"Lesbians of Mass Destruction"

One of the wittiest yet fundamentally sound arguements in favor of same-sex couples having children can be found in this column in Slate. Here are a couple of my favorite excerpts:

The 30-year search for proof that gay parents are destructive looks a lot like the hunt for WMD. The American Psychological Association has compiled abstracts of 67 studies. Some are plainly biased, and only the latest two or three have avoided the methodological flaws of earlier investigations. But after 67 tries, you'd expect the harm of gay parenting to show up somewhere. Yet in study after study, on measure after measure, kids turn out the same.

If you're going to base family policy on averages, the chief problem isn't stepparents; it's men. That's what "pro-family" groups keep covering up. According to Focus on the Family, "Increased risks of physical and sexual child abuse at the hands of non-biological parents are another serious concern for same-sex families." Nope, not for lesbians. The latest study cited by the group actually concludes that the "key risk factors are living with a stepfather or the mother's boyfriend." Of 55 child deaths reviewed in the study, zero were caused by a stepmother or by a biological mother in a stepfamily or live-in relationship. Other studies show the same pattern in child abuse generally.

As we've recently been reminded, James Dobson really hates letting facts get in the way of his rhetoric of discrimination. It's nice to see someone on a national platform setting the record straight. I'm personally sick to death of hearing about Mary Chaney's baby, but it her pregnancy can focus some positive attention to same-sex couples raising children, that's a good thing.