FOR SOME reason, the speech by University of Iowa student Zach Wahls to the Iowa House Judiciary Committee last January is still gaining an extraordinary amount of attention. You can view it here.Wahls was raised by two lesbians and gave a speech in support of same-sex marriage, which the Iowa legislature has not approved. His performance is a real tear-jerker. Every argument he uses could be deployed in defense of polygamy or incestuous marriage. Notice how his sister in the family portrait at his website appears of ambiguous sexual identity. They share the same anonymous donor as father.  In his speech, Wahls refers to his absent father as a “monogamous” donor.

                                   — Comments —

DIANA writes:

Please do not take my question as being triflingly argumentative, but why did you begin your post about Zach Wahls with the phrase, “for some reason”? [Laura writes: I should have made it clear that I was being ironic, perhaps by saying, “For some strange reason.”] You should at this point know why Wahls’ testimony has become so popular. The homosexualist movement is lavishly financed and very well placed, particularly in the media. It has convinced a lot of heterosexual young dummies of its righteousness so it appears to be an unstoppable force.

Look, we’re in a war here. So let’s stop being incredulous at the effectiveness of the tactics of the other side. Let’s stop expecting crazy people to be sane. That’s crazy.

I use the word war literally. We have nothing in common with people who think homosexuality is good, and that it can be integrated into the heterosexual family paradigm without violating and polluting the nature of the latter. I’m not advocating violence, but any kind of fraternizing with the enemy ( yes, enemy) is prohibited in wartime. That includes any kind of sympathy. I’m well past that, thank you.

In war, the two sides hate one another, with a deadly hate. This, too, must be faced. You cannot control what you do not admit. Our hate must be channeled into effective opposition. Yes, despite the fact that we formally control legislative bodies, etc., what I described above, especially the media cheer squad, turns the normal majority into the opposition. Hey, they don’t call themselves “queer” for nothing.

Despite what I say, I do not consider this to be a lost cause. The homosexualists crow endlessly about the fact that youth is on their side and for now, they may be right. But young people grow up. They look around at their “gay” friends who by age 35 are mostly wrecks, if they are still alive. Maybe they connect a few dots and see that homosexuality and self-loathing are opposite sides of the same coin. Maybe they start to listen to that small, still, voice that says, “NO. No child is the product of two men, or two women. All babies have a mother and a father.”

This is all show biz. I used to work in show biz. I could tell you stories. Zach Wahls looks superficially quite attractive. But as a former flack, I can tell you that the appearance and the reality are two very different things. Let’s check back with the kid when he’s 40. I find it hard to believe that by age 40 he will never have wanted to look his own father in the eye. Will he be drinking? Will he be married? Will he be a sperm donor?

Is he gay himself? If there’s nothing wrong with being gay then why not say so?

Laura writes:

When I said his speech was a “real tear-jerker,” I meant it was consciously manipulative. His exposure is part of a well-funded campaign. I thought I made that clear in the title of the entry by calling him a “poster boy.”

Truthfully, I don’t know why thousands of Iowans didn’t show up last January to protest Wahls’ speech. That floors me.

David writes:

Laura writes, “Every argument he uses could be deployed in defense of polygamy or incestuous marriage.”

Not necessarily. His arguments are empirical, that the fact that his caregivers were a same-sex couple did not stop them from bringing up as a fine young man. To see if this argument applies to polygamy or incestuous marriage, you’d have to see if those arrangements have the same capacity to raise healthy and effective individuals.

Laura writes:

An argument really can’t be anecdotal and empirical simultaneously, even if the anecdote is true. An empirical argument consists of facts chosen without regard to the observer’s opinions. It is by nature falsifiable. “My experience” isn’t falsifiable, therefore it isn’t empirical.

Second, contrary to the saying, ‘there is nothing new under the sun,’ I think that Heather Has Two Daddies really is new. We are not even telling Heather that her dead mother was a cheap slut drunken whore, which would be bad enough. Stuff like this happened when death came early and suddenly, and slander of the dead is not unknown.

No, we are telling Heather she never had a mother. She has two fathers, one of whom rented her surrogate’s womb, exactly like a straight man rents a woman’s body for sex. It’s a lie to tell a kid he
has two mothers, or two fathers. This is new.

