New Study: Anti-Gay Laws Harm LGBT Individuals

A new study out of the University of Michigan School of Public Health reaches conclusions that are no surprise to most LGBT individuals: anti-gay laws harm LGBT individuals.  Harming gays, after all is the real motivation behind such laws.  They may be dressed up as efforts to "protect marriage" or to support "family values," but the real goal is to stigmatize, marginalize and make life in general as difficult as possible for LGBT citizens.  The Michigan Daily has details on the study findings.  Here are excerpts:

New research out of the School of Public Health breathes urgency to the polarizing issue of gay marriage, by highlighting the depressive and psychosocial impact of such restrictive legislation on young gay men, especially in regard to their fatherhood aspirations. 

The study was conducted by Assistant Public Health Prof. José Bauermeister and was published in this month’s issue of the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. The report builds upon a growing body of research on the psychological effects of government policy. 

Bauermeister analyzed the survey results against state-specific LGB policies, including bans on marriage equality, same-sex joint parenting and second parent adoption. He stressed the importance of including policies not just limited to marriage equality saying less frequently discussed policies are also restrictive.

“You stick another layer into it and you start seeing a lot of parenting laws and bans in place that prohibit either a single gay or lesbian man or woman to adopt or to have a child and then have a second same-sex parent added as a guardian of that child, or to adopt jointly,” Bauermeister said.

The results confirmed Bauermeister’s hypothesis that men who plan on raising children had higher levels of depression and lower levels of self-esteem in states with LGB restrictive policies than men with the same aspirations in states without the bans.

Public Health Prof. Gary Harper said politicians that propose such restrictive policies are often more concerned with getting reelected than with the consequences the policies produce. 

“(Politicians) need to realize that those restrictions do have real-world influences on individuals, especially adolescents who are developing their sense of self and sense of who they are,” Harper said. “That’s a really critical time and these restrictive and oppressive laws can have an extremely damaging impact on the adolescent.”

“If from very early on you were told that you are not as good as everybody else, then you are not going to develop a healthy sense of self-esteem because at every turn you are told you’re not as good as other people,” Harper said. “When we have marriage restriction laws, we are basically saying to a young gay person, ‘Your love for another person is not recognized by the state, so that means it’s not as good as heterosexual love.’ ”

Hawaii and Illinois recently became the most recent states to pass legislation legalizing gay marriage. Harper is happy with the progress, but said that there is a fundamental problem.

“If we live in a country where we say that all people are created equal and we have protection on almost every other identity characteristic under the sun," Harper said. “Why is it this one factor is the only factor that we federally, legally discriminate?”

The answer to the last question is easy: we give far too much deference to conservative Christianity and have allowed it to become a de facto established religion in America.  This needs to end.