Are kids with gay parents more likely to turn out gay?

During the gay marriage debates, the claim was frequently made that children from gay families are not more likely than others to develop a same-sex orientation.

I was always skeptical of the claim because: 1) gay parents should at least make kids feel more comfortable about going with a gay identity; and 2) if the kids were biological offspring, they would probably face a higher risk of homosexual orientation via genes from a parent. In addition, I didn't rule out the possibility that gay parents might provide a more permissive environment for kids so they are more likely to have pleasant same-sex experiences when they are young and impressionable.

This new study shows that the claim about gay families was false. 76 adult biological offspring of a woman with a lesbian partner were matched demographically with 76 controls. Women from these families were: 1.5 times to be sexually attracted to other women; 2.4 times more likely to identify as lesbian or bisexual; and 1.4 times as likely to have same-sex experiences.

Compared to controls, men from lesbian families were: 3.1 times more likely to be sexually attracted to men; 4.3 times more likely to identify as gay or bisexual; and 3.8 times more likely to have had same-sex experiences.

There is no evidence here that lesbian parents have more impact on girls than boys, either by passing on genes that raise the risk of same-sex attractions for daughters but not sons, or by gender-specific socializing. In fact, the parent-child link seems to be stronger for males. (This could be due to the very high rates of same-sex attraction, identification, and experiences among the female controls. How do I make sense of this? I suspect women in their 20s in the past decade have lived in a pro-lesbianism culture which makes their numbers not that dissimilar from female peers from lesbian families.)

My guess would be that moms are passing on mutations on to sons and daughters that tend to disrupt heterosexual brain development.  I suppose an encouraging environment could convince someone with same-sex attractions to pursue and embrace the identity, but I doubt this would explain such large differences. And I doubt that lesbians are providing a perinatal environment that raises the risk of the kind of infection posited by gay germ theory.

UPDATE: tantum (@QuasLacrimas) over at Twitter made a good point that these results do not support sexually antagonistic selection. According to the theory, genes that make a daughter more feminine and attractive and thus more reproductively successful will raise the risk that a son will develop a homosexual orientation. The daughter's success compensates for the son's reproductive failure so the genes are not weeded out. The logic is the same for lesbianism, with the advantage/disadvantage reversed.

Such a theory would predict that lesbians would be likely to have masculine, straight boys, but this study found that lesbians are much more likely to have gay sons. 

Gays demanded marriage, not because they were dying to be married, but to make a point

The General Social Survey (GSS) has collected enough data to begin to give us a sense about the degree to which homosexuals have embraced marriage since the opportunity has opened up. Here are marital status trends for gay men by decade:

The red line represents married people. The percent of gay men who are married in this decade is only slightly higher than previous decades. (I assume that married gays from earlier decades were either married to a woman or called their relationship with a man "marriage."). The next graph is lesbians:

Lesbian marriage has decreased (red line). Again, I'm sure lesbians were married to men in previous decades or called their same-sex relationships "marriage," but their move away from heterosexual marriage has not been replaced by lesbian marriage.

Maybe we need more time to see the trends more clearly, but what we GSS data suggest is that homosexuals did not fight gay marriage because they were dying for participation in the practice, but because they wanted the law to reflect the view that homosexuality is as good as heterosexuality. They were just making a point.

Data on gay marriage

This article shows, that based on extensive European experience, there is less enthusiasm for marriage and more enthusiasm for divorce among homosexuals (especially lesbians) compared to straights.

And this article describes a new study which improves on the methods of previous research and finds that kids in same-sex families turn out worse as a adults than children raised in two-parent biological families (perhaps because their childhoods were less stable).

The devout gay Mormon therapist with a wife and three kids

This is fascinating. It is the story of a devout gay Mormon therapist who has been happily married to a lovely (and understanding) woman for 10 years. He told her he was gay on a date when he was 16. Their sex is intimate, not a sexual turn-on for him, and they have three beautiful daughters. The girls, in turn, have what is their birthright--a mother and a father.

