In the 1950s Evelyn Hooker realized that all extant studies of homosexuals were conducted on homosexuals who had been imprisoned for sex crimes, in therapy or committed to mental institutions, and so they were concluding homosexuals were sick because they only studied sick homosexuals. Her 1957 study, The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual was the first to systematically examine homosexual men who weren’t in prisons or mental institutions or undergoing therapy and, surprise, surprise, discovered that if you study gay men the same way you study straight men they look pretty much alike.
In 2012 Mark Regnerus studied broken families with gay people in them, compared them to intact families headed by heterosexuals, and concluded that gay people make lousy parents, thereby proving that the religious right wants social science and the view of gay people to stay back in the early 1950s.
It is because of the studies of Hooker and Kinsey and others which began appearing 60 plus years ago that those who use their religious beliefs to assert homosexuality is intrinsically disordered and destructive have no excuse. One could almost excuse then in the Seventies for their ignorance. But in the year 2012, any ignorance they have can only be construed a willful and blind.
Another thing that makes me very angry about this study and the way it’s being used on the right is that EVEN IF IT WERE RIGHT in what the right says it proves (and what Regnerus sometimes says it proves, and sometimes doesn’t), so what? Even if same-sex parents provided a demonstrably worse environment on certain outcomes than intact biological parents, so what? What does that have to do with gay adoption or with same-sex marriage? We don’t prohibit divorced or (in most states) single people from adopting children, even though the social science suggests that they will provide a less optimal environment for their children. We don’t prohibit men and women from divorcing, even though we know broken homes create sub-optimal environments for raising their children. We don’t prevent divorcees from remarrying, or deadbeat dads, or prisoners on death row. So why the hell should any evidence about same-sex parenting be cause for suggesting that gay adoptions or same-sex marriages should be prohibited? We don’t require any other group to prove their fitness to marry or to have, raise or adopt children, yet somehow we have to prove that we’re “fit” to do so. America shouldn’t be about deciding who “deserves” equality and who doesn’t; it’s supposed to be about guaranteeing that everyone just has it.
The ACLU filed a Federal Lawsuit today to force North Carolina to permit second parent adoption. I read the complaint, and you should to. The descriptions of the families starts about the middle of page 14.
There is no WAY after reading that that I can understand why anybody would want to hurt these people and their children.
https://www.aclu.org/files/assets/nc_complaint.pdf
I don’t care what that God damned research says I see in North Caroline loving families good families.
Beginning in 1974,when he was 3, my partner and I
started co-parenting–on a part-time basis (shared
custody with his mother) my son. Today, he is a
“normal heterosexual,” age 41, who just sent us the
most wonderful expressions of love (in our Father’s Day cards) that a father could possibly ask for. Ask
these misguided “researchers” to come research our
family!