Wednesday August 18, 2010
Expert: Prop 8 Trial Based on False or Dubious Statements about Homosexuality
By James Tillman
August 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Judge Vaughn Walker built his decision overturning Proposition 8 on many “findings of fact” that to a great extent came from experts supplied by the opponents of Proposition 8. But according Dr. Walter Schumm, professor of Family Studies and Human Services at Kansas State University, many of these so-called facts are either false or doubtful.
In an interview with LifeSiteNews.com (LSN), Dr. Schumm explained that, contrary to the findings of Judge Walker, homosexual parents are more likely to raise homosexual children; that scholars are often biased in favor of research friendly to the homosexual agenda; and that legalizing homosexual “marriage” places an unjust burden upon heterosexual families.
(To read the entire interview, which covers material not included in this summary, click here.)
The 71st finding of fact in Judge Walker’s decision states that children raised by homosexuals are just as likely as children raised by heterosexual parents to be “healthy, successful, and well adjusted.”
But according to new research by Dr. Schumm, “children of GLB [gay, lesbian, or bisexual] parents were more likely to either have identified as GLB or to have at least experimented with nonheterosexual behavior.”
The abstract of his study states that according to one of his analyses the percentage “of children of gay and lesbian parents who adopted non-heterosexual identities ranged between 16% and 57%”
Schumm also said that the studies indicating that the children raised by homosexuals are as well adjusted as those raised by heterosexuals, may be flawed.
“Many of the studies have set up questionable comparisons of GLB and heterosexual parents,” he said. “Often, the GLB parents have higher education, higher incomes, fewer children, as well as a likely desire to present their children in a socially desirable manner for the sake of ‘the cause’.”
He continued: “I have yet to see any study that has controlled for or taken into account per-capita household income when comparing children from both types of households.”
“One recent study used gay fathers from households earning an average of $190,000 annually, which put them easily into the top 5% of all U.S. households for income. Generalizing from the top 5% of all households to all households is simply not appropriate scientifically.”
Those who wish to critique such methodologically flawed studies, he continued, often have difficulty finding a hearing.
“My own research has shown that articles featuring ‘pro-gay’ outcomes are much more likely to be cited scientifically than those featuring ‘anti-gay’ results, even if the authors, timeframe, and journals are the same,” he said. “I have also found that sometimes, the worse the quality of the research in this area, the more likely it is to have been cited in major reviews of the literature.”
He continued: “If a journal is willing to publish adverse outcomes for GLB parenting it is at risk of being blackballed and deemed ‘unscientific’; thus, editors of journals must have tremendous courage to buck the current of political correctness and allow fair peer review of such research.”
The 48th finding of fact in Judge Walker’s decision states that same-sex "couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in the characteristics relevant to the ability to form successful marital unions."
According to Dr. Schumm, however, it is becoming “increasingly clear from research that lesbian mothers tend to have less stable relationships than heterosexual mothers and fathers, an issue seldom considered by researchers.” Because children raised by single-parent households generally do worse than those raised in two-parent households, children raised by lesbians may be adversely affected by less-stable lesbian relationships.
Furthermore, he said that researchers have found that “gay men are much more likely than heterosexual men to engage in and approve of ‘extra-marital’ sexual affairs.”
Finally, Dr. Schumm also addressed the flawed argument that it is “simple justice to afford equality to same-sex couples.”
“In my opinion,” he said, “this is a case of focusing on equality of outcomes rather than taking into account equality of inputs.”
“My point,” said Dr. Schumm, “is that by treating unequal relationships (unequal in terms of costs and risks) as if they deserve to be equal in terms of societal benefits, the court is actually establishing a great inequality, the very opposite of what it may think it was doing.”