Walter Schumm knows what he's about to do is unpopular: publish a study arguing that gay parents are more likely to raise gay children than straight parents. But the Kansas State University family studies professor has a detailed analysis that past almost aggressively ideological researchers never had.
When one such researcher, Paul Cameron, published a paper in 2006 arguing that children of gay parents were more likely to be gay themselves, the response from the academic press was virulent, to say nothing of the popular press; the Southern Poverty Law Center, for instance, equated Cameron to a Nazi.
The gay press, as far back as the 1980s, labeled Cameron "the most dangerous anti-gay voice in America." Though Cameron was the first to publish papers on the dangers of secondhand smoke, the scientific community has abandoned him. The American Psychological Association long since dropped him from its membership for an "ethical" violation.Schumm seems to have done a pretty thorough analysis of the available data and what he's found has implications not only for the question of gay adoption but also for the debate over what role genetics plays in one's sexual orientation.
One thing that isn't clear from this article is whether the children studied were biological children of gays or adoptive children. I assumed the latter but they certainly could be the former, and it makes a difference.
Anyway, Schumm, anticipating a firestorm of outrage over his having conducted a study that does not arrive at the socially approved conclusions, and which indeed treads on the far side of the line separating orthodoxy from heresy, takes comfort in a quote from philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. "All truth passes through three stages: First it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
Exit question: If it turns out that gay parents are more likely to raise gay kids why should a society that holds as dogma the belief that homosexuality is a legitimate alternative lifestyle find that upsetting?