Checking the APA's Findings on Homosexual Parenting

American Thinker ^ | 06/22/2012 | Janice Shaw Crouse

[SeekAndFind]

Since 2005, when the American Psychological Association (APA) issued an official brief on lesbian and gay parenting, political correctness has demanded that all agree with the spurious assessment that children of homosexual parents do fine. The APA declared, "A growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with one or two gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual. Children's optimal development seems to be influenced more by the nature of the relationships and interactions within the family unit than by the particular structural form it takes."

In a fit of concurrence, elite opinion-makers, academics, and those in the mainstream media voiced their wisdom by declaring that any household structure works well as long as there are loving relationships within the family unit.

In the absence of research to the contrary and a barrage of positive media images of homosexuals in family settings, public attitudes were manipulated into widespread acceptance of same-sex parenting. The few lone dissenting voices were harassed and discredited.

But the prestigious Social Science Research journal recently published highly credited research that counters the prevailing public and scientific attitudes. Loren Marks, of Louisiana State University, authored "Same-Sex Parenting and Children's Outcomes: A Closer Examination of the American Psychological Association's Brief on Lesbian and Gay Parenting," which uses objective scientific methods to examine the APA assertion about the outcomes of homosexual parenting. Marks' research calls into question the validity of research methods and analysis of the 59 published studies cited by the APA.

Marks concluded that the APA assertions about homosexual parenting were not empirically warranted -- i.e., the data presented doesn't validate their hypothesis. He found that the sampling that these researchers used was not representative: the samples are too small,

[AnonymousConservative]

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