Predictors of support for gay marriage

Audacious Epigone has a great post on attitudes toward gay marriage. It made me wonder what best predicts support (sample size = 3,399, GSS, blacks and whites):

OLS standardized regression coefficients

Age -.11*
Sex .14*
Race -.02
Size of place .02
IQ .08*
Education .18*
Income -.01
Church attendance -.30*

*statistically significant

Irreligiosity is clearly the stongest predictor of support. Education, being young, and being female are in the middle, and a high IQ is the weakest significant predictor. Race, the size of your town, and income don't matter.

UPDATE: If I add political orientation to the model, there are two noteworthy changes: 1) being liberal becomes the strongest predictor of support, and 2) race becomes significant. When you remove the influence of liberalism, blacks become signficantly less supportive of gay marriage than whites.

Marriage equality for all!

Prominent law professor Jonathan Turley makes the case for legalized polygamous marriage. 50,000 polygamists are waiting for their turn. They're living in the shadows, folks. Let's regularize their status so they can spread even more! It's the era of "whatever consenting adults want to do." J.S. Mill, the new God! Happy day.

Berger on polyamorous unions

Sociologist Peter Berger writes about the increasing popularity of polyamourous partnerships and marriages--relationships which involve multiple people. Among his examples, we hear of the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamorous Awareness, an organization created in 1999. While he is not one of us, Berger concedes that cultural conservatives appear to be empirically correct that "once you legitimate same-sex marriage, you open the door to any number of other alternatives to marriage as a union of one man and one woman."

The moral theory underlying the push for gay marriage is what we might call "consensuality"--if a union is voluntary, it is good.  Following this principle, the list of possible arrangments is limitless. It is an invitation to moral choas, a road we have been on for half a century.   

I was stunned the other day when a very conservative friend of mine said she didn't have a problem with Mormon polygamous families. I didn't ask, but I presume she would be cool with Muslim polygamy as well. Moral libertarianism--or perhaps lifestyle liberalism is a better term--cripples conservative thinking.

Decline in family values continues unabated

The Family/Gender/Sexual Revolution is a complex phenomenon, but there are signs that the rejection of traditional values continues to spread--50 years after it began.

Here are the percentage of Americans who think that various actions are morally acceptable, measured at the beginning and the end of the last decade (from Gallup):


Percent thinking the behavior is morally acceptable

Sex between unmarried man and woman
Beginning 53
End 59
Change +6

Divorce 
Beginning 59
End 69
Change +10

Having a baby outside of marriage
Beginning 45
End 54
Change +9

Gay marriage should be valid
Beginning 27
End 44
Change +17


Attitudes toward gay marriage have changed most dramatically, but this issue is just the most recently-grown leg of a monster that was born in the Sixties. The new ethic replacing the traditional one claims that any kind of relationship is good as long as it is honest, voluntary, and egalitarian (infidelity and polygamy are as condemned now as 10 years ago). Any limitations beyond that are considered judgmental. Questions of what is good for children or what is good for the country are irrelevant. Freedom from sexual rules, self-fulfillment, accommodativeness, egalitarianism, and androgyny are the new idols. The new Prophet is half Beatnik, half Woman.       

Gay marriage, religion, and accusations of hate

I watched Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's rally yesterday and enjoyed it a great deal. My favorite part was Stewart's castigating liberals for calling people bigots at every opportunity. A lot less finger-pointing and a lot more data would be helpful.

A recent case in point is gay marriage. I see that it has become a mantra among liberals that people who oppose gay marriage do so out of hate. The fact is that many Americans look to their religions for direction on moral issues, so when you call them haters, you are saying that their church is a hate factory. You are saying that their faith creates panting beasts of hate. The problem is that for religious people their churches are among the most cherished things in their lives. People love their church like they love their children, like they love their parents. Calling their religious beliefs hate is like your mother being called evil. How are you going to react if every time the subject of your mother comes up, some person goes on about what a whore she is? Chances are, you'll start to hate that person.     

