Letter to the Editor: Response to: Comment on 'Invisible Victims: Delayed Onset Depression among Adults with Same-Sex Parents'

摘要

I appreciate the opportunity to respond to Dr. Franks letter [1] about my article [2] and applaud Hindawi fostering a free and open exchange. Franks complaint that I "fudged" the sample to bias the results in ways that are "damning" to gay and lesbian parents is emphatically false. Franks claims are based on multiple confusions and errors, mischaracterize the state of knowledge, and use special pleading. To the extent some of his points have merit they tend to undermine not my study but rather others showing benign findings for children with same-sex parents and suggest I have if anything understated the level of harm for such children. No Harm Studies: 74, or Fewer than 10? Frank characterizes my findings as an "outlier" from 74 studies collected on his website showing no disadvantage for children of gay or lesbian parents. But there are many other studies he did not select, which report difficulties in same-sex partnerships similar to my study. I cited three such studies concerning health difficulties and intimate partner violence (IPV). Messinger s conclusion, for example, is very similar to mine: "concerns over 'airing the dirty laundry' of an already stigmatized community alongside researcher prejudice or indifference cannot justify treating GLB [Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual] IPV victims as invisible, leaving them without support in a painful and potentially dangerous environment." [3] My study is not an outlier but is in line with the concerns and approach of these other studies. Frank also does not mention that his website also includes four studies that do show disadvantage for children of gay or lesbian parents. Three of these studies employ three separate large population samples, finding similar levels of disadvantage [4-6]. By contrast, the 74 studies include only two or three which use population samples. The remainder are small convenience samples, typically recruited from sympathetic groups and settings, that are (in my view and that of detailed reviews) [4, 7] worthless for the question of child outcomes. These studies do not meet minimal scientific standards and are biased toward benign findings [8]. Asking patrons of a local LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender] bookstore or gay friends network about child outcomes is like surveying a Bible study about religiosity: the rosy picture is misleading about the larger population. Excluding such nonrandom or biased samples, fewer than 10 of the 74 studies remain. The Problem of Special Pleading. The validity of Franks critique is undermined by selective application, known as special pleading. Regarding the sample, my study notes that "same-sex parents were identified using the procedure described by Wainright et al." [9] Wainright's three studies used the same data and sample of same-sex parents as mine, selected in the same way. The difference is those studies conflated two groups that I believe should be examined separately: (1) children residing with two same-sex parents and (2) children residing with two opposite-sex parents, one of whom was in a same-sex relationship with a third person. Wainright mixed these about equally sized groups together, finding no statistically significant differences in child outcomes compared to opposite-sex families [9-11]. My study examined the first group separately, finding some disadvantages for children with two same-sex parents; otherwise, my study replicated Wainright's.