One of the many and varied reasons I left my career in journalism is because journalists think that whenever they have a story about gays and lesbians that they must “balance” that story with someone who is anti-gay—preferably someone who is religious and anti-gay. I find it infuriating and wonder why they don’t ask a white supremacist to “balance” stories on race, or flat earthers to “balance” stories on global warming. Their opinions should be just as valid if journalists are going to running to religious bigots every time gays and lesbians are mentioned in the press.
So, today’s bit of journalistic “balance” come from CNN. It reports on a 25-year study that shows “children raised in lesbian households were psychologically well-adjusted and had fewer behavioral problems than their peers.”
This is truly fantastic news—not just for the gay community, but for the children—and isn’t that who these anti-gay family groups are most concerned with? Aren’t they always telling us “think about the children!” when issues of gays and lesbians daring to do anything other normal citizens get to do come up? So, here is a study that shows that, hey, the kids are all right—and maybe even better than kids raised in straight families:
Children from lesbian families rated higher in social, academic and total competence. They also showed lower rates in social, rule-breaking, aggressive problem behavior.
Despite these glowing results that children are not just surviving, but thriving in lesbian households, the “pro-family” spokesperson picked by CNN, Wendy Wright, president of the Concerned Women for America, disputed the study because it was funded by pro-gay groups.
“That proves the prejudice and bias of the study,” she said. “This study was clearly designed to come out with one outcome—to attempt to sway people that children are not detrimentally affected in a homosexual household.”
Not so, said the researcher Dr. Nanette Gartrell:
“My personal investment is in doing reputable research,” said Gartrell. “This is a straightforward statistical analysis. It will stand and it has withstood very rigorous peer review by the people who make the decision whether or not to publish it.”
And therein lies the rub for the anti-gay folks—the vast majority of their studies (largely reported on in the media without “balance” from the LGBT community, I might add), are not peer reviewed and usually wind up published in journals they own or influence. This study will appear in the July issue of the journal Pediatrics—a widely respected journal.
But, overall, whether the study is biased or not, the thing that it does show is that children do well when they have parents who have planned for the children and are closely involved in their lives. The gender of the parents is irrelevant. The fact that this is not good news to the anti-gay crowd simply reveals that they are deeply anti-child as well as homophobic.