Gay couples teach us that open relationships are awesome!

As elite culture turns homosexuals into our heroes and role models (Do we have a gay superhero yet?), research is documenting that open marriage is common among gay men (shocker, I know). In a study of 566 gay couples, only 45 percent had even made the promise to be monogamous.The findings are so essential to the welfare of American society, the NIH forked out 3.5 million additional dollars to continue the study for five more years.  

And these coupled gay men generate catchy memes for the rest of us. Dean Allemang, who just started a new relationship, dispensed this gem: "I don't own my lover, and I don't own his body," he said. "I think it's weird to ask someone you love to give up that part of their life. I would never do it."

Gay couple promiscuity

This study reported in the New York Times provides an argument that marriage will not traditionalize homosexuals; rather, trend-setting homosexuals will modernize marriage. In a study of 556 gay male couples, half admitted to having an open relationship. (Cheating among the other half was not described). According to author Joe Quirk:

"The traditional American marriage is in crisis, and we need insight,” he said, citing the fresh perspective gay couples bring to matrimony. “If innovation in marriage is going to occur, it will be spearheaded by homosexual marriages."

H/T Guy White

Attitudes toward illegitimacy

Whites, N = 3,281

This graph (GSS data) shows trends in the answer to the question, "Do you agree or disagree: People who want children ought to get married." You can see the culture war is growing. Compared to the past two decades, there are more whites who strongly agree with the statement, but there are also more respondents who have no opinion or who strongly disagree.  There are now fewer white Americans who simply agree.

Blacks, N = 477

With blacks, there are also fewer now who simply agree that people who want to be parents should marry, but the slack has been picked up by the strongly agree category. There is perhaps a little bit of a moral renewal going on here.  
 
How great it would be if our moralistic energy were directed toward bad family decisions instead of things like using an outdated name for black people. (I witnessed an elderly professor get busted recently for accidently using the word "colored").  Black folks themselves would benefit much more from being shamed for having kids out of wedlock than being timidly referred to as "African Americans." 
 
People need social punishment for socially destructive behavior. I know that if I divorced my wife today and walked away from four children, not a person I know would express a single word of disgust because nowadays everyone is so non-judgmental and so compassionate. American society has gotten to the point where it does nothing moralistic to shape our behavior except to throw us in jail when we have really crossed the line.  (Of course, it shames us mercilessly over contemporary concerns like gay marriage).      
 

N = 112

Here we see that Mexican Americans are significantly more permissive toward illegitimate births than either blacks or whites. Just exactly how are these people social conservatives?

To reinforce my point: a recent Pew poll revealed that more Mex-Ams favor gay marriage than whites: 45 versus 39 percent.

Gay marriage and gender socialization: (From the comments of this post): As gay marriage becomes widely accepted, people will feel the need to stop believing that a child benefits from by being raised by a mom or a dad. For there to be no disadvantage with a child being raised by two moms, being raised by a dad cannot be considered important. For there to be no disadvantage with a child being raised by two dads, being raised by a mother cannot be considered important.

Even gay families worry about their child lacking a parent of one sex (e.g., lesbians wanting to find a father figure for the boy). In terms of gender socialization, being raised in a homosexual home is the same as being raised in a single-parent home. There's all sort of research documenting the problems that stem from growing up without a mother or a father; problems that are not simply the result of not having two adults present. Kids still fare poorly if they are raised by mom and grandma--two adults.

And mom and grandma at least have the advantage of a biological relationship to the child. Gay families have at least one non-biological parent. Research shows that non-biological parents are not as good as related parents.

The fact that stepfamilies are just about as bad for kids as single-parent families shows that "two grown-ups in the house" is not enough. A child seems to need his biological dad and his biological mom.

