The Regnerus Debate (New sociological study says that kids from same-sex marriages suffer.)

I am a Canadian economist who has worked on family issues in Canada and the U.S. for the past 26 years. Although I’ve mostly studied matters of divorce, custody, child support, and the general institution of marriage, for the past few years I’ve been working on series of empirical projects related to same-sex marriage. I’ve been using a special data set in Canada that is large (over 300,000 individuals) and random (with weights), that directly identifies sexual orientation, and that was designed by Statistics Canada. In the process of working on same-sex marriage I have read almost every study conducted on same-sex parenting. I say all of this because, unlike most people who have commented on the recent Regnerus study, I’m a qualified outsider to the U.S. debate and perhaps can provide some (relatively) neutral assessment.

The study published by Professor Mark Regnerus this week certainly has some flaws, and many of the comments made about it have some merit. However, as a matter of intellectual honesty, it needs to be recognized that virtually all the studies of same-sex parenting that have been conducted thus far fall far short of any standard of scientific testing.

Of the 50-plus such studies done in the past 15 years, the vast majority come to the same conclusion: Children of gay parents perform at least as well as children from heterosexual families; there is no difference in child outcomes based on family structure.

For several reasons, this literature is unlike anything else within social science. First, it partly arose from, and was strongly influenced by, legal cases in which lesbian mothers were denied custody of their children on the basis of their sexual orientation. Second, for the most part it has been written by individuals with strong personal worldviews who sympathize with those studied. Third, the focus of the literature is often on “soft” measures of child and family performance that are not easily verifiable by third-party replication, and that differ substantially from measures used in other family studies. One of the odd characteristics of this literature is the lack of consistency of measures across time. Subsequent studies seldom test for measures that were used in previous studies. Fourth, the data and procedures used in the studies are never made available online in order for other scholars to replicate findings. And finally, almost all the literature on gay parenting is based on weak designs, biased samples, and low-powered tests.

The result is a nascent literature that falls far short of standard social-science research. At its best, the literature contains interesting exploratory studies that raise provocative questions and make interesting observations. At its worst, it is advocacy aimed at legislators and judges — which may explain why, despite its weak scientific nature, the literature is characterized by strong recommendations for policy and legal changes to family regulations.

The bias of the same-sex-parenting literature has been recognized by individuals within and outside this literature (indeed, in the same issue of Social Science Research as the Regnerus study, Loren Marks has provided another critique of this literature). Ironically, the common complaint about Regnerus — that he compares apples to oranges — is valid about practically every study that finds no difference between homosexual and heterosexual families. In the latter, biased samples of high-income, highly educated, self-selected lesbian parents are compared to random samples of opposite-sexed parents.

If the Regnerus study is to be thrown out, then practically everything else in the field has to go with it.

I think Regnerus needs to be applauded for what he did and didn’t do. He tried to use a random sample; he developed many hard measures of outcomes; and he is making all the data and procedures available for others to sift through. Inadvertently, he is going to draw attention to the failures of other studies in terms of their design and methodology, and he has demonstrated how difficult it is to find a large sample of this elusive population. He also didn’t make a lot of unjustified claims in his study. He was careful to note that he made no case for causality, and that his findings may or may not be related to the same-sex aspect of the adult relationship. He didn’t take his results and announce a series of policy recommendations. He has simply called into question the claim that there is no difference.

Others are working on this very issue, and soon better studies will be published. In my own work, I’m also finding differences in behavior and in child outcomes. Given how small the population of same-sex parents is, given how many different channels children might take to find themselves in a family with two parents of the same sex, and given how much data it takes to sort through all of these issues, the bottom line is this: We’ve got a long way to go before we can answer the question: Are children better off, the same, or worse off in same-sex families compared to intact biological families?

The political contest that is going on in the U.S. over same-sex marriage is not helping the social science. It took almost 40 years for academics to figure out the effect of no-fault divorce on divorce rates (not to mention all the other areas of life no-fault divorce influenced). With same-sex marriage and parenting, the issues are much more profound and more difficult to measure. Rushing the work or, worse, pushing research claims beyond what the studies justify, is bad social policy. This goes for both sides of the debate.

