Sunday, October 17, 2010

Gay Parents = Gay Kids?

Sorry I've been gone for so long. I'm in the middle of my last semester at college. So, as you can imagine, it's been very time consuming (but also very fun and enjoyable).

I read this article on gay parents being more likely than straight parents to produce gay children and found it intriguing and worth writing about. The statistics and research presented in this article/study doesn't surprise me at all. To begin with, if homosexuality is genetic, then it only fits that gay parents may pass on gay genes to their children, thus causing their children to also become gay. Likewise, it makes perfect sense to me that if homosexuality is environmentally based, homosexual parents may be more likely (either intentionally or unintentionally) to have an influence on their children also becoming homosexual. I can certainly see how a child growing up in a home with homosexual parents would at the very least be much more open to the idea of being with someone of the same sex (just as heterosexual parents may influence their children to becoming heterosexual--again, if sexuality is environmentally based). Regardless of the origin/s of homosexual orientation, I think all people can agree that parents of any type have an overwhelming influence on the kids they raise. And for that reason alone, I'm not surprised to find evidence that gay parents are statistically more likely to have gay children.

3 comments:

daemon said...

I almost stopped reading as soon as I saw Paul Cameron's name. He was dropped by the APA for ethical violations, namely fabricating research and publishing it.

The Box Turtle Bulletin had an interesting article about this "study".

http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2010/10/17/27400


Glad to see you back and posting. Hope things are well and a smile is on your face.

Daemon

Jim Jordan said...

Looks like you went away again, this time for two months. I'm sorry I missed this on my blogroll. In any event, I know of lot of gay people who have had children. We have a large gay community here in Ft Lauderdale. I can't think of anyone off hand who's kid turned out gay. I worked very closely with a father/son team for a while and the father was gay and the son had a wife (and liked to chase around women that weren't his wife).

While parents influence their children more than any other childhood factor, having a gay parent doesn't mean the children will be gay.

Hope to see you blogging again.

Mark said...

commenting because I agree again, and don't want you to think I singled out posts I disagree with you on....

Environment has a lot to do with how kids turn out - if their parents smoke, they are more likely to smoke, drink, drugs - same thing. If their parents divorce, they are more likely do divorce, so yeah, if the parents are gay, the kids have a greater liklihood of being gay. Besides, the best scenario is a mom and dad.