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New Research on Same-Sex Households Reveals Kids Do Best With Mom and Dad

by      within Marriage, Science    February 10th, 2015     Copyright © The Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.
Published research employing the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), the ECLS (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study), the US Census (ACS), the Canadian Census, and now the NHIS all reveal a comparable basic narrative, namely, that children who grow up with a married mother and father fare best.

A new study published in the February 2015 issue of the British Journal of Education, Society, and Behavioural Science appears to be the largest yet on the matter of same-sex households and children’s emotional outcomes. It analyzed 512 children of same-sex parents, drawn from a pool of over 207,000 respondents who participated in the (US) National Health Interview Survey(NHIS) at some point between 1997 and 2013.
Results reveal that, on eight out of twelve psychometric measures, the risk of clinical emotional problems, developmental problems, or use of mental health treatment services is nearly double among those with same-sex parents when contrasted with children of opposite-sex parents. The estimate of serious child emotional problems in children with same-sex parents is 17 percent, compared with 7 percent among opposite-sex parents, after adjusting for age, race, gender, and parent’s education and income. Rates of ADHD were higher as well—15.5 compared to 7.1 percent. The same is true for learning disabilities: 14.1 vs. 8 percent.
...   Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics
This is not the first time the NHIS data have been used to analyze same-sex households and child health. A manuscript presented at the 2014 annual meeting of the Population Association of America assessed the same data. Curiously, that manuscript overlooked all emotional health outcomes. Instead, the authors inquired only into a solitary, parent-reported measure of their “perception of the child’s overall health,” a physical well-being proxy that varies only modestly across household types. Hence, the authors readily concluded “no differences.”
I’m not surprised.
This juxtaposition provides a window into the state of the social science of same-sex households with children. Null findings are preferred—and arguably sought—by most scholars and journal editors. Indeed, study results seem to vary by author, not by dataset. It is largely a different approach to the presentation of data that distinguishes those population-based studies hailed by many as proof of “no differences” from those studies denounced by the same people as “junk science.”

...  The real disagreement is seldom over what the data reveal. It’s how scholars present and interpret the data that differs profoundly. You can make the children of same-sex households appear to fare fine (if not better), on average, if you control for a series of documented factors more apt to plague same-sex relationships and households: relationship instability, residential instability, health and emotional challenges, greater economic struggle (among female couples), and—perhaps most significantly—the lack of two biological connections to the child. If you control for these, you will indeed find “no differences” left over. Doing this gives the impression that “the kids are fine” at a time when it is politically expedient to do so.




The “no difference” theory is dead

Michael Cook | 9 February 2015

A US study finds that opposite-sex parents are better than same-sex parents. Wait for the fireworks. 
Fresh research has just tossed a grenade into the incendiary issue of same-sex parenting. Writing in the British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioural Science, a peer-reviewed journal, American sociologist Paul Sullins concludes that children’s “Emotional problems [are] over twice as prevalent for children with same-sex parents than for children with opposite-sex parents”.

He says confidently: “it is no longer accurate to claim that no study has found children in same-sex families to be disadvantaged relative to those in opposite-sex families.”

This defiant rebuttal of the “no difference” hypothesis is sure to stir up a hornet’s next as the Supreme Court prepares to trawl through arguments for and against same-sex marriage. It will be impossible for critics to ignore it, as it is based on more data than any previous study -- 512 children with same-sex parents drawn from the US National Health Interview Survey. The emotional problems included misbehaviour, worrying, depression, poor relationships with peers and inability to concentrate.

After crunching the numbers, Sullins found opposite-sex parents provided a better environment. “Biological parentage uniquely and powerfully distinguishes child outcomes between children with opposite-sex parents and those with same-sex parents,” he writes.
As he points out, this has immense implications for public policy. The Elton John/David Furnish model of lavishing love and licorice on the offspring of surrogate mothers won’t do.