The social costs of gay marriage in MA (Maggie Gallagher) :

Five years after same-sex couples first began to enter legal marriages --recognized by court order -- in Massachusetts, what do voters in the Bay State think about gay marriage?

A new poll commissioned by my organization, the National Organization for Marriage, and the Massachusetts Family Institute indicates that voters remain sharply and surprisingly divided about gay marriage.

When asked, "Do you personally favor or oppose same-sex marriage generally?" 43 percent of Massachusetts voters favor same-sex marriage and 44 percent oppose it, with the remainder saying they don't know or choosing not to respond.

The telephone survey of 306 people taken March 30 to March 31, 2009, is representative of voters in Massachusetts and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 5.7 percent...

I have argued that over time gay marriage will weaken support for the idea that marriage really matters because children need a mom and dad.

Massachusetts voters were also asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement, "All things being equal, it is better for children to be raised by their married mother and father." Seventy-six percent of voters agreed (66 percent strongly) while 21 percent disagreed (13 percent strongly).

A similar question was asked in a 2004 poll of Massachusetts residents. In 2004, 84 percent of Massachusetts residents agreed (33 percent strongly) and 16 percent disagreed (2 percent strongly). Thus, in the five years since gay marriage became a reality in Massachusetts, support for the idea that the ideal is a married mother and father dropped from 84 percent to 76 percent. The proportion who disagreed strongly increased nearly sevenfold, from 2 percent in 2004 to 13 percent in 2009.

The NOM/MFI poll is also the first poll in the nation to attempt to measure the extent to which ordinary citizens feel free to oppose gay marriage in a state where gay marriage has been declared a constitutional right and is the law of the land. I know from personal conversations that at least some folks in Massachusetts are afraid to speak up for their views. But how widespread are these fears?

A surprisingly substantial minority of voters in this poll expressed fears that open opposition to gay marriage might result in retaliation or harassment of some kind.

For example, 36 percent of all Massachusetts voters agreed with the statement, "Some people I know personally would be reluctant to admit they oppose gay marriage because they would worry about the consequences for them or their children." (Twenty-four percent agreed strongly.)

A further 36 percent of voters who oppose gay marriage agreed with the statement, "If you speak out against gay marriage in Massachusetts you really have to watch your back because some people may try to hurt you." (Twenty-six percent agreed strongly.) Fifteen percent of voters who oppose gay marriage say they personally know someone who experienced harassment or intimidation because of their belief that marriage involves a man and a woman.

The NOM/MFI Massachusetts Marriage Poll thus documents a fairly significant level of apprehension among voters who oppose gay marriage about the consequences of speaking openly or acting on their belief that marriage means a husband and wife.

What difference has gay marriage made five years later? Support for the idea that children need a mom and dad has dropped, and a substantial minority of people believe it is risky to oppose gay marriage openly.

Alphas v. Herbs: Via Audacious, I learned about Roissy's parody of modern fathers. "Herbs" they're called. Pretty damn funny, even though I'm guilty as sin.

I was tempted, myself, to write a little parody of Bad Boys--too easy, really (and I see myself heading in a direction that would be labelled racist)--but instead I'll be direct and say that in my experience there is no comparison between the two, at least for someone with my personality.

When I was single, I never had any trouble finding attractive girls to hang out with. During the years I was an atheist, being a playboy seemed pretty appealing, but I really couldn't pull it off most of the time because I have a conscience. Maybe I'm too beta to attract girls who just want to have sex, but for me to have casual sex, I would have had to deceive the girls into thinking I was interested in something more. Girls wanted to have sex because they saw it going somewhere. If a woman wants nothing more, fine, but guys who steal a copulation through fraud, to my mind, are not much better than those who get it by force. They're basically sociopaths.

Now, the experience of raising a child is gold compared to that mess. I'm not even going to attempt to describe it. You'll have to do it to see what I mean. But you know the intense love that moms feel for their kids? Sure, there are biological differences between the sexes, but much of the affection comes through interaction. Dads and kids are often not close because Dad is annoyed by kids or is interested in other things. For guys with that kind of temperament, fine, but for the other type, you have missed a great deal if you go childless, or aren't involved with your kids. And I don't mean to romanticize it, because it is hard, but it makes me feel like a man like chasing tail could never do.