— Douglas W. Allen is the Burnaby Mountain Professor of Economics at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia

This guy is actually wrong. There have been many studies that have shown differences in the outcomes of same sex verses traditional family structures. Now in the past decade there has been a proponderence of activist studies where the subjects self select and self evaluate themselves so effectively lesbian moms and homosexual dads are answering a questionaire which they know the purpose for. So what do you think they will say when asked if their children are well adjusted? Really that isn’t science and that is what passes for science in the leftist dominated social sciences. This new study is an attempt to actually establish empircle measures which is more in line with earlier studies. What the gay activists do not want is empiraclism. They lose on that count every time. They want emotional laden catch phrases while simultaneously bullying anyone who dares question the immutability of homosexuality.

Science, myths and same-sex parenting
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/science_myths_and_same_sex_parenting

If you look at the responses to this study they immediately lable it a “conservative” study to detract from it even though it is the most comprehensive study of its kind. If that is the standard not one of the studies done showing children of homosexuals were just as good as traditional parents was ‘scientific’ and many of these studies were actually conducted by open homosexuals with funding from left wing sources and or in left wing sociology departments so none of them would be valid by such a standard.

There is one thing that can not be denied and that being homosexual in general carries with it several common indicators increased drug/alcohol use, increased sexual partners (especially men), increased depression/mental illness, incrased domestic violence and increase incidence of sexual disease. There really isn’t a comparison.

http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02

I know many just want to ignore the facts. Its easier that way but it doesn’t change the facts. We are doing a dangerous thing letting homosexuality be normed the way it is. All one has to do is spend a day reviewing the literature and ‘gay events’ to see that there is no way in hell that this lifestyle is a positive thing. It is are the least an incorrect personal decision and at its worst the cumulation of years of sexual and or parental abuse.

However, as a matter of intellectual honesty, it needs to be recognized that virtually all the studies of same-sex parenting that have been conducted thus far fall far short of any standard of scientific testing.

Thank you! To call what people in this field do "science" is a huge stretch. Pournelle lumps Sociology along with several other areas into what he calls the Voodoo Sciences, and that would seem appropriate to me. This author would seem to agree with that assessment give this line in the article:

Really that isn’t science and that is what passes for science in the leftist dominated social sciences.

It is worth noting that it was a related field, Psychology, that removed homosexuality from their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, their bible for diagnoses throughout the field, not on the basis of any new breakthroughs in research, as would be expected of any Science worthy of the name, but because homosexuals and NE Liberals in the Psychology community got together and decreed it no longer a "disorder". I've always found this an interesting finding from a Darwinistic perspective.

Here is an article that discusses the removal from the DSM from a homosexual-friendly standpoint: Not Sick: The 1973 Removal of Homosexuality from the DSM. You can see reading this how it is all about controlling the narrative and a question of competing value judgements, and nothing having to do with Science, at least to anyone trained in the tenets of real Science.

All addictions are caused by self-esteem issues-—emptiness. Godlessness. There can be no true meaning to life (happiness) without a belief in God.

CS Lewis’s writings pretty much prove this-—he was an atheist until 31. All atheists-—Flew until he became a Theist—are nihilists-—there is nothing else-—materialism—all worldly stuff deteriorates and dies. You have faith in no God and just the world-—then you are a nihilist and incapable of pleasure—except the superficial, short term pleasures which dissipate quickly—in fact, many ruin the changes of long term—real—happiness.

Poundstone shows her hatred of self (God’s design) by her addiction. There is no love of self without the love of God-—the Creator which gives the only real meaning in life.

Her father and mother did not love her-—that is where one learns to love oneself and God. It is modeled and emulated and proven—only through consistently being able to trust both man and woman (parents) can you trust others. Children learn to trust or hate and fear by how they are treated by their own fathers and mothers in early childhood. (Piaget, Erikson, Attachment theory). To learn trust (Piaget) parents have to be there and not give their children up to “strangers” when they are not able to think abstractly—they don’t understand the abandonment—they learn to not trust. (Daycares, early childhood schools)-—all non-existent until the Marxists took control over education and a generation of mother-haters—population alarmists—feminists—and homosexuals—wanted to destroy the institution of marriage and motherhood-—so that children would be emotionally damaged and easily controlled. They would lose the ability to trust and have long term relationships which were never modeled.

