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— June – July 2013
T
HE Iona Institute has recently been
accused of deliberately misrepre-
senting research, conducted by Child
Trends, in its submission to the
Constitutional Convention. Senator David
Norris raised the issue in the Seanad and has
requested an inquiry.
In response David Quinn authored a blog
post on Iona’s website defending the use of
Child Trends’ research in their submission. In
the post Quinn claims that the research was
used to show that marriage between two bio-
logical parents “is the most beneficial family
form that we know of from the point of view
of children”. Quinn further states that “the
available data does not allow us to say how
well children raised by same-sex couples fare
compared with the biological married fam-
ily”. Such a statement slights over years of
academic research which concludes that chil-
dren raised by same-sex parents experience the
same outcomes as those raised by two biologi-
cal parents. Quinn explains that he rejects the
current body of research as he believes it to be
flawed: “To this day it remains the case that
there are no large national surveys that allow
us to draw reliable conclusions about the chil-
dren of same-sex couples.
The question which then arises is why,
back in , the American Psychological
Association (APA) was so quick to come to
the conclusion that ‘the kids are alright’ given
the lack of large national surveys examining
how the children of same-sex couples actually
fare?”.
This sentiment was also stressed in Iona’s
Iona Institute
misrepresented research
David Quinn insists that change be driven only by evidence, but when it suits
him he cites a discredited author who ignores recent research and relies on
distortions
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peter ferguson
continued on page 30
H
AVING to respond to the accusa-
tion that you have ‘misrepresented’
research is a bit like having to
respond to the accusation that
you beat your wife. It automatically creates an
insinuation against you that probably never
quite goes away.
‘Morning Ireland’ made a similar allegation
against the Iona Institute recently when pre-
senter Cathal MacCoille said that New Zealand
academic, Dr David Fergusson was “unhappy”
at how the Iona Institute summarised a research
paper by him which says there is no evidence
that abortion improves the mental health of
women.
In fact, Dr Fergusson never said he was
unhappy and MacCoille had to admit this on
air two days after the original false allegation
was made.
For its part, Peter Ferguson’s article
amounts to little more than an extended rant
against me, and even more so against Loren
Marks of Louisiana State University.
But I am going to completely ignore the
ad hominem attacks against both myself and
Marks and instead go straight to the research
and what it has to say about the effects of differ-
ent family structures on child wellbeing.
Ferguson puts together what he imagines is
an impressive list of research into the effects of
same-sex parenting on children. He quotes the
American Psychological Association’s summary
of some of this research which says, “there is
no evidence that lesbian women or gay men are
unfit to be parents or that psychosocial devel-
opment among children of lesbian women or
gay me is compromised relative to that among
offspring of heterosexual parents”.
On his blog, Ferguson has quoted other bod-
ies which summarise the research in much the
same way.
For good measure, Ferguson then falls back
on that hoary old favourite, the argument from
authority, by saying that to contradict the above
statement is to “slight over years of aca-
demic research” on the topic, and by extension
the researchers themselves.
This is not an argument at all of course. We
must look at the research itself, rather than at
the researchers’ credentials, and assess how
good it is. The basic criticism to be made of the
research is that it does not use large, random
samples to come to its conclusions.
Loren Marks points this out in ‘Same-sex
parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer
examination of the American psychological
association’s brief on lesbian and gay parent-
ing’, published in the journal, Social Science
Research.
Ferguson tries to discredit Marks by cher-
ry-picking quotes against him from hostile
websites. One of the accusations is that Marks
reviews only out of the or so papers
the APA cited.
However, the reason for this is that only
a portion of those plus papers deal with
empirical studies specifically related to lesbian
and gay parents and their children. The APA
No, Ferguson
misrepresents ...
The reason Marks reviewed only 59 of the APA-cited 130 paper is that eight
are ‘unpublished dissertations’, 26 don’t compare gay families with other
families, and 54 fall short of AA guidelines on use of statistics.
david quinn
continued on page 31
— June – July 2013
submission to the Constitutional Convention:
“Some research seems to indicate that children
do just as well when raised by a loving same-
sex couple as they do when raised by a loving
mother and father. Some of this research is
attested to by the American Psychological
Association. However, this research is invar-
iably flawed in some way. For example, the
samples relied on are small, and they are usu-
ally non-random”.