I don’t know about David, but I say lying is evil.

Since you brought up the issue of poster boys, here’s an update on the Seattle murder case.

There are heterosexual parents who are horrible, too. But they generally come from trashy, dodgy backgrounds and somehow their transgressions are rarely surprising, although they are certainly
shocking. But these two were poster boys for “gay parenting” – and look what happened. We won’t see this on Ellen.

By the way, no one talks about the bereaved mother. Because the dead baby had no mother – he had “two fathers.”

David writes: 

I thought that was implicit in my statement. His basic arguments – which can be summed up as, “Look, I’m perfectly normal” – could be deployed by someone campaigning for polygamy. 

Sure, assuming that there is anyone perfectly normal who was raised in a polygamous environment. Again, a more robust investigation would involve comparing the percentages of each.

Laura writes: 

Responsible adults are not willing to conduct “robust investigations” on children when it involves exposing them to perversion and depriving them of their mother or father. I don’t need “robust investigations” anymore than I need robust investigations to tell me that incest is psychologically harmful. 

David writes: 

Many studies confirm that children who do not live with their biological parents due to the conscious choices of adults – rather than because of the death of a parent – suffer psychological harm.  

And yet you advocate that very thing, as opposed to abortion, in the post above. 

Laura writes: 

Adopted children are normally given an adoptive mother and father. They are not exposed to the sexual confusion of two “parents” of the same sex. Also, adopted children, when they are told about their background, are usually informed that their parents were unable to care for them. This leaves an entirely different impression on the child than the fact of being conceived in an impersonal commercial arrangement. Adoption  is an less-than-ideal accommodation to an  unwanted pregnancy. The child in a same sex “marriage” is purposely conceived as a quasi-orphan. The moral implications are entirely different, which is not to say that adoption is not painful too. In the case of adoption, the alternative – abortion – is far worse. In the case of same-sex “marriage,” the alternative – real marriage – is entirely healthy. Every homosexual has the right to marry someone of the opposite sex.

David writes: 

However, I wouldn’t strive too hard to convince you of this fact because if you do not see it, if you cannot understand what it means to be conceived in a contractual, commercial arrangement and to be denied any relationship with your mother or father, to be deliberately orphaned in this way, or to be raised in a home without an adult of the same sex, then no amount of evidence is likely to convince you otherwise. 

So if I don’t already, a priori, accept your claim, evidence won’t convince me otherwise? On the contrary: if I did already accept your claim, then I wouldn’t need any evidence to convince me. It’s only the unconvinced that need evidence in the first place. And I assure you, I would be swayed by convincing evidence, gathered in a controlled manner, for your claim.

Laura writes: 

And how might you respond to someone who said they needed “evidence” to be convinced that incestuous relationships are psychologically harmful or wrong, assuming these relationships do not result in conception? 

Would you say, hey, let’s try it out. 

How might you respond if someone said he would need evidence to know that bestiality is harmful to teenagers? 

Would you say, let’s do a “robust investigation?” 

David writes:

 Yes, homosexuality is inherently bad. I also assume that not having a relationship with one’s biological father is inherently bad and humanity has over the ages agreed on this point. 

Well, like I said, if you assume that, the argument is already over. And there’s no objective way to argue about what is inherently bad or not. People like Wahls assume that they’re not inherently bad. Claiming that humanity has agreed over the ages, by the way, is not an argument; humanity over the ages has believed lots of things.

 Laura writes: 

Yes, right and wrong cannot be conclusively proven or rationalized. Humanity through the ages has believed murder is wrong but that is not proof that it is wrong. 

David writes:

 If you could be convinced that the normal child has no innate desire for his closest kin based on the statement of one adolescent speaking in defense of the adults who have supported him and upon whom he is utterly dependent, you probably are not open to the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Fatherlessness destroys, as does motherlessness. 

Well first of all, I don’t believe that Wahls ever claimed that there was no such innate desire. He does disagree with your latter claim however, that fatherlessness destroys. And no, it’s not just his statement that convinces me of that, though it supports it. And by the way, it doesn’t sound like he’s dependent on them anymore; he sounds well on the way to becoming independent. 

