Don’t Believe Everything You Read

 I have often thought about how scary it is that people will believe anything they read or hear especially if the person or source should be credible due to occupation or societal standing. I too have fallen into this trap many times. But all humans have flaws and biases and the worst part is that people believe so many things without question or concern particularly when it confirms opinions and ideas they have already formed even if the information is false. I have tried to maintain that what is most important in life when is comes to research, politics, religion, education etc, is that truth is more important than my opinion or how I feel. Some might say well this is “my truth” and that is not what truth is. 

Most recently a topic this applied to is an examination of the 2005 APA brief on lesbian and gay parenting done by Loren Marks at Louisiana State University. Now, nothing I have to say in this post means I think same-sex couples should or shouldn’t be aloud to raise children or be married because that is entirely irrelevant. What concerns me is how much the original brief has affected the world.

If you really look into the research behind the APA brief and compare it to what they are actually claiming almost none of it is relevant or substantial to the statement “There are no differences between the outcomes of children raised by same-sex parents and heterosexual families.” They go even further as to say that children of same-sex parents are equal to, if not better than children raised by heterosexual couples. And that claim is all well and good if the research referenced actually supported it.

To start off, very few of the studies actually studied any children. Wouldn’t it be kind of important to study the children if your claim is that there are no differences in their outcomes? In addition, it might be important to do studies of the children after they have become adults because that is when they would be “outcomes” because technically there aren’t really substantial results if they are still children in the process of being parented. Another point for concern is that most of the research referenced is not compared to heterosexual families if anything they are compared to single mothers, who’s children we know from many studies on the topic, are often at a significant disadvantage when compared to families with a mother and a father. So if the claim is that children of same-sex parents are equal to hetero families but the studies are comparing them to children we know are already at a disadvantage does it not give cause for concern regarding the data? Similarly, many of the studies only looked at the parents in gay and lesbian couples and their ideals, values, and opinions on how they were raising the children. Most parents, regardless of sexual orientation, like to believe they are good parents and that they are executing their ideals effectively. Most of the time though what they wanted to happen and what actually occurred are two very different things; and that’s okay because we as humans are imperfect, but still doesn’t reflect the outcomes of the children from the parenting in order to provide any support to the claim being made. The lesbian mothers studied also did not reflect the general population of that group because they were all of a higher socioeconomic status which makes them outliers rather than representative of the average lesbian mother because we also know that the average lesbian couple often makes below average income as opposed to gay couples who trend towards higher incomes. 

There are many more concerns with the data presented in relation to the claim I won’t get into at this time, but the point is that this brief changed the world even though it was not reliable. If the research performed, to make this claim, actually demonstrated that when the children of same-sex couples were compared to children of hetero couples presented equal outcomes that would be great. But that is just not the case and its effects have reverberated throughout the world and its not about the parents because what really matters is the kids who are going to be affected, whether for better or worse, for the rest of their lives.