Study the Romanian orphanages-—what happens when children have no loving mother and father who cherish them. They will not grow up and become flourishing, happy, productive adults. None of them. They are always in need of government assistance until the day they die. All psychologists (until taken over by the gaystapo) have known the detriment of young children who do not have both a loving father and loving mother. They can not mature into rational, loving human beings who embrace both men and women and parenthood. It destroys the future generation.

Of course, there can be a great male or female substitute which happens with grandparents and adoptive parents—but nature designed the best and most natural system— which also greatly influences a child’s reality of what is natural and good.

Worldview is formed in early childhood. It is why some children from cultures which practice abnormal things—see nothing “wrong” with it when they are adults. It is why slavery, pederasty, child sacrifice, and homosexuality were common where they existed throughout the world before Chrstianity absorbed all of Western Civilization and created the “Good and Evil” paradigm based on the Bible (and Natural Laws which were put into Catholic Canon by St. Thomas Aquinas).

We see a confused world and reality being forced in our laws and schools—a new pagan paradigm—which removes the Christian paradigm and Natural Laws (basis of US Government) which has been dominant for 2000 years in Western countries. God is Dead movement started in Germany-—we saw where that took us-—Hitler. Now they are destroying our children intentionally for one world control. Destroying Stoic men is crucial to destroying cultures.

Per Wikipedia, you appear to be wrong about Poundstone:...
.... Both as to cause and result. It appears to have to do with alcoholism.

Not likely. The authorities bent over backwards to conceal -- and I do mean conceal, as in suppress -- whatever their beef was, but the child-protective services sent a landslide down on Poundstone and she was whisked off to County. Interested FReepers connected the dots and came to the obvious conclusion: You don't get that treatment for being two beers over the limit at home on a Friday night.

Do you have a reliable source for your statement?

Depends on what you call reliable. Liberals like to use that line to mean, "can you (ha, ha) find a cite in (bwaaahaha) The New York Times or Washington Post or Larry O'Brien's columns in the L.A. Times -- on of the reliable papers -- to support your conservative lies and screeds and crying and peeing and losing history?"

But this contemporary FR thread from 2002 might help get some perspective .... if you consider FR "reliable". (I'm sensitive to that "reliable" crap: a liberal cousin used it on me to deny, contrary to fact, that Alberta liberal kangaroo court artists had an Edmonton preacher in the defendant's cage for preaching against homosexuality from his pulpit. She refused to believe it, until I found an Edmonton newspaper's account of the (eventual) trial, which she grudgingly accepted. She didn't want to believe the original report and discounted it completely, because it came from a website supported by a Stateside ministry. Obvious wild-eyed, mullah-esque zealots, totally non-credible.

But try FR anyway, maybe you'll discover it makes scratch:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/791973/posts

One of the FReepers commenting on the story put up links to further stories and FR threads from 2001.

Also, notice especially Post #10, put up by FReeper Pure Solace. It "may" be the only place on the planet, by now, where that original CNN story content is preserved.

Keep in mind about Wikipedia that they are subject to PC Police patrols and scrubbing. FReeper Bryan was involved in defending FR against an effort on Wikipedia to "establish" an article that characterized Free Republic as a "hate site" and used bracketing techniques, plus slurs and lies from people like the Southern Poverty Law Center, to "bracket" FR (propaganda technical term) with sites like Stormfront.

Wikipedia is overrun with Pinks, Punks, and Moonbats, all of whom are driven by their own inner vacuity to "control" other people's perceptions, to "own" the truth -- IOW, to lie like dogs about anything they can get away with. The Wiki editors are not exactly slackers, but they have little sympathy for conservatives and are often quite complacent about the crap the Moonbats like to put up.

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