Throwing down the gauntlet before supporters of same-sex marriage, Sullins contends that “the primary benefit of marriage for children, therefore, may not be that it tends to present them with improved parents (more stable, financially affluent, etc, although it does this), but that it presents them with their own parents.”

The Ultima Thule of same-sex marriage, legal and social recognition of gay and lesbian partnerships, will not reduce the risk of emotional problems. “The two family forms will continue to have fundamentally different, even contrasting effects on the biological component of child well-being, to the relative detriment of children in same-sex families.”

Read the entire article at: http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_no_difference_theory_is_dead#sthash.XA3ZACQE.dpuf

Transgender Surgery Isn't the Solution

By PAUL MCHUGH      June 12, 2014 

A drastic physical change doesn't address underlying psycho-social troubles.

The government and media alliance advancing the transgender cause has gone into overdrive in recent weeks. On May 30, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services review board ruled that Medicare can pay for the "reassignment" surgery sought by the transgendered—those who say that they don't identify with their biological sex. Earlier last month Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that he was "open" to lifting a ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. Time magazine, seeing the trend, ran a cover story for its June 9 issue called "The Transgender Tipping Point: America's next civil rights frontier."
Yet policy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention. This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes.
The transgendered suffer a disorder of "assumption" like those in other disorders familiar to psychiatrists. With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the individual differs from what seems given in nature—namely one's maleness or femaleness. Other kinds of disordered assumptions are held by those who suffer from anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.

The Absurdity of Transgenderism: A Stern but Necessary Critique

by         within Marriage, Philosophy             Feb 6th, 2015     Copyright © The Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved.

We should make public policy and encourage social norms that reflect the truth about the human person and sexuality, not obfuscate the truth about such matters and sow the seeds of sexual confusion in future generations for years to come.
By now we are all undoubtedly familiar with the tragic suicide of Joshua Alcorn, the transgender teenage boy who, in late December, walked onto a freeway with the intention of ending his life. In an apparent suicide note, Joshua cites a host of reasons for why he was led to end his life, most prominent of which were his parents’ attempts to discourage his identifying as a girl and his being sent to therapists in an attempt to relieve these feelings. All of the problems that ultimately culminated in his suicide, writes Joshua, stem from the fact that, from the time he was a small child, he felt like a “girl trapped in a boy’s body.”
No sooner had Joshua’s heart stopped beating than the story of his suicide was seized by LGBT activists and pruned to advance a familiar narrative of a sexual minority fighting cultural oppression. Joshua’s parents immediately began to be chided as “repressive” and “bigoted” and even began to receive various threatsfrom LGBT internet crusader-activists.
Transgenderism and Gender Identity
I have not referred to Joshua by using female pronouns or by using his self-invented female name of “Leelah.”  The reason I am not doing this is simple: Joshua was not a girl—he was a boy—and to address males with female pronouns or females with male pronouns is to contribute to our culture’s confusion about sexuality and the nature of the human person, which is literally leaving casualties in its wake. No amount of surgical mutilation of body parts, effeminate behaviors, or artificial female appearances can make a man a woman.

Read the entire article at: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/02/14305/

The Girl in the Tuxedo: Two Variations on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

by          within Culture, Marriage     Feb 5th, 2015  Copyright © The Witherspoon Institute. All rights reserved. 