Laura writes: 

He did indirectly argue that an innate desire for one’s own parents is insignificant in his statements on same-sex “marriage.” 

As far as his dependence on his mother and her girlfriend, I assume they are supporting him. Adolescents are still very dependent on their parents psychologically.

David writes: 

Same-sex “marriage” creates a whole new category of quasi-orphans, who have a vested interest in believing that their upbringing is not as bizarre and abnormal as it is. Just as the sexually abused child does not come forward with his abuse until many years, if not decades, later, the victims of same-sex “marriage” are not likely to reveal their resentment until they are well past early adulthood. 

Assuming you’re correct that this resentment exists in the first place, perhaps so. That’s a big “if”.

 Laura writes: 

Children of artificial, anonymous insemination have already expressed anger. I have provided links in other entries of the organized efforts of adult children of artificial insemination to protest the commercialization of reproduction and their grief at having unknown fathers. [I will add them here as soon as possible.] But again, you should not need those links or that evidence anymore than you would need a study to prove that the death of a child is painful to parents.

Similarly, Trayce Hansen has published evidence showing that same-sex marriage is harmful to children. But I totally reject the need for such studies. It is wrong to consider this an issue requiring study in the same way it is wrong to think of seriously considering whether frequent solitary confinement is dangerous for children. The stakes are far too high and there is ample evidence that adults who walk way from their biological children inflict lasting damage on them, that homosexuality is profoundly damaging and that children imitate the behavior of those with whom they are reared. If you are entirely new to the pathologies that exist in this area, then I recommend Richard Gill’s book Posterity Lost. He lists many of the studies on juvenile disintegration in homes without fathers. There’s also Jeffrey Satinover’s book,  Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth. There are stacks of books that show that children raised by their biological parents are healthier than those raised in broken homes.  But a same-sex “marriage” is worse than a “broken home” because the child knows there was never a shred of love between his parents. Sure, some children can live with that. But some children can live with brain tumours too.

Laura adds:

The common response to what I have said above is that many children grow up in unfortunate or less-than-ideal circumstances and therefore same-sex “marriage” is relatively harmless. But society should not encourage adults to neglect the young.

Jesse Powell writes:

Promoting gay and lesbian parenting as being equivalent to or just as good as heterosexual parenting is a direct attack against heterosexual marriage and even the very principle of valuing one’s identity as a man or a woman.  The very reason why gay marriage and gay parenting is given so much attention and approval by the wider culture is precisely because of its use in attacking heterosexual ideals and institutions. A heterosexual couple is obviously made up of a man and a woman who interact with each other as husband and wife and work cooperatively to perform their roles as parents. A homosexual couple by definition is missing either the mother or the father and in all cases is without the heterosexual interaction between man and woman. To claim that parenting missing this fundamental aspect is equivalent to parenting that includes the fundamental reality of the heterosexual dynamic is to claim that the heterosexual dynamic itself has no value.

The whole point of being a man is that you are not a woman but have a very special and important role to play in relation to women. The whole point of being a woman is that you are not a man but have a very special and important role to play in relation to men. The man and the woman combined in a marital union then have very important roles to play in relation to the children they jointly create together who then, learning from their mother and father and how their mother and father interact with each other as husband and wife, grow up into men and women ready to play their respective roles in the creation and development of their own children. 

For the homosexualists to proclaim that the gender dynamic doesn’t matter and that men and women are simply interchangeable “adults” is to blow up the entire structure and rationale behind family life. From the point of view of evolution, there is nothing more damning on this issue than that homosexuals can’t have children.

Diana writes:

“And yet you advocate that very thing, as opposed to abortion, in the post above. “

Laura didn’t advocate raising children in homes away from their biological parents. You said that adoption was an option available to women considering abortion. David is not arguing in good faith.

About studies, you know that much peer review has degenerated to crony review, especially in the social sciences. But, for what it’s worth, studies demonstrating that children whose parents died before age 18 are prone to life-long depression are surprisingly recent – they’ve only been doing this research in the last 25 years. Now, before that, everyone “knew” that suffering parental death early in life was a blow – but people assumed that kids are tough, they bounce back. And to a degree, that is true. People can be amazingly tough.

