Zach Wahls, the Iowa college student that became interweb famous after eloquently speaking out in support of his two moms, has shot down a controversial, newly released study that alleges that children raised by gay parents will be negatively affected in the long-run.
The study, which shockingly (read: not shockingly) has funding ties with the Family Research Council (an anti-gay hate group) confuses causation with causality. Wahls and Slate's Will Saletan argue that the data found by the study actually points to the idea that children raised in a stable two parent/same-sex partner home have no noted negative outcome.
More, plus Zach Wahl's interview with Eliot Spitzer on Current's Viewpoint after the jump!
In the controversial study by Mark Regnerus, only two of the study's subjects (out of 3000) reported having been raised by a same-sex couple for their entire childhood. 248 reported that they had one parent that had a relationship with someone of the same gender at one point in their lives.
There are various reasons for why that was the case, including the homophobic societal climate that these couples (or potential couples) were living in. Basically, if you're living in an environment where your relationship isn't validated and raising children with a same-sex partner is potentially prohibited, then it's hard to gauge accurately how these kids would turn out if permitted to be raised in a loving two-parent home with committed same-sex parents.
Wahls notes that "If these families had been able, from the beginning, to be in stable, loving, committed relationships, like my moms and so many other parents across the country have today, these numbers would be much, much closer to what we see be in line with other studies in the past that have actually been about the stable, committed families.”
Of course, knowing the homophobes as we do, they'll run with this invalid, unsubstantiated study to prove their unfounded arguments.
Hopefully people like Zach Wahls will keep hitting them with logic until this becomes a non-issue.
