Same-sex adoption

[dreamer_easy]

I didn't spot this in time to leave a comment at the SMH: Opposing same-sex adoption is not bigoted, an opinion piece by Anglicare head Peter Kell.

Kell's piece led me to Anglicare's submission to the 2009 Parliamentary enquiry on adoption by same-sex couples. The thrust of Anglicare's argument against allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt is that, despite extensive research, we can't be absolutely sure the kids won't be worse off than if they were adopted by straight couples, so we should err on the side of tradition. Well, of course this is bigotry; it's a blanket negative assumption about a large, diverse group of Australians. But let's put that aside: what caught my eye in Kell's op-ed was this:

"A submission by Anglicare Sydney noted that research on same-sex carers had been affected by both methodological flaws and ideological debates. Anglicare Sydney concluded that, in the best interests of children, the state should err on the side of caution on adoption - even more so in areas where research, at best, appears ambiguous. And the members of the committee were far from unanimous about the research evidence."

Far from being "an evidentiary quagmire", that the evidence shows same-sex parenting is no worse for kids is the position taken by both the Australian Psychological Association and its American equivalent. The Anglicare submission makes no mention of either statement. Unable to find any evidence that kids raised by queers would be worse off, they resort to misleadingly cherrypicking quotations from the opposition. For example:

"It has been observed that research conducted into the care of children by same-sex couples has been affected by both methodological flaws and the highly politicised debates surrounding this issue. It has become an evidentiary quagmire. The UK researcher Stephen Hicks sums up the problem as follows: 'I do not believe that the topic of lesbian and gay parenting can or should be assessed on the basis of "the evidence" alone. That evidence is too thin, too equivocal and, more importantly, does not represent the facts of the matter, for these are moral as well as epistemological questions.'"

This seriously mispresents Hicks' piece, which is not a summary of a review of the evidence, like the statements from the two APAs. Rather, it's a debunking of misrepresentations of the evidence by right-wing Christians! His actual statement was:

"Nevertheless, my point has also been that "sexuality" itself should not be seen as an object or variable, and I do not believe that the topic of lesbian and gay parenting can or should be assessed on the basis of 'the evidence' alone. That evidence is too thin, too equivocal and, more importantly, does not represent the facts of the matter, for these are moral as well as epistemological questions. Instead of asking whether lesbian and gay parenting is 'bad for kids', we should be asking how homophobic Christian discourses are bad for such families and, indeed, how those discourses maintain the very idea that lesbians and gay men transmit their essential and deficient 'differences' to their children."

Similarly, the Anglicare submission states:

"Likewise, US researchers Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz, who are sympathetic to same-sex carers, agree with their opponents that 'ideological pressures constrain intellectual development in this field'".

Back in its context, that statement's part of an indictment of the very attitude of Kell's opinion piece and the Anglicare submission:

"We agree, however, that ideological pressures constrain intellectual development in this field. In our view, it is the pervasiveness of social prejudice and institutionalized discrimination against lesbians and gay men that exerts a powerful policing effect on the basic terms of psychological research and public discourse on the significance of parental sexual orientation. The field suffers less from the overt ideological convictions of scholars than from the unfortunate intellectual consequences that follow from the implicit hetero-normative presumption governing the terms of the discourse—that healthy child development depends upon parenting by a married heterosexual couple."

IMHO, these misrepresentations veer dangerously close to bringing false witness. One of the papers they quote compares "policy and practice that is evidence based and ideologically driven". Anglicare's argument is that evidence-based policy is impossible. It's all so ideologically tainted that lay people have no hope of making sense of it all! And even if it wasn't, there are some things science was not meant to know, such as the influence of fathers on sons, which may be "ultimately immeasurable". Unable to make a case, Anglicare, and Kell, argue feebly that no case can be made anyway.

ETA: For an easy-to-read analysis of the research and its reliability, check out chapter four of the Parliamentary committee's findings.