Let me put it another way. Those in favor of gay marriage have neglected a strong argument for guys like me. Most would agree that kids ideally should be raised by married parents. All the rights talk doesn't grab me, but this does: "Mr. Guhname, just like you, I want to have the chance to have a son and raise him to be a man. You know how rewarding and meaningful that is. Let me do the same."

Sentimental, I know, but there it is.

Real reason to oppose gay marriage: People speculate why someone like me opposes gay marriage. I've been told it's religious bigotry, some irrational hatred of homosexuals, or I might even add Bradlaugh's comment over at Secular Right that we have an instinct against it.

In my case, all three are incorrect. I do have a natural yuck-reaction to gay sex, but myself, I wouldn't be against people getting married because they do gross stuff. As for hate, that is just silly. I don't instinctively have feelings about groups, but if I think about it, I have a mildly positive feeling about homosexuals.

Yes, my religion teaches that homosexual sex is wrong, and gay marriage is a slap in the face of every traditionally religious person in the country, but my orientation to social policy really is secular.

So, what's my real problem with it? It's one part of a much larger problem. In my view, the country made a huge mistake in the 1960s when it began to dismantle the traditional moral regime. You folks can tell me where I'm wrong, but America has functioned optimally when there was a consensus that: premarital sex is bad; promiscuity is bad; loose womanhood is bad; playboys are bad; pornography is bad; masturbation is bad; out-of-wedlock births are bad; single-parent families are bad; abortion is bad; divorce is bad; prostitution is bad--you get the point--and, finally, homosexual sex is bad.

Much of the country has rejected many of those values, and the division has been dismantling and discrediting the old system. Even if a kid is raised the old way, he can always say, but my buddies' parents don't believe that. What once was authoritative is now just one viewpoint, one lifestyle.

The reigning morality has become, choose for yourself the moral way. All too often, that means choose the selfish, short-sighted way. In my view, the result has been: more out-of-wedlock births; more divorce; more mother-only famlies; more men not civilized by marriage and fatherhood; more disappearing fathers; less child support; more welfare dependency; more poor kids; more crime; more STDs; more abortion; more girls who are pumped and dumped a hundred different times.

To the mention of girls who have many sex partners, let me add: more pornography; more strip clubs; more girls gone wild. Now, you might respond that freer female sexuality is not a problem. I simply cannot imagine a greater tragedy in my life--and I am not exaggerating here--than to, say, read about some girl at a party who had sex with a bunch of guys in front of everyone, and to learn that the girl was my daughter. It's painful to even contemplate it. I'd be tempted to find the guys responsible and go all Taxi Driver on their asses.

So, what does this have to do with gay marriage? Gay marriage is the further discrediting of a moral system that I argue is a constructive and rational system. The old way seems to be correlated with a thriving society, and to my mind social policy should aim to optimize societal success. Not only should we throw out gay marriage, we should work for a moral revival across the board.

Follow-up: Some readers don't think hunting is a good measure of masculinity. Let's use whether or not a person owns a handgun since it is less rural than hunting.


Logistics regression coefficients (N = 3,833)

Male -.542
Owns a handgun -.395
Belief in God -.363
Conservative politics -.448

All are significant at the .01 level. Possession of a handgun predicts opposing gay marriage, independent of these other factors.

Masculinity is associated with opposing gay marriage: Today's debate about gay marriage at Secular Right got me thinking about who, in my experience, seems to have the biggest objection to homosexuality. Of course, many churchgoing people oppose the behavior on religious grounds, but rarely have I personally witnessed animus coming from those kinds of people. Religious people I know talk about love and forgiveness, and tend to have a gentle, even feminine way about them. It often feels quite leftish. Look at Ms. California when she was asked if she had anything to say to Perez Hilton, the gay man who called her a dumb bitch and a c**t after she said publicly that she was against gay marriage. She answered that the first thing she would do is hug him. Yuck, I know, but you can't really say she sounds like a hater. (If someone called me that, my good Christian self would have told him to take his ugly ass and 'do and go f*** himself.)

