Is any scientist conducting this experiment?

Question

A major roadblock in gays and lesbians getting the right to marry is the implication that they'll be granted full rights to raise children, but a great deal of people who are against gay marraige (who are wise enough to exclude religious implications, since no one cares about what God thinks anymore these days) are afraid that gays who raise children will raise them homosexual.

Has anyone yet thought of conducting an experiment where exceptionally young foster children are given into custody of gay, lesbian, and straight parents and their behavior and development is carefully monitored over the course of their lives? It's already upsetting to enough people that gays come out of straight homes, but don't we need to carefully study which household brings about which sexuality? If the results of the experiment follow no recognizable pattern, then it would be proven that sexuality of the children is NOT a result of the sexuality of the parents, and gays could be allowed to have kids.

Answer 1

Do you honestly believe it is a good idea to experiment with children? I don't. I think My Steve was ruined by being involved in an experiment when he was a child. He was in the "control group" of a testing of the ITA, Initial Teaching Alphabet, a sick little idea that did not, fortunately, come to much. In the meantime, his life was controlled in ways that he never did recover. They couldn't let him show as smarter than the kids who were using the ITA, which would ruin their statistics. So they kept him from reading anything he chose himself, and was not allowed to even touch his older sister's textbooks. He got the impression there was something wrong with him, not with the circumstances under which he was being raised. He never really shook that idea, and committed suicide last December.

Answer 2

There have been many studies on this issue. Research in psychological and sociological databases at the library. Basically what has been found is that the sexuality of the parents does not predict the sexuality in the children. Statistically there is no difference between the number of children that consider themselves gay or straight when compared between traditional families and same sex families. To respond to another answer, it is ethical to do these experiments. There is no manipulation involved it is simple survey techniques given to volunteers. Also the children are typically in their late teens or adulthood. They have to be so they can identify their sexuality. Unfortunately, in our society politicians do not always look at the research when making laws. Instead they look at their personal beliefs, their constituents, their financial backers, etc. This has been seen time and time again in many issues not just gay and lesbian issues.

Answer 3

Studies like that have been going on for a long period of time and many have shown that such fears as children becoming homosexual because they are raised by gay/lesbian couples have no basis.

For a summary of a large body of literarture, visit:

http://www.apa.org/pi/parent.html

Answer 4

Fantastic idea I wholeheartedly agree. I have been trying to explain to my Dad for years that gay people come from straight homes and it does not therefore follow that they would raise gay children!

Answer 5

I think experimenting on children is wrong, in your methodology I would come up with another term