That said, about 20-25 years ago a bunch of studies came out showing that suffering either parent’s death before age 18 puts people at higher risk for life-long depression. It was a bit of a shock, even
though everyone always “knew” this. [Laura writes: I believe the evidence in various studies indicates that death of a parent is less traumatic for children in the long run than divorce.]

Also, I well remember when the divorce epidemic hit in the 1970s. “Everyone” said that kids are tough, the human race is genetically optimistic, nothing would stop young people from trying to make their own families in their own way. Then in the late 80s, early 90s, more studies came out, proving that children of divorce suffered much higher rates of truancy, depression, drug-taking, than children from intact families, and that they were much more fearful of making emotional commitments. This hit society like a thunderclap. Don’t you remember? I do.

I predict the same thing will happen with this. Guess what, “same sex parenting” produces kids who are more likely to be gay, lesbian, transgender, etc., fearful of commitment, and so on. And everyone will be shocked, shocked.

Laura writes:

It is wrong to reduce this issue to “evidence.” The invisible constitution of personal identity can never be subjected to the kind of scientific scrutiny modern rationalists, often using the need for “proof” as an excuse to avoid self-sacrifice and higher duties, have come to expect.

Who was it that said, “Tyranny is always more organized than freedom?” I believe it was Charles Péguy. In this case, the tyrannical forces of the homosexual left are more organized than the constituencies that defend the freedom of children.

David writes:

“Similarly, Trayce Hansen has published evidence showing that same-sex marriage is harmful to children. But I totally reject the need for such studies. It is wrong to consider this an issue requiring study in the same way it is wrong to think of seriously considering whether frequent solitary confinement is dangerous for children.”

Didn’t you accuse me of being such that no amount of evidence would convince me?

It looks like you’re the one that wouldn’t even conceive of considering any counterevidence to your beliefs.

Laura writes:

I have no doubt there are lesbians who love the children they take care of and who work hard to care for them. I’m sure there are other people like Zach Wahls who love the lesbians who have raised them. Every child loves the people who care for him.

But that’s not counterevidence. The fact that immoral and harmful actions result in some good does not redeem them. There are children who have felt affection for the stepfathers who abused them. That doesn’t make child abuse right.

So it’s not that I wouldn’t consider counterevidence. The problem is there could be no adequate counterevidence against the well-known innate nature of human identity and biology. Just as both male and female are required to form a human being biologically, rendering homosexuality a form of voluntary sterility or “self-annihilation” and thus making the public approval of homosexuality selfish and wrong because it may spread this voluntary sterility, male and female are required to form a person spiritually and psychologically.  Open the pages of fairy tales, written myths, poetry, history, novels and they overflow with evidence as to the primal importance of mother and father. Walk through any art museum and see the testimony of ancient peoples to the centrality of mother and father in human identity. Someone who is deaf to this testimony strikes me as a person living in self-imposed exile from history.

David writes:

I didn’t mean by that one example. I meant that you seem to be saying you wouldn’t be convinced by statistical evidence that, on average, people raised by same-sex couples are no worse-off than people raised by different-sex couples. And there are studies showing just that.

Laura writes:

Statistical evidence?

And how many children would have to be submitted to such an experiment in order to amass truly significant evidence to counter the facts of biology, the testimony of history and the enormous body of research on the effects of growing up without a mother or father due to the conscious choice of the parents? 

My point is, these studies are inhuman.

David writes:

No one’s talking about directly engineering parenting situations. That’s not necessary. Thousands of children are already raised by same-sex couples. All that is needed is to survey them, as well as a sample of children from different-sex couples, on a standardized measure of well-being, and compare the results of the two groups. And these studies have already been done.

Laura writes:

No one’s talking about directly engineering parenting situations. 