To evidence these assertions Quinn links
to a paper written by Loren Marks of the
Louisiana State University published in
that critiqued an APA brief. This APA brief cat-
alogued and analysed the results of over
publications relating to lesbian and gay parent-
ing and reported that: “there is no evidence
to suggest that lesbian women or gay men are
unfit to be parents or that psychosocial devel-
opment among children of lesbian women or
gay men is compromised relative to that among
offspring of heterosexual parents. Not a sin-
gle study has found children of lesbian or gay
parents to be disadvantaged in any significant
respect relative to children of heterosexual par-
ents. Indeed, the evidence to date suggests that
home environments provided by lesbian and
gay parents are as likely as those provided by
heterosexual parents to support and enable
children’s psychosocial growth”.
Marks’ article claims that there are insuf-
ficient data to make such an assertion as the
sample sizes are too small. Quinn argues sim-
ilarly: we cannot know if children raised by
same-sex parents have similar outcomes to
those raised by biological married parents;
therefore, there should be no legislation for
same-sex marriage. Such logic is quite spurious
and not reason enough to object to same-sex
marriage; however, what I shall show is how
David Quinn, so loth to prostitute himself to
allegedly ambiguous research here, has no
qualms linking to hugely flawed research of
questionable academic integrity providing it
agrees with his prejudice.
In Loren Marks was expected to
testify on behalf of the defendants in the
Proposition court case, then known as Perry
v Schwarzenegger. He was called to testify that
the two-biological-parent family structure was
the most beneficial to children, however, he
was dropped after making some egregious
admissions in cross-examination:
l
He admitted to not actually having read all
the research he cited; in fact, he had read
“just portions of it”;
l
He admitted cherrypicking only data that
were relevant to his argument;
l
He admitted that his religious convictions
may have influenced him when he con-
ducted the study;
l He admitted that his belief that the ideal
family structure is marriage between a
man and a woman predates his work as a
social scientist and does not stem from his
research;
l He admitted the reports he used didn’t
define “biological” in the genetic sense:
it also encompassed adoptive parents. He
was forced to remove the word “biological”
in the report he prepared;
l He admitted he never actually researched
any same-sex couples.
After such a shocking deposition he was
summarily dropped as a witness.
Loren Marks had a pre-set conclusion and
endeavoured to write a report which would
agree with this conclusion regardless of what
the evidence and studies actually showed.
Luckily he was revealed to be a charlatan.
Indicatively, Marks has ties to the National
Organisation for Marriage (NOM). The
Southern Poverty Law Center which fights
intolerance, says the National Organization
for Marriage pushes the line of being labelled
a hate group because it “continues to spread
lies about gays” and uses its website to link to
debunked research.
NOM was also described by Michael Cole,
spokesperson for Human Rights Campaign, the
largest LGBT equality-rights advocacy group
and political lobbying organization in the US,
as “a secretive player in anti-gay politics, which
is posing as an offshore company for anti-gay
religious money”. Marks’ paper was published
in Social Science Research, the editor of which,
James Wright, also has ties to NOM.
It is clear Marks has an agenda. It is no sur-
prise that somebody who is willing to doctor
research to ensure he arrives at his predeter-
mined conclusion later authors another paper
in which he tries to do the same.
Marks’ main contention (repeated by
Quinn) with the brief is that the sample sizes
in the publications cited by the APA are too
small. However, this is not a sufficient reason
to negate the studies. William Meezan and
Jonathan Rauch carried out a similar review
of same-sex parenting in and took sam-
ple sizes into greater consideration, detailing
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continued on page 32
“
In fact, the American
Sociological Association
states: “Decades of
methodologically sound
social science conrm
that whether a child is
raised by same-sex or
opposite-sex parents has
no bearing on a child’s
wellbeing’’
lists such studies but eight are “unpublished
dissertations” reducing the number to .
Marks’ article (and I invite readers to look it
up and judge it for themselves) includes a table
summarising the published studies cited by
the APA. It speaks for itself. Marks shows that
of the studies use no comparison groups,
that is, they don’t compare the gay and lesbian
families they are studying with any other fami-
lies at all.
