The December 16, 2010, issue of Discover Magazine presumed to announce the “Top 100 Stories of 2010” and declared (at #88) that “Same-Sex Parents Do No Harm.” They drew on the work of University of San Francisco psychiatrist, and lesbian, Nanette Gartrell, who studied 78 children “conceived through donor insemination and raised by lesbian mothers.” The magazine reported that these offspring exhibited “healthy social, emotional, and psychological development.”

That same year, Lisa Cholodenko (a lesbian who has had a child with the help of an anonymous sperm donor) made a film proclaiming, The Kids Are All Right. It featured two IVF children encouraging their lesbian mothers to stick together—and it won both a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination.

A recent, much larger study1 by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus came to substantially different conclusions. The results were published in the academic journal Social Science Research, under the title, “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study.”2 The research compared “social, emotional, and relational” outcomes in the now-adult offspring from households of a half-dozen different types.3

He focused particularly on the children of women who took on a female partner after the disintegration of their heterosexual marriages. The findings were extensive and dramatic:

1. Contrary to media portrayals, which present lesbian relationships as lasting and devoted, lesbian relationships are quite transitory. Only 57% lived with their partners for more than four months; only 23% made it beyond three years. Only a few stayed together for 18 years. In other words, there is “profound instability” in lesbian homes.

2. Furthermore, most of the homosexual parents involved were on welfare. Again, this runs contrary to the Hollywood image of lesbians and gays as middle and upper-class providers. For instance, children of cohabiting lesbian partners were four times as likely to be the beneficiaries of welfare as their counterparts in traditional families.

3. When the children got out on their own, the rates of dependence on public assistance differed dramatically—38% of those from lesbian households; only 10% of those whose heterosexual families of origin were intact.

4. Only 3% of children in traditional families were “touched sexually by a parent or other adult,” while 23% of the children with lesbian parents suffered this offense.

5. Undermining the claim that homosexuals are simply born that way, the study showed that 90% of children from traditional homes identified themselves as “entirely heterosexual,” while only 61% did so when the mom was a lesbian. It turns out that childhood sexual orientation is very susceptible to environmental influence and that gender confusion and fluidity is more a matter of nurture (or lack thereof) in the home than of the child’s native inclinations.

As one reads through the results, the recorded pathologies mount up, revealing these children’s greater incidence of promiscuity, STDs, unemployment, arrest, depression, and marijuana use—and their lower educational attainment. (An excellent overview, with helpful graphics and answers to frequently asked questions is available at http://www.familystructurestudies.com/.)

One might think that Regnerus’s colleagues in the social sciences would thank him for this extensive new study on a matter of great concern, the welfare of children. But many were indignant and abusive, for he embarrassed the gay agenda, which they and a host of professors across the disciplines have embraced. Nevertheless, his work was vindicated by the University of Texas,4 and it stands as a warning that those who trifle with or defy God’s design for marriage and parenting do so at great risk, both to themselves and to their offspring.

Footnotes:
1
This one involving 2,988 interviews of subjects 18-39 years old, at a cost of $1.5 million. Funding was provided by The Witherspoon Institute.

2
Mark Regnerus, “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study,” Social Science Research 41, no. 4 (July 2012): 752–770. Copy available http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000610 (accessed September 26, 2012).

3
E.g., single-parent, heterosexual households and step families, as well as those led by homosexuals.

4
Meslissa Steffan, “Mark Regnerus Cleared of Misconduct in Research Involving Gay Parents,” Gleanings, September 12, 2012, http://blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2012/09/mark-regnerus-cleared-of-misconduct-in-research-involving-gay-parents.html (accessed September 26, 2012).
article adapted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located one and a half miles of Rt. 222 in Perryville, MD.