#Homophobia kills #LGBT pic.twitter.com/aTxZH5EWi3
— STOP-Homophobia.com (@WipeHomophobia) September 23, 2014
Gay people have been accused of being unfit parents, more likely to be pedophiles, unable to sustain lasting relationships, and worse. But research shows these and other myths just aren’t based in fact.
Gay parents aren’t as good as a father and a mother.
Many of those who oppose gay marriage and gay adoption charge that same-sex parents aren’t good for kids, and that a child needs both a father and a mother to grow up to be a healthy adult. Research, however, shows that children of gay parents tend to fare just fine.
For example, one recent study looked at nearly 90 teens, half living with female same-sex couples and the others with heterosexual couples, showing that both groups fared similarly in school. Teen boys in same-sex households had grade point averages of about 2.9, compared with 2.65 for their counterparts in heterosexual homes. Teen girls showed similar results, with a 2.8 for same-sex households and 2.9 for girls in heterosexual families.
Another study found that kids with two moms or two dads were no more likely than their counterparts in “traditional” homes to engage in delinquent activities, such as damaging others’ property, shoplifting and getting into fights.
“The bottom line is that the science shows that children raised by two same-gender parents do as well on average as children raised by two different-gender parents,” said Timothy Biblarz, a sociologist at the University of Southern California. “This is obviously inconsistent with the widespread claim that children must be raised by a mother and a father to do well.”Both studies were described in a literature review paper published in February 2010 in the Journal of Marriage and Family.