He shows that out of the studies fail
to follow the APA’s own guidelines by telling
readers what their statistical power is, which
means we can’t say how reliable their findings
are.
Many of the studies didn’t even look at child
outcomes, let alone make comparisons with
children in other family types.
So it seems it is Peter Ferguson who is doing
the misrepresenting here. He should present
the Marks paper more fairly and accurately.
Hedging his bets, Ferguson himself more
or less acknowledges the methodological prob-
lems at one point in his article when he quotes a
paper by William Meezan and Jonathan
Rauch called ‘Gay marriage, same-sex parent-
ing and America’s children’.
As Ferguson says, in that paper Meezan and
Rauch acknowledge the deficiencies of much of
the research – some of which the APA used –
into same-sex parenting to date, including the
very small sample sizes.
But he then points to the fact that Meezan
and Rauch identity four more papers “which
have large sample sizes”. But do they? A read of
the Meezan/Rauch brief says otherwise.
One of the studies looks at children
raised by lesbian couples. Another looks at
lesbian-headed families. A third looks at
lesbian couples and lesbian single mothers.
The fourth looks at lesbian couple families.
These studies aren’t large. They’re tiny. As a
result their statistical power is very small. It is
a bit like telling us that we can rely on the find-
ing of an opinion poll consisting of a few dozen
people. Even if the few dozen were randomly
selected, it would still lack statistical power and
would not be truly representative of the gen-
eral population.
But most of these tiny samples, commonly
quoted by supporters of gay marriage such as
those referred to by Ferguson, don’t even have
the benefit of being randomly selected. They
are often self-selected.
So we have more misrepresentation by
Ferguson.
When large scale-studies based on national-
ly-representative samples of different kinds of
families are conducted, what do they tell us?
Child Trends, a US-based think tank sum-
marises it very well in its briefing paper,
‘Marriage from a Child’s Perspective: How Does
Family Structure Affect Children, and What Can
We Do About it?’.
It says: “Research clearly demonstrates that
family structure matters for children, and the
family structure that helps the most is a family
headed by two biological parents in a low-con-
flict marriage...There is thus value in promoting
strong, stable marriage between biological
parents”.
I have been accused of misrepresenting this
finding because Child Trends points out that
the paper says nothing about same-sex fami-
lies. But who said it did? Not me.
In fact, on this score the quote Ferguson
tries to use against me in this respect backfires
on him. Badly.
The quote says: “This Child Trends brief
summarizes research conducted in ,
when neither same-sex parents nor adoptive
parents were identified in large national sur-
veys. Therefore, no conclusions can be drawn
from this research about the well-being of chil-
dren raised by same-sex parents or adoptive
parents.”
Precisely the point. Child Trends drew on
research that allows us to properly compare
children from different family structures and
didn’t include children with same-sex par-
ents because they are not to be found in “large,
national surveys.”
When children from married, biological
families can be properly compared with chil-
dren from other family structures, the former
generally have the best outcomes.
The bottom line is that at this point we can
say little about children from same-sex fami-
lies given the absence of large-scale studies of
those families. Meanwhile the burden of proof
is firmly on those who insist that having two
parents of the same sex is just the same from
the point of view of child outcomes as being
raised by their own biological parents.
In one of his blogs, Ferguson lists a number
of studies which have been published since that
Child Trends brief in which he insists
are large, national studies. Look them up. He’s
wrong. In fact, Ferguson misrepresents them by
pretending they are large, national studies.
All this shows is that he is so keen to accuse
his ideological opponents of ‘misrepresenting’
data that he can’t see it when he is doing that
very thing himself.
Ultimately all we have is Ferguson flailing
about angrily, throwing dust in the air, and
relying on personalised attacks and arguments
from authority to press home his point, mean-
ing the only one doing the misrepresenting is
him.
“
Most of these tiny
samples, commonly
quoted by supporters
of gay marriage such
as those referred to by
Ferguson, don’t even
have the benet of being
randomly selected. They
are often self-selected
— June – July 2013
the problems of small sample sizes. They found
that gathering data regarding same-sex parents
was quite difficult because same-sex couples
only represent a tiny minority of the popu-
lation (.%) and are geographically sparse.
