American Sociological Association Files Prop 8 Brief Demolishing Arguments Against Gay Parenting

One of the favored arguments of the anti-gay hate merchant crowd is to claim that same sex parenting results in impaired or less well adjusted children.  Like most every thing that comes out of their mouths this effort to denigrate and stigmatize gays isn't true but is used as part of the Christofascist smoke screen to avoid admitting that only one thing lies behind DOMA and Proposition 8: religious based prejudice if not outright hate and animus.  Yesterday, the American Sociological Association ("ASA") filed amicus briefs in the Proposition 8 and DOMA appeals before the U. S. Supreme Court that stopped just short of calling the defenders of Proposition 8 and the falsely named Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives outright liars.  Here is an excerpt from the ASA press release on the brief:

“An issue at the heart of these cases is whether family composition, per se, affects the well-being of children and thus, provides a justification for limiting the right to marry,” said Ridgeway, the Lucie Stern Professor of Social Sciences in the Sociology Department at Stanford University. “This core question is an empirical one and is the subject of a broad range of social science research. As a scientific body, ASA has a duty to provide the court with a systematic and balanced review of the evidence to assess what the consensus of scholarly research has shown.”

In their briefs to the court, the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives, which is defending DOMA, the Hollingsworth Petitioners, which are defending Proposition 8, and their respective supporters assert that children fare better with opposite-sex parents than with same-sex parents.

“When the social science evidence is exhaustively examined—which the ASA has done—the facts demonstrate that children fare just as well when raised by same-sex parents,” states the ASA amicus brief. “Unsubstantiated fears regarding same-sex child rearing do not overcome these facts and do not justify upholding DOMA and Proposition 8.”

Of course the supporters of DOMA and Proposition 8 care nothing about what science and empirical evidence shows because their sole agenda is to force their religious beliefs on all Americans and to subvert the First Amendment guarantee of religious freedom to all Americans, not just the Christofascists.   It's all about them and, truth be told, they don't give a damn about children.  Here are excerpts from the ASA briefs:

However, the claim that same-sex parents produce less positive child outcomes than opposite-sex parents—either because such families lack both a male and female parent or because both parents are not the biological parents of their children—contradicts abundant social science research. Decades of methodologically sound social science research, especially multiple nationally representative studies and the expert evidence introduced in the district courts below, confirm that positive child wellbeing is the product of stability in the relationship between the two parents, stability in the relationship between the parents and child, and greater parental socioeconomic resources. Whether a child is raised by same-sex or opposite-sex parents has no bearing on a child’s wellbeing.

The clear and consistent consensus in the social science profession is that across a wide range of indicators, children fare just as well when they are raised by same-sex parents when compared to children raised by opposite-sex parents. The social science studies cited by BLAG, Proposition 8 Proponents, and their amici to support their arguments fail to address same-sex parents at all. Accordingly, as a matter of science, these studies cannot serve as the basis for conclusions about same-sex parents and related child outcomes and do not undermine the social science consensus that children fare just as well with same-sex parents.

 

To the extent some of the studies cited by BLAG and the Proposition 8 Proponents show that stability improves child outcomes, they confirm that marriage rights for same-sex couples and the federal recognition of such marriages are likely to improve the wellbeing of children of same-sex parents by providing enhanced family stability. The research presented in this brief articulates these points in greater detail, and demonstrates that the government’s interest in promoting the wellbeing of children is neither substantially nor rationally connected to DOMA or Proposition 8, because the overwhelming scientific evidence shows clearly that same-sex couples are equally capable of generating positive child outcomes.

 The sad truth is that nowadays, no one lies more than the self-anointed "godly Christian" crowd and its political whore and sycophants in the GOP.   If their lips are moving, it is a safe bet that they are lying.