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Some gay advocates are more interested in expanding their own civil rights than in providing stable homes for children, Chambers told CT in an interview. Courts have held there is no right to adopt.

An increasing number of individuals who contact Exodus have had homosexual parents, he said. "They were raised in gay-parent households, and it was detrimental to them, especially as they grew older."

Chambers says children raised by two men or two women are missing a role model. "It's important for a child to have a mom and dad in order to be secure in gender roles," Chambers says. "Even though a divorce situation isn't ideal, there are still significant male and female relationships patterned."

In forming public policy and applying existing law, judges and state officials often look to doctors and social scientists to assess how homosexual parents influence young children, and what is in the best interest of a minor child who is orphaned or whose parents have divorced.

In turn, gay advocates urge politicians, doctors, and researchers to believe that homosexuals can be good parents and should be allowed to adopt or retain child custody after a divorce. Rosie O'Donnell, media celebrity and parent to three adopted children, declared on national television, "I am the gay parent."

Janet Reno, a Democratic candidate for governor of Florida, has pledged her support for overturning her state's ban on gay adoptions.

Homosexual activists have commended the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) for a February statement that "a growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with one or two gay or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual." The academy urged its 55,000 members to support "second-parent" adoptions, in which a homosexual adopts a partner's children.

Conservative rejection of the AAP announcement was swift. British sociologist Patricia Morgan, author of Children As Trophies? (Christian Institute, 2002), told CT, "There's a tremendous bias in both the publishing and acceptance" of results that support homosexual parenting.

Morgan, who has written extensively on family development, says that four dozen studies cited by the AAP are in error because researchers failed to use control groups, used self-selected volunteers, and relied on nonrandom samples. Morgan, senior research fellow at London's Institute for the Study of Civil Society, says research supportive of gay parenting shows a tendency toward "extravagant claims" from sympathetic researchers. "Any critical evaluation or examination of the work … is apt to invoke furious reflex accusations about homophobia."

Researchers Robert Lerner and Althea Nagai, coauthors of No Basis: What the Studies Don't Tell Us About Same-Sex Parenting (Marriage Law Project, 1991), support Morgan's findings. Lerner and Nagai evaluated 49 studies on gay parenting, finding significant mistakes in all of them.

They particularly criticized "convenience sampling," in which investigators select whoever is available, and "snowball sampling," in which homosexual activists help researchers find volunteers willing to answer questions.

"These studies prove nothing," Lerner and Nagai wrote. They say reliance on this suspect research has strongly influenced policymakers toward a positive view of gay parenting.

Morgan believes the most reliable research clearly shows that "children reared in a home with a married mother and father do far better than children in other circumstances."

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July 8 2002, Vol. 46, No. 8