'No Such Thing as an Intact Household for a Child With Same-Sex Parents,' Says Blogger Raised by Lesbian Mom
WASHINGTON — Although the American Sociological Association has promoted the idea that there is no harm done to children raised by same-sex parents, a traditional marriage activist blogger, who was raised by her lesbian mother, asserted on Friday that there is no such thing as an "intact household" for a child raised by same-sex parents.
Next Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Obergfell v. Hodges case on whether the 14th Amendment requires states to license gay marriages. In a discussion hosted by the Alliance Defending Freedom, nationally-recognized blogger Katy Faust, who professes her Christian views on marriage at AskTheBigot.com, argued that not only are the ASA's claims misleading, but more focus needs to be put on the stories of emotional distress told by children who grew up with same-sex parents.
"It's hard because all of who we hear from now in this debate are adults and we are starting to hear more voices of adult children who have gay parents speaking about saying, 'I support a child's natural right to be in a relationship, to be with both her mother and father because I didn't get that,'" Faust explained.
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Faust, whose mother fell in love with her lesbian partner a year after her parents divorced when she was in the fifth grade, issued an amicus brief and postscript to the Supreme Court highlighting the emotional problems that children subjected to same-sex parenting can have due to the loss of connection with one or both of their biological parents.
Although Faust knows just as well as anyone that same-sex parents are just as loving and nurturing as opposite-sex parents, nothing can replace the irreplaceable bonds between a mother and her child and a father and his child.
Faust explained that she was lucky enough to have her father remain a part of her life after her parents split. However, that is not the case for many children in same-sex households.
"I talk in my brief about how if it was just about stability and low-conflict and love and commitment, then my mom and her partner would have been enough," Faust explained. "They were not enough. Everybody craves of a relationship with their father."
Althogh Faust admitted that living with same-sex parents is a better situation for children subject to terrible living situations, a Supreme Court ruling in favor of constitutional gay marriage, would completely devalue importance of biological motherhood and fatherhood.
"Does that mean that we should promote a law that says that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and unnecessary? No." Faust contended.
"That is really what is at issue," she continued. "A gay man can be a great dad, he just can never be a mother. A lesbian women can be a great mom, but she can never be a father. Kids want and need and deserve both."
After releasing her letter to Justice Anthony Kennedy in February, Faust said one gay activist was so enraged that he looked up on her Facebook page and found a statement she made in 2013 that stated that "there is no such thing as an intact household for a gay marriage situation." She explained that the man was so enraged and told Faust that he and his partner were there since day one of their child's life, and even said goodbye to the biological mother when leaving the hospital.
"Ding, Ding, Ding! You had to break a bond with the only parent that child knew at the time for her to join your household," Faust stated. "There is no such thing as an intact household when you talk about child being raised by same-sex parents."
"They are going to arrive in that household through death, divorce, abandonment or third-party reproduction," she added. "When you look at social science, all of those, it is unanimously acknowledged that children suffer not just socially, but they are at higher risk for social and economic and physical negative outcomes when they are subjected to those four things and that is the only way that child will arrive in a same-sex headed household."
Also speaking at the ADF discussion was Catholic University of America professor of sociology, the Rev. Dr. D. Paul Sullins, who released findings he compiled from the the U.S. government's National Health Interview Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health, which back up Faust's claims and discredit the claims made in "biased" studies done by the ASA.
In the adolescent health survey of 20,745 random participants, 32.4 percent of children in households with married same-sex parents report either crying or being fearful daily.
"The reason I like to report this finding is that it confirms basically the findings that I found using the other data set that there is a higher rate of emotional problems certainly through depressive episodes of, what we call, 'lack of positive affect' is included in those," Sullins explained.
Sullins also shockingly found — using the same set of data – that 37.8 percent of children in households with married same-sex parents report being sexually touched or abused by their parents or adult caregivers.
Sullins called out the widely-accept ASA surveys that found that "no harm" is done to children living with same-sex parents and claimed that the sampling was selective and biased to promote the associations ideological stance.
"A century ago, science would have told you that blacks were inferior, it was called eugenics. They even convinced the Supreme Court to make some very embarrassing decisions about people who are undesirable in the reproductive capacity, but that turned out to be very wrong," Sullins stated. "[T]his same kind of trend is happening today with regard to the claim that there is no harm or no differences in children who are raised in same-sex families."
