In my earlier blog; and in Blog 1. of this group of Friday blog posts, I avoided opinion as much as possible on this volatile issue and tried to stay with a dry presentation of the legal arguments and their convoluted progress through the state and federal court systems. Some of the readers of my blog posts consider that my description of the legal issues bespeaks advocacy for same-sex marriage and that; instead, I should limit myself to supporting the married-father-mother-sister-brother family concept. So far as I can determine, evidence for that belief has not been compelling in the courts thus far. Feelings and beliefs are paramount driving forces for the maintenance of the status quo of traditional man-woman marriage. An editorial in the Deseret News, inouropinion editorial section—the newspaper wholly owned and operated by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City—dated April 12–presented the strongly felt arguments of the Mormon church which would likely be accepted by the Catholics and other traditionalist religious groups. I will liberally quote from that printed opinion so as not to be misunderstood about what pro-traditional marriage people feel.
The editorial begins, “When a man and a woman marry and have children, that union has a strong impact on those children, and consequently, on the society of which those children become a part. For decades, social science researchers have investigated how family structure affects children by measuring their social and academic progress.” On that much both sides of the question and the courts are in agreement. The editorial quotes a research summary for ChildTrends by K.A. Moore, S. Jekielek, and C. Emig: ‘It is not simply the presence of two parents, as some have assumed, but the presence of two biological parents that seems to support children’s development.’ The opinion writers conclude, “…should this wealth of existing evidence about family structure be ignored? No. In fact, family structure research is more relevant than ever before.” The editorial characterizes the issue before the 10th circuit court thus: “Indeed, emotion is at the heart of the effort to redefine marriage from a conjugal relationship of responsibility for the rearing of children to a romantic attachment for adults.” The editorial applauds the governor and the attorney general of Utah for their defense of traditional marriage because “…Utah citizens and lawmakers have many sound and rational policy reasons to retain the traditional definition of marriage.”
The Utah argument brief is lauded and quoted, “’the two sexes bring different talents to the parenting enterprise…the weight of scientific evidence seems clearly to support the view that fathers matter.’ The brief went on to state that the absence of a father places a daughter at special risk for early sexual activity and that children reared in same-sex households experience lower high school graduation rates, have higher rates of depression, delinquency, and substance abuse (among children conceived through sperm donation).
The Deseret News opinion took note of the fact that 59 social studies have been conducted which found no disadvantage for the children of same-sex marriages but went on to say, “…Louisiana State University professor Loren Marks examined these 59 studies in excruciating detail and found that each of them relied upon small, self-selected samples of lesbian or gay parents.” Professor Marks’s conclusion was that “The aggregation of these convenience-based samples is less statistically significant than results for robust comprehensive data sets now in use by researchers in the U.S. and Canada.”
Douglas Allen, an economics professor at Simon Fraser University, reported his findings based on the 2000 U.S. and Canadian Census Reports. “…Allen found that girls in a home with homosexual fathers had a 15 percent chance of graduating, compared with girls in a home with a mother and a father. Girls in a home with lesbian mothers had a 45 percent chance of graduating, relative to the mother and father.” Similar decreases in graduation were found in single parent households and cohabiting unmarried couples.
The Deseret News article concluded: “Large-sample social science examining family structure finds that children raised by their biological parents, on average, fare better. That’s one reason state policies promoting traditional marriage are both rational and beneficial.” continued…