Ruth Institute Blog

Just in case there wasn’t enough to argue about on this blog.

by Susan Smithies

An Australian parliamentary debate on same-sex adoption shows gay rights to the fore.

Heated debate and controversy swept across the Australian state of New South Wales last week when a bill granting same-sex couples the same rights under adoption laws as heterosexual couples was passed narrowly (45 votes to 43) in the Legislative Assembly (lower house) of its Parliament. Read more…

by Walter R Schumm

Research showing the risks of lesbian and gay parenting is ignored in the race to make a political case.

There is an inherent risk that anyone who has anything to say about gay male or lesbian parenting, no matter how cautious, will be misunderstood at best and vilified at worst. Nevertheless, the mission of a university professor includes seeking new ways to look at old issues, to resist all forms of intimidation, and to ensure that multiple sides of controversial issues are considered. Since there are more voices promoting the virtues of parenting by people defining themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender (GLBT), I will present here an alternative, possibly minority, view that focuses on some of the possible risks associated with gay and lesbian parenting. Read more…

Part 1. in a series of responses to a question posed by a student.

No one contract can treat same sex couples and opposite sex couples identically.

(Warning: this post is long! But Worth the effort if I do say so myself!)

1. If you believed that it is not possible for the government to be neutral in the definition of marriage, would that change your view of the desirability of your proposal? Read more…

W. Bradford Wilcox

I have a lot of respect for Pamela Paul. So it pains me to say that her new piece in The Atlantic, “Are Fathers Necessary?”, gets it wrong, and in two very big ways. The gist of her argument is that sociologists Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey are right in claiming that fathers play no essential role in the lives of their children. Or, in their words, ”based strictly on the published science, one could argue that two women parent better on average than a woman and a man…” Read more…

New podcast!  Drew Mariani interviews Dr J on his radio show about Fathers’ Day, the president’s speech commemorating same, homosexual parenting, and the oft-mentioned Pediatrics study championing lesbian parenting.  Listen here.

Fathers’ Day and Homosexual Parenting

We’ve been talking about this study a lot lately, and now there’s a podcast about it here.  Dr J appears on Issues, Etc to discuss the shoddy science and the gratuitous potshots contained therein.

Just in Time for Father’s Day…

By Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse|Published Date: April 04, 2010 at The Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

Equal, but…

“Kids Do as Well with Same Sex Parents,” the headlines screamed. I crossed swords with Judith Stacey, one of the authors of this most recent study, at a debate at Bowling Green State a few years ago. I asked her point blank if she believed men and women were completely interchangeable as parents. In front of that very friendly audience, she said absolutely: the gender of parents doesn’t matter. And so she says now, in this new article the media loved. But midway through the article, her argument shifts from a “no difference” argument to my favorite definition of feminism: men and women are identical, except women are better. Her article ends with an intimation that I believe tells strongly against same sex marriage. Redefining marriage will create a cultural climate that will drive men out of the family, and lead to the belief that the only good man is a gay man. Read more…

Is Father’s Day going to become obsolete? I guess those for whom it is actually celebrated are a dying breed.

By Van Helsing

Father’s Day is coming up a week from Sunday. MSNBC has begun to honor it already — by proclaiming that fathers are needed only for their sperm: Read more…

You’ve all seen the headlines by now: “Children of lesbian parents do well.” These headlines are based on a new study published in the journal Pediatrics. I actually read the study, which is my custom before commenting. I also read the letters to the editor on this study.

Here are 8 reasons why this study does not prove anything about the functioning of the children of lesbians.
1. The sample is extremely small: 78 children of lesbian mothers and 93 children in the control group.
2. The sample of lesbian mothers is unlikely to be representative of the general population of lesbians. This is a sample of people who volunteered for the study, not a random sample. The most motivated and high-functioning people are the most likely to volunteer for a politically charged study.
3. The “results” are intrinsically unreliable. The results are nothing but the mothers’ reports of their childrens’ behavior and functioning. There is no cross-checking with objective outcomes, Read more…