Teens struggling with their sexual identity may seem to have more options than they did in the 1980s—but one important option is increasingly denied to them.
I came across a photo the other day of a fifteen-year-old girl dressed in a tuxedo, complete with red bow tie and tails, standing in front of a Christmas tree. She was heading for her high school’s Christmas dance, and her parents had taken pictures beforehand.
Why the tux? She had recently heard of a “gender bending” prom at a nearby school, one where all the girls had worn tuxes along with their dates. She was immediately drawn to the idea. However, at her school, she was the only one in on the twist. In the photo, she is attempting to look cool and smug, but her eyes betray sadness. The sexual identity struggles and confusion that had been quietly welling up within her since middle school were finally emerging for all to see.
The photo is from many years ago. I know because I am the girl in the picture. As I think back to that night, I can’t help but wonder how that girl’s life—my life—would have been different if the dance had taken place in 2015 instead of 1985.
I can’t help imagining the scenario that teenagers struggling with their sexuality face today . . .
2015: The Girl in the Tuxedo Goes to the Dance
After the pictures at home are taken, it’s time to head to the dance. Once she arrives, the girl in the tuxedo attracts attention for her bold choice to subvert gender stereotypes through her choice of attire. Members of her high school’s LGBTQ-Straight Alliance applaud her. Later, when she opens up about the confusion she’s been wrestling with surrounding her feelings toward other girls and her own identity, the “Q” (for “Questioning”) component of such clubs is happy to welcome her and inform her about gay sex and identity.
Read the rest of this true story at: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/02/14388/#

Dear Justice Kennedy: An Open Letter from the Child of a Loving Gay Parent

by      within Marriage   February 2nd, 2015

Take it from the adult child of a loving gay parent: redefining marriage promotes a family structure in which children suffer.

Dear Justice Kennedy,
June is nigh, and with it will come your ruling on the most contentious political issue of our time: marriage.
I write because I am one of many children with gay parents who believe we should protect marriage. I believe you were right when, during the Proposition 8 deliberations, you said “the voice of those children [of same-sex parents] is important.” I’d like to explain why I think redefining marriage would actually serve to strip these children of their most fundamental rights.
It’s very difficult to speak about this subject, because I love my mom. Most of us children with gay parents do. We also love their partner(s). You don’t hear much from us because, as far as the media are concerned, it’s impossible that we could both love our gay parent(s) and oppose gay marriage. Many are of the opinion I should not exist. But I do, and I’m not the only one.
This debate, at its core, is about one thing.
It’s about children.
The definition of marriage should have nothing to do with lessening emotional suffering within the homosexual community. If the Supreme Court were able to make rulings to affect feelings, racism would have ended fifty years ago. Nor is this issue primarily about the florist, the baker, or the candlestick-maker, though the very real impact on those private citizens is well-publicized. The Supreme Court has no business involving itself in romance or interpersonal relationships. I hope very much that your ruling in June will be devoid of any such consideration.

Read the entire article at: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2015/02/14370/

LBGT Demands For Other People’s Children Are Misogynistic

By      febRUARY 3, 2015
The misogyny of the LGBT movement flings women backward to a dark era, when the rule was prejudice against single mothers and unintended pregnancy.
The U.S. Supreme Court has recently announced it will review a November decision by the Sixth Circuit Court—which represents Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee—that upheld marriage as between a man and a woman. Will the Supreme Court side with the two judges in the majority, or with the one dissenting judge?
The majority ruling dismisses any possibility of a constitutional right to gay marriage, while the dissent focuses on an entirely different question of whether gay parents are as good as straight ones. The latter controversy is something that the majority decision explicitly refused to weigh in on, so the dissent is a curious non sequitur.
Since I was raised in the LBGT household and am the daughter of a lesbian, I am anxious to see if children’s rights are something that the Supreme Court considers. The dissent from Martha Craig Daughtrey does not consider the rights of children. Rather, she treats children as a social nuisance and or as an entitlement owed to same-sex couples.

LGBT ‘Rights’ Trample Women and Children’s Rights

The “marriage equality” arguments leverage children, often claiming that if gay adults can marry the children they are raising will benefit from broader “protections.” This is doublespeak. The “protections” consist of the gay adults’ access to and control of children as commodities. Activists have enough savvy to realize it is better that people did not see this hidden inconsistency. Most people are still fixated on the initial claims: “between two consenting adults who are not hurting anyone else.”

Read the entire article at: http://thefederalist.com/2015/02/03/lbgt-demands-for-other-peoples-children-are-misogynistic/
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