Despite this, Meezan and Rauch concur with
the APA brief’s conclusion. Meezan and Rauch
further identify four more papers which they
deem “methodically rigorous” and which have
large sample sizes. These studies also concur
with the APA.
Marks strangely only analyses out of
the + publications cited by the APA: less
than %.
Even stranger is the fact that Marks pub-
lished this in : the APA brief was prepared
in . There is a six-year gap and Marks
fails to analyse any of the papers which were
published in the intervening years. In fact, the
APA brief only included research conducted up
until , so that is, in reality, an eight-year
gap where dozens of papers were published,
some of which were nationally-represent-
ative studies containing large samples, and
Marks fails to take them into consideration.
This makes Marks’ review of APA’s brief obso-
lete and therefore irrelevant to today’s debate
about same-sex marriage.
Marks purports to cite a study by Dr
Sotirios Sarantakos which claims that chil-
dren of same-sex couples had worse outcomes
than children of married heterosexual couples.
However, Sarantakos’ research was dismissed
by the APA as his methodology skewed the
results. He almost exclusively studied children
of same-sex parents who had experienced a
divorce and when his results were compared
to children of heterosexual parents who also
experienced a divorce they were almost iden-
tical. Sarantakos himself admitted the results
were not due to any fault in the parenting but
more likely due to anti-gay bigotry in others.
Yet Marks attempts to cite this as evidence that
not all research shows that same-sex parents
benefit children in the same manner as bio-
logical married parents.
Also, Marks’ paper only reviewed the
research conducted by the APA which con-
tained exclusively research completed before
. Quinn fails to acknowledge the dozens
of papers published in the past years and
the numerous organisations which have all
issued public statements in support of same-
sex marriage: the Canadian Psychological
Association, American Academy of Pediatrics,
Australian Psychological Society, American
Psychoanalytic Association, American
Psychiatric Association, North American
Council on Adoptable Children, Royal College
of Psychiatrists, American Academy of Child
& Adolescent Pscyhiatry, American National
Association of Social Workers and the Child
Welfare League of America.
David Quinn has misrepresented one
research paper; and claims that there have
been no large national surveys completed to
gauge accurately the outcome of children of
same-sex parents and that this is an adequate
reason to oppose same-sex marriage. Not only
is this untrue but to evidence his claim Quinn
cites a report authored by Loren Marks who
has a record of manipulating research. Quinn
and Marks both amateurishly ignore the sci-
entific techniques now deployed in the field of
child developmental psychology. Large-scale
studies are not required to ascertain accurate
results. Quinn himself has no social science
credentials, and Marks’ research is in the field
of marriage and religious faith. There is a sci-
entific consensus among psychologists on
the best research methodology and it is these
methods that are used in the same-sex parent-
ing studies.
In essence, David Quinn has attempted to
negate decades of social science research con-
ducted by hundreds of scientists by citing one
paper written by a discredited researcher who
only reviews the APA brief from , ignor-
ing all other research. In fact, the American
Sociological Association, in an amicus curiae
prepared this year, stated: “Decades of meth-
odologically sound social science research,
especially multiple nationally-representative
studies and the expert evidence introduced in
the district courts below, confirm that child
wellbeing is the product of stability in the rela-
tionship between the two parents, stability in
the relationship between the parents and child,
and greater parental socioeconomic resources.
Whether a child is raised by same-sex or oppo-
site-sex parents has no bearing on a child’s
wellbeing. The clear and consistent consensus
in the social science profession is that across a
wide range of indicators, children fare just as
well when they are raised by same-sex parents
when compared to children raised by oppo-
site-sex parents”.
It would be disingenuous of David Quinn to
continue to decry the numerosity and quality
of research. In fact, such persistent rejection of
such a vast body of research borders on social
science denialism akin to evolution- and cli-
mate-change -denialism.
The Constitutional Convention ended with
% in favour of legislating for same-sex mar-
riage, so there may well be a referendum on the
issue in the near future. It is, therefore, imper-
ative that the public are fully informed and
facts treated, unlike opinions – as sacred.
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“
Not a single study has
found children of lesbian
or gay parents to be
disadvantaged in any
signicant respect