Yes, I realize that. But when this issue is considered something that should be studied then a form of indirect engineering of parenting situations has already occurred. Do you understand what I mean? To suspend judgment is, in effect, to approve of children being raised this way. For instance, it never would have occurred to people years ago to undertake a major study to determine whether young children should spend many hours alone in houses after school with no adults nearby to supervise them or whether children would be affected by divorce. People knew long before any studies were completed that children would be devastated by divorce. It was only when people approved of divorce and became relatively indifferent to the spiritual and psychological welfare of children that divorce was considered a subject worthy of study. People would have considered children being alone for many hours a misfortune, not something that should call for expert, pseudo-scientific study. Besides how could you possibly measure the effects of children being alone for long hours over the course of years. What may be most affected is their inner lives and that is difficult to examine. The best studies of the effects of divorce have been just these kinds of studies – such as that done by Judith Wallerstein and the somewhat subjective appraisal of Elizabeth Marquardt in her book The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce. But these works came out many years after the divorce epidemic began and it is easy for some to look at more superficial criteria and dispute their findings, to in effect deny that human beings have inner lives.

When you say “all that is needed is to survey them,” you show a poor grasp of what it means to study psychological well-being. I’m sure these children raised by homosexuals are being studied and will continue to be studied. But it will take many years to show the results. It is not until they have tried to form and sustain families of their own, not until they are past middle age, that the effects of their upbringing can be better understood. I have no need to wait for decades to know that a high proportion of them will face struggles and bitterness that children raised by their own parents or adoptive parents will face. I am certain that many of them will express their anger at the approval of this form of reproduction in the same way that children who are sexually abused express their anger many, many years later.

Diana writes:

I have this question for David: Do you deny that human beings are the product of one sperm and one egg? And that each sex cell contains 23 chromosomes, 1-22 autosomal, the 23rd pair are the sex cells (XX, or XY)? And that Nature, or God, has so ordained that these chromosomes pair up so that the 23 pairs of chromosomes create a human being? One allele from mother, one from father?

You cannot deny this because these are the facts.

Now, I do admit that I am about to embark upon an interpretation of the above facts, which is: individuals may very well grow up estranged or alienated from the unique provider of half his genetic inheritance. And some individuals may turn out brilliantly. But no human society that I know of bases institutions on individuals. Institutions are based upon the average, or the norm.

The norm is still to raise a child with his mother and his father. No matter how much the state and modernity have combined to wreck it, this is still the norm. The Zach Wahls and the Ellens of the world may not acknowledge it, but the fact is that they are part of a larger, heterosexual village, from which they derive mostly good things. It is astonishing how these “It takes a village” idiots don’t own up and admit this. Zach Wahls gets his masculine identity from the society he claims is discriminating against him and his family. Where else does he get it from? His genes? Oh, but half his genes are from his sperm donor….

Back to the subject of institutions, let’s take a look at a real life example of a society in which 75% of children are raised by women without husbands. I refer of course to African-Americans. No further comment needed. Please do not claim that behavioral and achievement problems in African-American communities result from racial discrimination, because that isn’t true. Black kids born to intact parents do much better than black kids born to single mothers. White kids born to single mothers show the same problems as black kids born to single mothers (if not to the same intensity).

It takes a dad to raise a son to be a man.

I say this as the baby sister to several older brothers. Without my father, we would have been nowhere.

David writes:

But when this issue is considered something that should be studied then a form of indirect engineering of parenting situations has already occurred. Do you understand what I mean?

No, it hasn’t. The scientist has not done anything to either encourage or discourage same-sex couples to raise children. It happens, it has happened for a while. To say it’s something that should be studied is merely common sense, at least for people who want to know the facts.

[Laura writes: The social scientist doesn’t work in isolation. He doesn’t embark on major studies on his own. He needs the support of institutions and sponsors, and many years of paid subsidies to come to any serious conclusions about a major issue.  Only a society that is in the throes of social decay would even consider devoting these precious resources to the question of whether children should be conceived in a commercial arrangement and raised by two homosexuals. Is it a question of interest to some people? I’m sure it is a question of interest to those who have no intuitive knowledge of children and those who don’t appreciate the basic facts of biology, and I am sure the studies will be done. But placing this question in the hands of scientists is similar to going to a labor camp in Siberia and proposing a study as to whether Siberian exile is harmful to happiness. Being raised by homosexuals and conceived in a sterile, contractual arrangement is not physically oppressive as is exile in Siberia, but it is a form of spiritual exile  — from kin, from sexual identity, from one’s culture. Not every child, of course, will perceive it as such and many may have very comfortable lives.]

