Are Gay Parents Better Than Straight Parents?

Just today Christofascist bigot and GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum lectured the mother of a gay man on how he doesn't "hate gays." Actions and statements over a period of time, of course, tells a different story. Personally, barring a group of people from ever having any legal recognition of their relationships doesn't exactly strike me as loving. And as for Santorum's tired parroting of the hate group derived meme that children need a mother and father, new research suggests that even that line is not true. In fact, the new research suggests that gay parents may be better than many straight parents. I'm sure this nugget of truth will have Maggie Gallagher, Linda Harvey, Victoria Cobb and other professional Christians wetting themselves and going into spittle spewing convulsions. Here are highlights from a Huffington Post that detail yet another favorite Christianist lie being exposed as untrue:

On Jan. 6, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum told a New Hampshire audience that children are better off with a father in prison than being raised in a home with lesbian parents and no father at all. And last Monday (Jan. 9), Pope Benedict called gay marriage a threat "to the future of humanity itself," citing the need for children to have heterosexual homes.

But research on families headed by gays and lesbians doesn't back up these dire assertions. In fact, in some ways, gay parents may bring talents to the table that straight parents don't.

Gay parents "tend to be more motivated, more committed than heterosexual parents on average, because they chose to be parents," said Abbie Goldberg, a psychologist at Clark University in Massachusetts who researches gay and lesbian parenting. Gays and lesbians rarely become parents by accident, compared with an almost 50 percent accidental pregnancy rate among heterosexuals, Goldberg said. "That translates to greater commitment on average and more involvement."

[R]esearch suggests that gay and lesbian parents are actually a powerful resource for kids in need of adoption. According to a 2007 report by the Williams Institute and the Urban Institute, 65,000 kids were living with adoptive gay parents between 2000 and 2002, with another 14,000 in foster homes headed by gays and lesbians.

Research has shown that the kids of same-sex couples — both adopted and biological kids — fare no worse than the kids of straight couples on mental health, social functioning, school performance and a variety of other life-success measures.

In a 2010 review of virtually every study on gay parenting, New York University sociologist Judith Stacey and University of Southern California sociologist Tim Biblarz found no differences between children raised in homes with two heterosexual parents and children raised with lesbian parents.

The bottom line, Stacey said, is that people who say children need both a father and a mother in the home are misrepresenting the research, most of which compares children of single parents to children of married couples. Two good parents are better than one good parent, Stacey said, but one good parent is better than two bad parents. And gender seems to make no difference. While you do find broad differences between how men and women parent on average, she said, there is much more diversity within the genders than between them.

In fact, the only consistent places you find differences between how kids of gay parents and kids of straight parents turn out are in issues of tolerance and open-mindedness, according to Goldberg.

If same-sex marriage does disadvantage kids in any way, it has nothing to do with their parent's gender and everything to do with society's reaction toward the families, said Indiana University sociologist Brian Powell, . . .

Imagine that. "Godly Christians" lying and deliberately misrepresenting legitimate research. Rick Santorum is a total douche bag and if there is a God, Santorum will end up with gay or lesbian children. As noted before, the strongest argument for walking away from Christianity is falsely pious, sanctimonious, modern day Pharisee like "godly Christians."