Pro-family groups dispute gay parenting study results

By DEBORAH GYAPONG
Canadian Catholic News
Ottawa

Pro-family groups are disputing the results of a federal justice department study that says two gay moms are maybe even better for children than a mom and a dad.

The study, commissioned in 2003 by the former Liberal government only became public after its principle author Concordia University Professor Paul Hastings filed an access to information request.

Canwest News reporter Jack Aubrey wrote about it in a story picked up by the National Post and other papers.

"A few studies suggest that children with two lesbian mothers may have marginally better social competence than children in 'traditional nuclear' families, even fewer studies show the opposite, and most studies fail to find any differences," the study says, according to Aubrey's May 7 story.

The Catholic Organization for Life and Family and REAL Women of Canada dispute that claim.

"Since the Justice Department's 2003 study supporting gay parenting is dependent on the findings of other studies, it is plagued by the same serious methodological problems that make its conclusions unreliable," wrote COLF's assistant director Lea Singh in a letter to the National Post May 11. "To date, most research on gay parenting has been based on inadequately sized, self-selected samples, with lack of control for important variables."

REAL Women national vice president Gwendolyn Landolt wrote in a May 10 letter to the Winnipeg Free Press, saying, "The studies included in the report were published mainly in either homosexual, lesbian or feminist journals and as such, they can be considered as advocacy studies only, at best."

Singh also stressed the importance of the traditional family structure. "The complementarity of the parental sexes is fundamental for children's emotive and psychological development," she wrote. "Both mothers and fathers have a crucial role to play."

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