Note:
"Two peer-reviewed articles [emphasis added] published Sunday in a scholarly journal (Social Science Research) cast doubt on a core assumption used to advance same-sex marriage."
ok. good. I would have preferred you link the actual papers but that is fine.
The article continues: "Yesterday the academic journal Social Science Research published a detailed methodological review of the research on which the APA based its conclusion." The journal reported that not one of the 59 studies described in the APA report "compared a large, random sample of lesbian or gay parents with a large, random sample of married parents and their children." Not one.
this is a meta-analysis and I am not very interested in it. It doesn't represent a study as requested.
A second large, representative article also published in Social Science Reserch reports on a study by U. of Texas sociologist Dr. Mark Regnerus. His study gives the "most representative" view available of young adults whose parents had same-sex relatiionships. More than 15,000 young adults were screened to find 3,000 participants. 175 of them told Regnerus that their mothers had been in same-sex relationships and 73 said their fathers had.
excellent. An actual scientific study. Thank you.
Here is the link to the article for reference.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000610
Importantly, this study makes multiple comparisons using multiple statistical approaches. This is fine for an exploratory study to identify if differences exist, but one must be very careful with this as it will yield many false positives.
Of note, they use simple t-tests for their first pass comparison, setting a p-value of 0.05. This means a 95% confidence that they are finding a difference. What this means though, is that there is a 5% chance of making a false positive. In other words, one out of every 20 comparisons, you are likely to find a positive when one doesn't exist.
In just table 2 alone, they made 105 comparisons. They then went back and ran additional comparisons using alternative statistical methods.
I shall assume their additional methods accounted for this, but (and this is important), they included this data along with their other more sophisticated analyses. This gives the more disreputable opinion writers fodder to claim differences when they do not in fact exist.
for example:
Findings: Young adults whose mothers had same-sex relationships fared worse than their peers "in intact biological families." Examples: They were "far more likely" to report being sexually abused, on welfare, and unemployed.
So what do you believe the causative relationship here is?
Does being a in a lesbian relationship make one poor? Does being sexually abused put one on welfare? Or does being on welfare and unemployed correlate with higher incidence of abuse?
Indeed, majority of the studies problems dealt with the fact that many of the same sex couples were from previously married heterosexual couples. That change is a large factor in many of the correlative data seen.
the author's own conclusions were quite important
But the NFSS also clearly reveals that children appear most apt to succeed well as adults—on multiple counts and across a variety of domains—when they spend their entire childhood with their married mother and father, and especially when the parents remain married to the present day
This suggests two main points:
1.) Children born into stable same-sex marriages will be more apt to succeed, suggesting that allowing gay marriage will be BETTER for children.
2.) Children from low economic families and divorce are worse off.
So, do you believe because of point 2 that we should outlaw divorce or prevent poor people from marrying?
please answer this question. it is very very important.
So there you have it, joobz--the very documentation you challenged me to produce.
Thank you. but, as you can see, one must read the original sources so that you can know what the limits are to the study.