It doesn't come through on this blog--obvious at the moment--but my personality is pretty damn mild. When I was a devout Christian in college, I had a tough-guy friend who was going on about how sickening homosexuality is. He was of the same faith. I told him that homosexual sex is just sin--the same as if he had premarital sex. Whether we like it or not, I said, God commands that we love everybody and that we separate bad behaviors from the person. He was shocked that I talked like that, but he knew that I was doctrinally correct and so dropped the topic. It seemed to me that his hostility came from his sense of masculinity, not from his belief system. I've personally heard perhaps 10 people say really nasty things about homosexuals. They were all men, and they were all tough guys.

Which leads to my question: Does level of masculinity correlate with opposition to gay marriage? I came up with two different measures: gender and hunting. Gender is an obvious indicator of masculinity, and hunting seems like a good one as well. Using GSS data from 4,146 Americans, I calculated logistic regression coefficients. The dependent variable is, do you agree that homosexuals have the right to marry. The third independent variable is belief in God.


Logistic regression coefficients

Belief in God -.462
Male -.644
Hunts -.687

All are significant at the .01 level with a two-tailed test. So, no not only belief in God, but being a guy and hunting independently predict opposition to gay marriage.

Some of the resistance to homosexuality and same-sex marriage seems to be a discomfort with guys acting like girls. Men seem to be saying, I want absolutely nothing to do with sissies. They are NOT joining my party.

At Secular Right, I was wondering out loud:

It is possible that gay marriage might delay and decrease the percent of men getting married, and it’s connected to modern fatherhood. I’ll try to find data on this, but I’m the kind of dad who’s always pushing strollers, playing with the kids outside, feeding them, changing diapers, etc. I often feel the glare of macho guys and sense that they’re thinking, “Damn homo.” Modern fatherhood, I suspect, is a problem itself in that it is making marriage look less attractive to very masculine men. Now, if these same guys see me pushing strollers with my married gay buddy, chatting away about how Johnny is saying a new word, I can imagine these macho types saying, that does it–I’m not joining the fag club.

UPDATE: Reader SFG makes a good suggestion to add controls for rurality and political views:

Belief in God -.343
Male -.422
Hunts -.673
Population size .000
Conservative politics -.399

All are significant at the .01 level, except for population size which is not significant. Hunting and gender still predict opposition to gay marriage.

Few homosexuals want to get married: The GSS asked: "If the right person came along, would you like to be married?" The sample size is small (N = 288) so I combined gay men and lesbians, and assuming most bisexuals are closer to homosexuals, I included them too. Results? Thirty-two percent answered yes. That means that 1.04% of Americans would like to personally take advantage of gay marriage.

Gay marriage and Republican prospects

Do decisions like Iowa's State Supreme Court to allow same-sex marriages provide the Republican Party with an issue that will appeal to moderates in future elections? According to the 2008 General Social Survey, the answer is yes. The top graphs shows attitudes on the issue by political orientation for white Americans; the bottom one is for Hispanics--folks who are supposedly swing voters (I'm holding back the laughter).

First, look how strong the relationship is for whites. Close to 70 percent of those who are extremely conservative strongly disagree that gay people should be able to marry, compared to only 14 percent of extremely liberal Americans.

But the issue is moderates. They are 37% of whites in this sample--a very big group. Only 29% of them agree or strongly agree with granting the right. When economic concerns die down, and that's a big when, judicial assertiveness might help Republicans.

But look at Hispanics. You know, the rock solid social conservative group that they are. The moderates among them are pretty much split on the marriage issue. Friggin' waste of time.