He/she is not gay/lesbian, and doesn’t even have any gay or lesbian friends.

Some obvious questions.

The writer does not seem to be sure of his/her gender so, that being the case, how can he/she be so positive that he/she is not homosexual?

And how can he/she be so sure that none of his/her friends are homosexual? Does he/she profess to be able to predict sexuality just by looking?

And why does he/she think all this is so important that it needs stating so explicitly?

I agree but the consequentialist argument cuts both ways. You shouldn’t exclude, for example, Catholic adoption agencies who have a good track record of placing children with adoptive families just because they refuse to place with gay couples. Even if their reasoning is poor, if the outcomes are good, they should be allowed to carry on as before. But by all means, gay couples should be allowed to adopt and public organisations should judge them as suitable on the same basis as heterosexual couples.

I read that the Catholic adoption agencies who previously disciminated have not abolished themselves, but instead become non-religiousised adoption agencies. That is not a bad outcome in my view.

Oh pagar, you never fail to provide the wtf. Don’t ever change.

Nick, the issue is not whether adoption agencies should be allowed to discriminate, but whether the Mail should be permitted to continue publishing outright lies.

Just a point: even if there WERE studies that children raised by gay couples were STATISTICALLY disadvantaged over their peers in care – which there aren’t – this would STILL not be an argument against gay adoptions since each application would have to be judged on it’s individual merits.

What Shatterface said.

Plus, even if gay parents were a little bit worse than heterosexual couples the real question is “Are they better than leaving children in care.” My bet is that they are.

In any case, that’s just a “what if,” I can’t think of a single reason gay parents would be worse.

Debi – And on that we agree. I am just saying the argument applies in other directions on the same issue too. Where are the outright lies relating to this out of interest? A quick google hasn’t turned up the exact Daily Mail claim that gay couple adoption is bad for children. Not that I am denying it is there, I know exactly how bad the Daily Mail can be reporting on scientific data.

I hate to get a bit right on about this but it seems that all these studies seeming to be working from the hypothesis that children raised by same sex parents are disadvantaged in some way. Is there any anecdotal evidence to suggest that this is the case? Why in the hell can’t we assume that same sex couples are fine, that the only reason it wasn’t allowed before was because we were ignorant bigots, and take it from there.

I’m not being overly clear but I guess what I’m trying to say is that I find it deeply offensive that anyone we have to get studies to prove that children aren’t in some way damaged by ‘the gay’ before we can tell the Daily Mail to stick it’s prejudice up it’s arse and leave people to it.

Interesting point about the Catholic adoption agencies – should we let bigots get away with being bigots just because they also do nice things? I’d say no.

Following links from the OP (which I did, ’cause I was interested), I think they’ve specifically been referring to columns by Amanda Platell:

Insults that betray the bigotry of gay zealots:

I don’t have a homophobic bone in my body. I just happen to believe that vulnerable children face the best possible life-chances when they are adopted by married heterosexual couples – a view backed by an increasing weight of academic evidence.

Equality? You must be joking! As watchdogs say it’s OK to sneer at men (but not women) in adverts

This, despite the fact that most ordinary families recognise that a child fares best when it has a married mother and father in the home – a belief that is backed by repeated academic studies.

I feel dirty now, thank you for making me dig those articles out.

I’m up for mailing the PCC. The quotes attributed to the mail are untrue and damaging, and deserve to be corrected. However, I’ll need a link to the Mail articles containing those quotes.

The only quote linked on the blogspot page is “I just happen to believe that vulnerable children face the best possible life-chances when they are adopted by married heterosexual couples – a view backed by an increasing weight of academic evidence” from this link:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1183011/AMANDA-PLATELL-Insults-betray-bigotry-gay-zealots.html

There are many studies showing no negative effects of same-sex couple adoption. So any page which states “positive outcomes for children were ‘thin on the ground’, ‘almost non-existent’ and ‘too methodically flawed to be valid’ ” can be taken on with all guns blazing. But I’ll need the links, please.

Ah, thanks for the second link Debi, you got in while I was posting

Will_full#8: You can find anecdotal evidence to support pretty much any viewpoint ever, if you look hard enough.

However, most of the ‘gay parents are bad for kids’ anecdotal evidence I’ve seen presented seems to be along the lines of ‘because the kids will be picked on at school!’ which seems to me to be a problem with our homophobia-infused society rather than a problem with queers ourselves.

Ah ok, so it is from an opinion columnist. Yeah, she sounds a bit nutty and it is good to challenge it. But I very much doubt there should be a law against saying what she has. I mean, you get some pretty outlandish claims in all newspaper columns and, overall, we are better off protecting the bullshit so that we can still learn about the issues.

