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April 12, 2002, 9:55 a.m. Is Gay Adoption Harmful? Moving behind the gay-adoption headlinesBennett.

NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez interviews Robert Lerner, a social-science researcher and co-author of the book No Basis: What the Studies Don't Tell Us About Same Sex Parenting, a study commissioned by the Marriage Law Project.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: How tied-into the same sex-marriage debate is gay adoption?

Robert Lerner: It appears to be another facet of this debate. The difference is the legal situation faced by advocates on either side. Homosexual adoption is permitted in every state, except Florida and Utah. Same-sex marriage is not legal anywhere except Vermont, which was the result of a state-supreme-court decision directing the legislature to produce some kind of civil-union statute, which it did. Similar court decisions were overturned by constitutional amendment in Hawaii and Alaska. The similarity between the two issues is that the body of evidence used to justify the more "progressive" policies in either case is the same. The American Academy of Pediatrics' recent decision on gay adoption relied on the same flawed body of evidence, as did the Vermont state supreme court in its decision on same-sex marriage.

Lopez: What are the flaws of studies of same-sex parenting studies?

Lerner: The research that purports to show that the sexual orientation of parents' makes no difference in child outcome is flawed in so many different ways that space prohibits listing them all. Here's a quick summary:

The same-sex parent studies:

— Completely misconstrue and thus blatantly misuse the standard logic of statistical hypothesis testing (e.g., they attempt to affirm the null hypothesis, which is wrong; one can only fail to reject the null hypothesis)

— Fail to use proper or even any control groups (e.g. Charlotte Patterson's Bay Area study)

— Use wildly unrepresentative non-random samples

— Use far too few cases to draw any valid conclusions

— Fail to control for essential variables when presenting their findings

— There is only one study that has any kind of follow-up. This particular study misanalyses its own data, which in fact show that the daughters of lesbian couples are more likely to engage in lesbian sexual experimentation as adults than are the daughters of heterosexual couples. This effect is probably understated since the authors lump together heterosexuals who are married with those who are cohabiting

— The above study is the only one which included adult data; findings based on young children are inadequate for talking about the development of adult behavior and identity

— None of the studies in question is a study of gay adoption; the children studied are either the natural children of one partner or result from artificial insemination. This limits the generalizability of the studies, even assuming they were valid otherwise

Lopez: Is same-sex parenting harmful to kids?

Lerner: In my opinion there is as yet no definitive answer to this question, even apart from the question of what is meant by "harm." For example, many would say that if children raised in these families were more likely to grow up gay or lesbian, that this in itself would be harmful. Others might not agree, but I would be surprised if most Americans would be neutral at the prospect of their own children becoming gay or lesbian.

There is some evidence that growing up with homosexual parents increases the likelihood of sexual promiscuity, experimentation, and homosexual sexual experience. If sexual preference is at least in part learned, this is to be expected. There is also a large literature indicating that gender nonconformity growing up leads to an increased likelihood of developing a homosexual orientation as an adult. I would speculate that same-sex adoption would likely lead to a greater experimentation with gender nonconformity and a greater likelihood of producing gays and lesbian adults than would heterosexual adoption.

Next, there is the evidence on the relative instability of same-sex relationships with its evident effects on the stability of children's relationships.

Finally, there is evidence that homosexuality, male or female, is associated with adjustment problem such as depression, anxiety disorders, alcohol and drug abuse, and attempts at suicide and, of course, there is the risk for gay men of venereal disease including but not limited to AIDS.

It is not too large a stretch to conclude at least tentatively that high degrees of: family instability, sexual-orientation confusion, parental emotional problems including higher rates of mental illness, higher risk of disease from high rates of sexual promiscuity, may make gays and lesbians less fit as parents than heterosexuals, other things being equal.

Lopez: Should there be laws like those in Florida that ban gay adoption?

Lerner: The available research is so poor that it would be dangerous to draw any conclusions from it. If the first rule of public policy is to do no harm, then rushing in without any real knowledge is foolhardy. The studies cited by the American Association of Pediatrics (AAP) are a portion of the ones we reviewed, and are so poor that they cannot be relied upon for anything.

With respect to same sex parents adopting children, we as a society may have already repeated the mistake we made concerning divorce. When the divorce laws were liberalized (beginning during the late 60s early 70s and extending through the next decade or so), it was claimed that scientific research showed that the children would not be harmed and therefore a high divorce rate would not be a problem but would free adults to self-actualize. When the findings from technically proficient studies began to appear, however, it appeared that the earlier results, which were in fact very sketchy, were totally wrong. Divorce can and does cause a good deal of harm for children caught up in it. Although this finding is now widely accepted, the new conventional wisdom does not help the many children who suffered because their parents were told that divorce was perfectly ok. Damage occurred that was not necessary and would not have occurred except for the acceptance of wishful thinking disguised as social science evidence. In fact, the issue had never been properly studied, especially when the earlier guesstimates and summaries are compared with today's rigorous studies. If we are not careful, the same results are likely to ensue.

Two alternatives to simply overturning the law are to create a rebuttable presumption against gay adoption, which could be overcome with a showing of either extreme need or superior parental fitness. This would avoid the "hard case makes bad law" problem. A second alternative that has been recently suggested by political scientist James Q. Wilson is to revivify residential-care centers, or orphanages, as potential substitute parents. Wilson argues that orphanages are reasonable alternative to single parenthood and I believe that this may be a feasible alternative here also.