Your method of reasoning seems to be: I believe in various truths about the nature of humanity, the nature of men and women, how they work, how they should work. These beliefs give rise to, among other things, the prediction that people brought up by same-sex couples should not generally be as happy or successful as those brought up by different-sex couples. But I don’t want to check if the latter is actually true.

[I’m not just concerned about happiness or success. Exposing children to homosexuality is deeply immoral and gravely threatens their spiritual development.]

That is not how science works, and science has proven to be the best tool humanity has to understand how the world really works. The way science works is: I have a belief/theory which gives rise to a prediction. I then want to test that prediction, to see if that’s how things actually are. If it turns out that the prediction is false, then I must revise my initial belief/theory, however near and dear to
my heart that theory was.

[“Science is the best tool to understand how the world really works.” Do you believe that? To paraphrase Dylan Thomas, science can tell us everything about the wasp, but why.]

To suspend judgment is, in effect, to approve of children being raised this way.

No, it isn’t. It’s right there in the meaning of the phrase “suspend judgment”; it means to neither approve or disapprove of children being raised this way until one has learned what the effects of it really are.

[No institution devotes hundreds of thousands of dollars to a “scientific” question that has been essentially resolved.]

When you say “all that is needed is to survey them,” you show a poor grasp of what it means to study psychological well-being.

Measuring well-being isn’t an exact science, but it’s not really necessary to know how happy, or healthy, people are in the absolute, but merely how happy and healthy they are relative to others.  So a fairly accurate method is to design a questionaire with questions about people’s satisfaction with various aspects of their lives. Again, this is not hypothetical; this work has already been done.

But it will take many years to show the results. It is not until they have tried to form and sustain families of their own, not until they are past middle age, that the effects of their upbringing can be better understood.”

Same-sex parenting is not as new as you think. There are already people in middle age that were raised in same-sex families. As far as I know, they don’t on average have more trouble sustaining families than those raised by different-sex couples.

[You prove here why studies on this issue would be essentially meaningless. Even if studies were done, the fact that some people would emerge from these conditions unscathed would prove to those who condone them that they are not wrong. So the issue cannot be settled by “scientific” research. It’s a question of ethics and basic principles.]

Diana writes:

David writes, “That is not how science works, and science has proven to be the best tool humanity has to understand how the world really works.”Define “the world”. Science is the best (the only) tool to understand chemical reactions, gamma rays, and the diffraction of light rays, but it really tells us nothing about human beings. 

Nothing? Yep, nothing. I can learn how my amygdala works from science – and only from science – but a human being is not an amygdala.

To understand human beings, give me the poets and the great writers.

Same-sex parenting is not as new as you think. There are already people in middle age that were raised in same-sex families. As far as I know, they don’t on average have more trouble sustaining families than those raised by different-sex couples.

Here David demonstrates his lack of knowledge about science, which is supposedly his strong point. Science takes into account each and every variable. In the case of persons raised in same-sex families up to now, the norm was a society whose basic parenting unit was a mother and a father, in which sex roles were reasonably strong, and where men and women were expected to cooperate in creating families. In this society (as homosexuals never tire of pointing out), heterosexuality is definitely privileged and preferred. (I don’t apologize for this, and I suggest that our side stop doing so.)

This has been shattered by the state, by feminism, and by modernity, and the homosexual movement is now delivering the coup de grace. It is in this chaotic environment that children of homosexuals and lesbians, conceived as Laura has pointed out, in soulless commercial arrangements, will be raised.

Comparing someone who was raised in the 1970s by two discreet lesbians, with a child raised by a couple of out loud and proud homosexual men now, is totally unscientific.

Laura writes:

Science cannot explain something so basic as the institution of marriage. Why do human beings marry? It cannot explain why.

David writes:

Laura writes, I’m sure it is a question of interest to those who have no intuitive knowledge of children and those who don’t appreciate the basic facts of biology, and I am sure the studies will be done.”

I’m pretty sure everyone who has done these studies knows the basic facts of biology, and as I have said, they have already been done. [If they know the basic facts of biology then they know that rearing children as homosexuals will make them unable to reproduce naturally.]

I’m not just concerned about happiness or success. Exposing children to homosexuality is deeply immoral and gravely threatens their spiritual development.