I didn’t think the subject was about whether there should be a law against opinion columns. I was under the impression the OP was stating there was a law about printing factual untruths in newspapers and we were being encouraged to call out the bullshit as it was printed.

After all, there’s little point in “protecting the bullshit” unless you’re going to actively call it out for what it is.

I think her statements could do enough real-world damage that they need to be shown as false. It’s not a matter of personal opinion, it’s telling over a million Daily Mail readers that’s there’s loads of evidence gay adoption is harmful. Completely untrue, and harmful to the currently hard-fought cause of gay parents wanting to adopt. She can hold the views and give her opinion, but not say it’s backed up by tests. Because it isn’t.

Having had to wade through some of her articles now, I’m glad we have freedom of opinion. It means that I am allowed to completely agree with the people who emailed her calling her a “nasty Tory cow” with “an IQ of minus 5″.

I wonder what the author feels about single parent adoption since there is some evidence to support that single parent families are not the ideal.

“I was under the impression the OP was stating there was a law about printing factual untruths in newspapers and we were being encouraged to call out the bullshit as it was printed.”

Is there such a law? Is the PCC’s remit statutory?

Also, just because something is being put in a newspaper, do you think all readers believe it? I know Daily Mail readers who read it for enjoyment and sometimes ironically without necessarily endorsing the views they read. You certainly can’t treat Mail readers as a monolithic block, absorbing its views via osmosis.

Nick: Irrelevant.

If I put out an “opinion” piece saying having Catholic parents harms adopted children, and claimed this was backed up by the findings of “repeated studies’, and an ‘increasing weight of academic research’, while studies saying the opposite were so flawed as to be invalid… it would become a matter for the newspaper to be challenged on.

Doesn’t matter if we decide we trust readers to take it in an ironic manner (and no, I don’t think the average Mail reader does so; if anything they’re precisely the demographic who should be getting the truth on this issue).

It is irrelevant whether a law has been broken or not.

By all means, challenge away. It is bullshit after all. I am just not sure exactly what you are expecting to achieve by going to the PCC specifically. And I would be worried that you might just be lending legitimacy to a pretty useless body by doing so.

I thought I’d answer some of the questions which have arisen in the discussion of this post, to help clarify the point of the site and campaign.

Firstly, I’m really pleased with the scepticism surrounding the site and the issues of same-sex adoption. Part of the issue with columnists laying claim to academic evidence is that they speak with an authority to readers unfamiliar with the research – it would be unfortunate if, in reaction to that, people took the word of a random from the internet. The research in this area is voluminous – take a look and form your own judgements.

I am actually aware of my own gender and sexuality, the ‘he/she’ stuff has more to do with anonymity than identity crisis. The denial of homosexuality is to counter the doubts that earlier readers had that I was merely pushing a ‘gay agenda’ and skewing the evidence to fit that. I’m not – I’m merely bothered about the misrepresentation of empirical evidence in daily newspapers.

In that context, I don’t really mind the Mail’s opposition to same-sex adoption – in response to one of the complaints we’ve made they have actually removed a claim to evidence leaving them with just a bald statement of opposition, and I’m fine with that. The problem is simply that I don’t think they should be claiming academic, evidential support for that opposition when it has none. The opposition should stand alone as an unsupported belief, as that’s all it is, and people will be persuaded or not on that basis.

I think it’s fair to expect factual accuracy in newspapers, and fair to keep them to the PCC code which they signed to say they would pursue such accuracy. The PCC is reactive, we have to ask them to keep newspapers to the code – the more we do it and the louder we do it, the harder it becomes for the newspaper to repeat its inaccuracies and the more careful it will become to check its facts.

Well that is all cool. Just so long as it is explicitly an attempt to hold organisations to their word, rather than to engage in censorship, then what you are doing is valuable.

Guest.
I think it’s really important to stick to what can be proven scientifically – and you risk damaging your own case, if you leave out the genuine variation of academic opinion on an issue.

You quote the APA, choose not to include:”It should be acknowledged that research on lesbian and gay parents and their children, though no longer new, is still limited in extent.” And ‘..relatively few studies have focused on the offspring of lesbian or gay parents during adolescence or adulthood”
So they recognise there is not enough scientific evidence to be firm in their conclusions

And the APA have recently done a U-turn on one of their major positions on homosexuality – previously saying there was over-whelming evidence… and now saying there is no such evidence.
See https://liberalconspiracy.org/?p=4788

2ndly -you quote a recent study by Rimalow and Caty – I googled but could find source that mentions these 2 together – where can I find it?

