LGBT Adoption

Last week, the United States Supreme Court Supreme Court considered the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s same-sex marriage statute. “If you redefine marriage to include same-sex couples,” Justice Anton Scalia said, “you must permit adoption by same-sex couples. There’s considerable disagreement among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not.” 

Actually, though there are some dissenters who say that research is not definitive — and some states block gay couples form jointly adopting children — there’s a broad consensus among major medical, psychological and child-welfare organizations that children raised by gay and lesbian parents fare just as well as those raised by straight parents. Scalia’s comments angered many gay-rights activists, including attorney Camilla Taylor of Lambda Legal, who called them “dishonest and disingenuous” for disregarding the consensus among child-welfare professionals. So exactly where is this so-called research Justice Scalia is referring to?