely to have lower educational attainments, have suffered from depression, have been arrested, use drugs and smoke frequently, and are more likely to be unemployed or underemployed.

Further, children are more than 4 times more likely to identify themselves as homosexual, more than 3 times more likely to have had an affair, nearly 4 times as likely to have been “physically forced” to have sex against their will, and shockingly 10 times more likely to have been sexually touched by a parent or other adult caregiver.

Taken together, these studies support and compliment the long line of research that have concluded that the intact married family is the safest and best environment to raise children.

Predictably, many in the radical homosexual community are outraged over the study (“It’s Time for Mark Regnerus to Get Collectively Dumped”) attacking the study and attacking the professors personally, but it’s easy to see why.  For years the homosexual community and its enablers in the media have tried to end the debate on the effects of gay parenting by shouting, “The debate is over, the experts have spoken!”  As we have seen before, the radical left and its media friends only really care about their “experts” and are not too fond of research that undercuts their preferred narrative.

While the debate on this issue is certainly not over, and more research is sure to come, this is the most significant study done to date on gay parenting and children.  And, the results will have important implications on the current battles to protect traditional marriage.  Trust us, this issue and debate are just getting started and will be one of the most talked about issues for this year and many years to come.  What makes this more compelling is that you now have a conflict in the academic community over this issue.

As we like to say, science has caught up to common sense.

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