3rdly – academics are not united in their interpretation of the recognised limited data:
““The uniform finding of no significant disadvantage for children raised by gay or lesbian
parents has been convincing to some scholars (Ball and Pea 1998; Meezan and Rauch 2005; Stacey and Biblarz 2001; Wald 2006), though others remain unconvinced (Lerner and Nagai 2001; Nock 2001; Wardle 1997).”

4thly – Michael J. Rosenfeld, Associate Professor ept. Sociology, Stanford University in his article “Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress through School” writes:
““Studies of family structure and children’s outcomes nearly universally find at least a
modest advantage for children raised by their married biological parents. The question which has bedeviled researchers, and which remains essentially unresolved, is why”.
http://www.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_Nontraditional_Families_Children.pdf

Adopted children, by definition, do not have the option of being raised by their married biological parents, so even if that report is true it’s irrelevant.

Hullo justvisiting,

You make some very good points. The APA do indeed say that more research is needed (and, indeed, since 2005 more has been done – if you trawl through the literature, there are seven more positive studies published in the last five years, plus nine which review the literature), but they do not conclude that there is any evidence of negative outcomes from same-sex adoption. Only the Mail appears to be claiming that. There is a distinction between being rightly cautious about the studies we have and claiming the existence of studies we haven’t. To be clear, I have found one unambiguously negative study published since the APA report in 2005 – it’s findings are, in the light of the body of research in this area, anomalous. We can’t write it off, but we should be cautious about placing too much weight on it. It also, clearly, does not itself constitute ‘repeated’ studies, nor an ‘increasing weight’ of academic evidence.

The Rimalow and Caty study is: Rimalow and Caty (2009) The mamas and the papas: the invisible diversity of families with same-sex parents in the United States Sex Education 9:17-32, and can be found here: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a908799014?words=adoption|gay|lesbian|same-sex|homosexual&hash=843258562

I’d be very careful about the Lerner and Nagai study you mention – if you read it, it very quickly turns into a politically-motivated attack-piece, cherry-picking research, misinterpreting the nature of studies and misrepresenting their aims and methods. I cannot speak for the other two studies you mention, however – I will look into them.

When we’re talking about adoption, we are talking about families who are already broken up. The evidence I’ve seen is fairly clear on unbroken families offering children the best chance, which makes intuitive sense and isn’t something I’m going to take issue with. The question is whether the Mail can legitimately claim that an increasing weight of evidence supports the conclusion that same-sex adoption is harmful to children. I have yet to see that increasing weight of evidence, and studies showing that families which stay together offer children the best chances don’t change that.

“The writer does not seem to be sure of his/her gender so, that being the case, how can he/she be so positive that he/she is not homosexual?”

Ahh, Pagar, your questions betray an ignorance of genderqueer culture. Someone referring to zirself as he/she could very simply identify as gender-variant or bigendered, switch genders frequently, or feel that the gender distinctions we are forced to use in language are trash. Sometimes homosexual/heterosexual labels are used relative to the person’s biological sex, if said sex falls into the traditional male/female binary, regardless of the person’s gender status.

More seriously, @ just visiting,

“And the APA have recently done a U-turn on one of their major positions on homosexuality – previously saying there was over-whelming evidence… and now saying there is no such evidence.
See https://liberalconspiracy.org/?p=4788”

That link does not seem to be relevant. Or is the reference you’re looking for somewhere in the comment thread? I’m still wondering what the position the APA about-turned on.

Julia set-up
Sorry, you’re right I was a bit brief and hence not clear.

Looking down that earlier thread – the issue that the APA did a U-turn on was whether homosexuality was genetic/biologically determined or not.

From 1998 their literature said:
“There is considerable recent evidence to suggest that biology, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, play a significant role in a person’s sexuality.”

But now they have reversed this, saying in a brochure called, “Answers to Your Questions for a Better Understanding of Sexual Orientation & Homosexuality,” :

“There is no consensus among scientists about the exact reasons that an individual develops a heterosexual, bisexual, gay or lesbian orientation. Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors. Many think that nature and nurture both play complex roles. …”

It doesn’t seem like there was any startling new studies/facts that forced theri rethink – in the way that for example Einstein came up with new facts that over-turned Newtonian dyanamics. So, it rather sounds like the APA’s earlier statement was more of a statement of what they wanted to believe, rather than ever based on solid scientitic fact.

I am informed by friends with more knowledge in this area, that the social sciences are in general very poor in their use (misuse) of statistics and experimental methodologies; so that some of what they report in academic journals is not to be relied on.

Hence why I ask people what scientific sources they base their views on.

DontGetMad
Thanks for taking the time to write that.

