Forever Learning

sarahstocracy:

Also, “Gollum’s Song” on the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers soundtrack…? Where did this gem come from?

YES! I love that piece… It is so dissonant and eerily beautiful. :)

awkward-ninja:

Mischief managed.

Best graduation speech. EVER.

I learned from a friend today that a girl I worked with and got to know in English class this past semester passed away in a hospital recently… She was hiking in Arizona with some friends and became dehydrated when the group got lost, and there were some complications that led to her death.

It just makes me think, “How well did I treat that person? What was our last encounter like? Was I kind or did I treat them worse than I should have?” Life is too uncertain to afford giving yourself reasons for regret.

I had a brief discussion about this today, and I thought I would present some studies and information found on the internet. A good overview with plenty of sources (many of which I included below) can be found here on Wikipedia. Just a note: when I use the phrase “homosexual parents,” I’m referring to parents that aren’t heterosexual. It’s shorter and easier to read this way.

Pros

• Lesbian and gay parents are as fit and capable as heterosexual parents, and their children are as psychologically healthy and well-adjusted as children reared by heterosexual parents. (Sources: Canadian Psychological Association, 2006, Australian Psychological Association, 2007, American Psychological Association, California Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, 2010, Psychology Press, U of Virginia, George Washington U, 2010, Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute, 2008)
• Mental health professionals in several different countries have not found any credible empirical evidence to suggest otherwise. (Sources: American Psychological Association, California Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, 2010, American Academy of Pediatrics, 2005, Department of Psychology, UC-Davis, 2006, Journal of Marriage and Family, 2010, Canadian Psychological Association, 2005)
• Children raised by homosexual parents do just as well in school as other children raised by heterosexual parents. (Sources: US National Library of Medicine: National Institutes of Health, 2010)

Cons

• Current studies use limited sample sizes and are inconclusive or un-generalize-able. (Source: Journal of Southern Baptist Convention citing Robert Lerner, Althea Nagai, U of Virginia, Journal of Marriage and Family, American Sociological Review, 2002, Family Research Council, A Selection of Studies, 2007)
• Households with homosexual parents are more stressful, lack important positive contributions to normal development; homosexual relationships are more short-lived than heterosexual ones. (Source: George Alan Reckers, Ph.D. University of South Carolina

Conclusions

After reading at least part of each of the studies and links above (I spent a while on this), here are my conclusions:

• There are quite a few studies that claim there are no harmful effects of homosexual parenting. These studies have been conducted by well-known groups in several different countries, so I would call them very credible sources. The only reported difference I read about was that children reared in a home with homosexual parents were less likely to have gender stereotypes than children raised in a conventional home. This seems like a rather positive outcome to me.
• There are fewer credible sources arguing against homosexual parenting. Those that are credible claim that the studies that support my previous point lack internal validity, have small sample sizes, lack randomization, etc. In short, they criticize the way the studies were conducted and claim the results are inconclusive.
• In the time I spent this evening reading through credible sources, I found only the one by Reckers that claimed homosexual parenting has a negative effect on children. I didn’t go looking for them: I used neutral search queries like “Homosexual Parenting Studies”

Minified Conclusions

• Most of the credible evidence supports the idea that children raised by homosexual parents suffer no disadvantages that children raised by heterosexual parents don’t. There is some doubt as to the credibility of this evidence, but there is very little evidence to suggest the oposite (homosexual parenting = bad) is true.