Well, then it’s up to you to find a way to measure spiritual development. These studies are limited to what can be measured. Otherwise all we can do is argue about whether there is such a thing
as “spiritual development,” why we think so, what that means, etc., and without measurement, we won’t get anywhere. 

Laura writes:

How does one measure a thought?

How does one measure affection? Or a vow? Or betrayal? Or loyalty?

You cannot measure any of these things. Science cannot even prove that they exist. It can prove that words on a page exist but not the thoughts behind them or the concepts they signify. It cannot prove that conceptual reality exists. It can prove that people pet each other and copulate, but not that they love each other. It can prove that a child is physically dependent, but not that he loves his father. Love is immaterial and unquantifiable. You would be paralyzed and unable to function if you attempted to live only by what is measurable. You depend on un-quantifiable reality all the time and you assume that it exists. So demanding a “scientific rigor” on this issue that you do not demand of many others is hypocritical.

If spiritual development were measurable, it wouldn’t be spiritual. 

What does “soulless reproduction” mean to a scientist if he is only thinking in scientific terms?

Jesse Powell writes:

On this issue of “scientific evidence” that David claims to be so fond of, there is a huge amount of evidence that assigning children to be raised by homosexual parents is wrong. 

David seems to claim that studies on this subject have already been done and that they found no harm or no significant harm to the children involved. It is not clear to me exactly what studies were done or what they found to support David’s claim but one thing I will say is that there is a difference between weak circumstantial evidence and strong empirical evidence. Also, there are indirect means of gaining reliable knowledge about a subject even if one does not have specific knowledge about a subject; this is the benefit of using inference.

David writes: 

“Measuring well-being isn’t an exact science, but it’s not really necessary to know how happy, or healthy, people are in the absolute, but merely how happy and healthy they are relative to others. So a fairly accurate method is to design a questionaire with questions about people’s satisfaction with various aspects of their lives. Again, this is not hypothetical; this work has already been done.” 

From this statement of David’s it seems like the studies he’s referring to involve children raised by homosexual parents compared to children raised by heterosexual parents answering various questions about how happy they are about various aspects of their lives. This to me seems like a very weak form of evidence that would be easy to bias unless strong measures were taken to remove bias. The reason why this is a weak form of evidence is because it is so easy to simply proclaim oneself to be happy and contented if one feels such answers are “the right thing to say.” I would be more impressed with evidence that cannot be so easily manipulated such as earnings, marriage rates, divorce rates, histories of drug use, criminal records, frequency of homosexual relationships, stuff like that. I would be further interested in knowing how old were the children or adults who took the life satisfaction surveys, did those taking the surveys know the purpose of the survey they were taking, how were those who were raised by homosexual parents selected for participation in the survey. It is well known that a scientific survey is supposed to be “double blind”; neither the researcher nor the subject is supposed to be aware of what category they fit into. I wonder if such precautionary measures to prevent bias were included as part of the design of the surveys David is talking about. 

Aside from these various issues much can be reasonably known about the effects of homosexual parenting by inference. Most of the arguments made against homosexual parenting in this thread have been arguments based on inference. Inference means that knowledge that is known about human psychology and similar situations is used to infer what the effects of having homosexual parents is likely to be. Inference is a perfectly legitimate and authoritative source of knowledge and a perfectly legitimate means of forming an argument. Let us say for instance that studies have been done that conclusively prove that children born to single teenage mothers who are living with their own single mothers for support such that the child is living with their mother and their grandmother and nobody else do less well than children born to married parents on average. From this it is reasonable to infer that a child born to a lesbian biological mother who is living with her lesbian partner will do less well on average than a child born to heterosexual married parents. Inference allows us to understand situations that we may not have directly encountered before but that are similar to situations that we are familiar with and that we do understand quite well. 

David seems to be saying that we should behave as if we have no understanding of the human condition at all, that inference is an illegitimate logical tool and an illegitimate basis for making decisions, and that instead we should rely upon studies he claims supports his position that most likely provide very weak evidence in support of a practice that is demonstrably harmful through multiple means of reasoning and based on a huge amount of social science research that clearly shows that the biological heterosexual married couple family is the ideal for children.

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