Aren’t you being self-inconsistent?
You write: “…do not conclude that there is any evidence of negative outcomes from same-sex adoption. Only the Mail appears to be claiming that.”

But this is contradicted when you wrote: “To be clear, I have found one unambiguously negative study published since the APA report in 2005 – it’s findings are, in the light of the body of research in this area, anomalous. We can’t write it off, but we should be cautious about placing too much weight on it. It also, clearly, does not itself constitute ‘repeated’ studies, nor an ‘increasing weight’ of academic evidence.”

Why do you feel it is OK to discount some research – maybe because it’s not in line with the outcome you want?

A ‘stay with the science’ approach would be more balanced.

Why not side with RosenFeld’s research that I refered to, where he says:
“The uniform finding of no significant disadvantage for children raised by gay or lesbian
parents has been convincing to some scholars (Ball and Pea 1998; Meezan and Rauch 2005; Stacey and Biblarz 2001; Wald 2006), though others remain unconvinced (Lerner and Nagai 2001; Nock 2001; Wardle 1997). ”

“Several points are worth commenting upon. First, as the critics have noted, convenience sampling dominated this literature in the past (Nock 2001)….More recent
scholarship has answered this criticism…”

“A second critique of the literature, that the sample sizes of the studies are too small to
allow for statistically powerful tests, continues to be relevant. The mean number of children of
gay or lesbian parents in these studies is 39, and the median is 37, and both numbers would be slightly lower if studies without comparison groups were excluded. The nationally representative studies in the series found only 44 children who were raised by lesbian couples in the Add Health survey. Golombok et al (2003) found only 18 lesbian mothers out of 14,000 mothers in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children …”

“A third potential weakness of this literature is the narrowness of family structures under study (Tasker 2005). Of the 45 studies listed, only seven examined the children
of gay fathers, and only two of these seven studies had a more traditional family control group built into the study….”

I only have one problem with this post, the notion that there has to be some sort of God given (for believers) or natural ‘right’ to have a family. Who has decided that such a ‘right’ ought to exist? It’s as though we believe that the human race should be genetically pure without any deformation, strong without any chance of procreation being a failure, I’m sorry but I think I live in the real world and that no one should expect by ‘right’ to be fortunate enough to be able to have a family, it’s something that needs to be accepted.

As for adoptive parents my only concerns would be for the best outcomes for the children, regardless of the gender of the adopters.

DGMI am actually aware of my own gender and sexuality, the ‘he/she’ stuff has more to do with anonymity than identity crisis.

How does concealing your gender protect your anonymity? There are still an awful lot of both males and females in the world you could be.

Julia Ahh, Pagar, your questions betray an ignorance of genderqueer culture. Someone referring to zirself as he/she could very simply identify as gender-variant or bigendered, switch genders frequently, or feel that the gender distinctions we are forced to use in language are trash. Sometimes homosexual/heterosexual labels are used relative to the person’s biological sex, if said sex falls into the traditional male/female binary, regardless of the person’s gender status.

I begin to think that ignorance of genderqueer culture may be something of a blessing in disguise. FFS so many questions.

Was Zirself in Star Wars?

Is being bigendered something to do with the size of ones arse?

Or something worse?

Actually, Julia, maybe I do need educating…………

On the serious point of the original post., to allege that same sex adoptions have better or worse outcomes for the child is ludicrous. Some will have good outcomes, others less good as with heterosexual couples. But the DM is, as usual, brazenly pandering to prejudices and you shouldn’t let them suck you in to such straw man debates. Do what I do- don’t read it.

Just while we are on the subject, presumably nobody here is arguing that black children should not be adopted by white couples?

Just Visiting – in what way do you think the APA has reversed its position? Do you believe that the two quotes you provide from APA documents are somehow incompatible?

The Lerner and Nagai study I’ve already discussed, Wardle (1997) was attacked by the New Zealand Law Commission as “based upon a flawed analysis and misinterpretation of the relevant literature and an obvious bias against homosexuality” (Scottish Government 2005) and Nock (2001) shares with Lerner and Nagai and Wardle the problem that it is merely reviewing existing evidence as insufficient to draw a conclusion from, not concluding that same-sex adoption is harmful. Since the most recent of these, in 2001, further research has been done building on earlier methodological issues (see the APA 2005, or the American Academy of Paediatrics in the same year, or the continued research in this area since then).

My problem is not with the Mail claiming that there is insufficient evidence to call the debate either way (although I think, in fact, there is), my problem is them claiming that they have ‘repeated studies’ or ‘increasing evidence’ when they have, in fact, one study and some reviews saying the evidence c. 2001 was not good enough. Which, let me make clear again, I do not discount – I find it fascinating that it has concluded the opposite of 40-odd years of accumulated research, and it deserves close attention. I do not agree that a ‘stay with the science’ approach would entail dropping this accumulated weight of research on the basis of one study. We look again, we don’t rip it up and start again.

If there is no blanket harm being caused by same-sex adopters, there should be no blanket prohibition. Each case should, as someone said, be decided on its merits. I agree that the idea of a ‘right to a family life’ is clumsy – let’s think of it as a right to be treated the same as your peers unless there is a compelling reason not to. I have yet to find that compelling reason in this case. In its absence, the Mail shouldn’t claim it.

Dontgetmad

I’m with you 100% when you say of the Mail “my problem is them claiming that they have ‘repeated studies’ or ‘increasing evidence’”.

Their position is out on a wing scientifically (no surprise there – they are a newspaper after all…)

Curly

the right you talk about and don’t seem to like, is the ‘god-given right’ that it takes a man and women to produce a baby. You probably had a hunch about that.

And anyway, both children outcomes statistics and evolutionary biology say that parents of the same DNA as the child make the best parents.

Greg

“Do you believe that the two quotes you provide from APA documents are somehow incompatible?”

I do. Google it yourself and you’ll find others of the same opinion.

But if you fancy a challenge – let us know how you read their two statements.

@34:
I do. Google it yourself and you’ll find others of the same opinion.

Oh yes, lots of them. All wingnut bloggers, all feverishly referring back to each other. It seems to have originated on the nutty conspiracy-theory website WorldNetDaily, which in turn has as its source the fundamentalist quacks at NARTH. And the thing is, they’re lying. NARTH are lying (or else so stupid that they are incapable of basic reading comprehension), and WND are either knowingly repeating it or can’t be bothered to do even a cursory fact-check using google.

I know this because I did do a cursory fact-check via google. And what did I find? The information from the 1998 brochure referred to, is still available in PDF format on the State of Connecticut’s website here. Check it – it is as the WorldNetDaily post describes it, down to the recommended resources at the bottom. And when you read it in full, it becomes clear just how much NARTH and WND were making this shit up. This is the line they quote (in bold) in the full context of the pamphlet (and note that they left out the word “also” from the line that they selectively quote):

“There are numerous theories about the origins of a person’s sexual orientation. Most scientists today agree that sexual orientation is most likely the result of a complex interaction of environmental, cognitive and biological factors. In most people, sexual orientation is shaped at an early age. There is also considerable recent evidence to suggest that biology, including genetic or inborn hormonal factors, play a significant role in a person’s sexuality. It’s important to recognize that there are probably many reasons for a person’s sexual orientation, and the reasons may be different for different people.”

In full, the substance of that statement appears to be the same as the substance of the second quote. Now you can see the statements aren’t remotely incompatible – though you should have been able to see that anyway, simply by reading them how they were written rather than how you wish they were written (you might like to wonder, for instance, where that “over-whelming” came from in your first comment @22).

Furthermore, that original statement is still available on an APA subsite here, three months after NARTH delivered its supposed gotcha – so it hasn’t been withdrawn/replaced, simply re-worded by a newer writer. NARTH appears to have attempted to twist reality to fit its own desires. Never believe what you read on a wingnut website, it’s either a lie or the wrong end of the stick.

More gay adoption in the news.

1. Any new/media publication/website/whatever that is spreading outright lies or deliberately tapdancing around the truth (about any subject) needs to be hauled up- regardless which political wing it favors. Perpetuating lies is a form of brainwashing and it needlessly incites anger in the masses who are already enraged at some of the hideous truths of the world.

2. As someone who survived an extremely rough and abusive upbringing, I can say firsthand that hetero parents are certainly no “better” than homo parents. I’m writing from the U.S. and I’m not to sure what the stats are in other developed, western countries concerning severe child abuse and sex crimes; but they are unbelievably high over here- and our stats are only coming from the situations that actually get reported to authorities (many don’t).

3. Foster homes (at least over here) are often a big joke. The government here gives fat incentives (large amounts of welfare, food stamps, tax breaks, etc) for fostering kids. The result is someone taking in a kid or several kids, just to get the financial perks, then treating the kids like absolute crap. Foster homes are not properly monitored and most caseworkers are lazy and apathetic.

That said, any couple (homo or hetero) that is psychologically and emotionally stable and mature, financially stable, fully determined to stay together, not inclined to violence, perversion or substance abuse, and blessed with compassion and common sense, should be given a fair shake with regards to adoption and child rearing. There just aren’t enough good homes to go around really, so why limit them further with unnecessary discrimination?