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发帖数: 29846 | 1 一项对同性恋人群的研究发现，女同性恋父母的子女中58%是同性恋，男同性恋子女是
33%，异性恋父母子女是5-10%；欢迎同性恋的社区里同性恋比例高89%
http://www.aolnews.com/science/article/study-gay-parents-more-likely-to-have-gay-kids/19668089
Study: Gay Parents More Likely to Have Gay Kids
Updated: 1 day 19 hours ago
Paul Kix
AOL News
(Oct. 17) -- 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.
Not all of the vitriol was hyperbolic. Cameron does not tolerate gay people.
He believes that "homosexual practice is injurious to society."
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.
Today, Cameron is the founder and chairman of the Family Research Institute,
whose "overriding mission" is to publish "empirical research on issues that
threaten the traditional family, particularly homosexuality."
Schumm doesn't go for that sort of research. After Cameron's 2006 paper,
Schumm listened as the academic community stated certainty of two things:
Cameron was an idiotic bigot; and the existing literature showed little to
no societal, cultural or parental influence on sexual orientation.
Schumm began investigating the second premise. "I just want to know the
truth about something," he tells AOL News. And he found it strange that
parents can influence so many facets of their children's lives -- but not in
any way their sexual orientation.
Lawyers for the state of Florida heard of Schumm's fledgling research and
invited him in 2008 to testify in a case. The state's Department of Children
and Families was attempting to uphold a ban on gay and lesbian parents
adopting children. Schumm's testimony actually ended up aiding the gay
parents in the trial.
He said: "Gay parents can be good foster parents," and "The decision to
permit homosexuals to adopt is best made by the judiciary on a case by case
basis."
Schumm tells AOL News that he agreed to testify as one of the state's
witnesses only if his evidence was not "slanted" for or against gay rights.
But also in his testimony was an inkling of the robust research Schumm has
just completed. His study on sexual orientation, out next month, says that
gay and lesbian parents are far more likely to have children who become gay.
"I'm trying to prove that it's not 100 percent genetic," Schumm tells AOL
News.
His study is a meta-analysis of existing work. First, Schumm extrapolated
data from 10 books on gay parenting; Cameron, for what it's worth, had only
looked at three, and offered no statistical analysis in his paper. Schumm
skewed his data so that only self-identified gay and lesbian children would
be labeled as such.
This is important because sometimes Schumm would come across a passage of
children of gay parents who said they were "adamant about not declaring
their sexual orientation at all." These people would be labeled straight,
even though the passage's implication was that they were gay.
Schumm concluded that children of lesbian parents identified themselves as
gay 31 percent of the time; children of gay men had gay children 19 percent
of the time, and children of a lesbian mother and gay father had at least
one gay child 25 percent of the time.
Furthermore, when the study restricted the results so that they included
only children in their 20s -- presumably after they'd been able to work out
any adolescent confusion or experimentation -- 58 percent of the children of
lesbians called themselves gay, and 33 percent of the children of gay men
called themselves gay. (About 5 to 10 percent of the children of straight
parents call themselves gay, Schumm says.)
Schumm next went macro, poring over an anthropological study of various
cultures' acceptance of homosexuality. He found that when communities
welcome gays and lesbians, "89 percent feature higher rates of homosexual
behavior."
Finally, Schumm looked at the existing academic studies, the ones used to
pillory Cameron's work. In all there are 26 such studies. Schumm ran the
numbers from them and concluded that, surprisingly, 20 percent of the kids
of gay parents were gay themselves. When children only 17 or older were
included in the analysis, 28 percent were gay.
Abbie Goldberg is a psychology professor at Clark University, and the author
of "Lesbian and Gay Parents and Their Children: Research on the Family Life
Cycle," which this year won the Distinguished Book Award from the APA. She
hasn't read Schumm's study, only seen the abstract. But she says, in general
, that a meta-analysis of this nature relies on sample sizes that are often
too small and may furthermore brim with participants whose perspective is
firmly aligned with the LGBT community. In other words, they're aware of
these sorts of studies and seek them out.
"The fundamental problem with this [type of meta-analysis] is such samples
tend to be biased," Goldberg tells AOL News.
Schumm says he guarded against that by seeking out so many different works.
And across all his data -- the 10 books he consulted, the anthropological
study, the scientific articles -- he noticed how lesbians begat more
lesbians. In Schumm's study, he quotes from the extant literature the
stories of young women, describing how being gay was never frowned upon in
their household, and so that "option" was available to them. That said,
Schumm also finds evidence of gay mothers pushing their daughters, upset
over a relationship with a man, to "try out women."
But couldn't gay men also tell their sons this? Yes, but Schumm tells AOL
News that most gay men have at some point been with a woman, so they
understand why their sons might date them. Whereas the literature shows some
lesbians "have a hatred of men that's intense," Schumm says.
Schumm says it shouldn't have taken until 2010 to do the meta-analysis. Too
often his colleagues impose "liberal or progressive political
interpretations" on their studies, which inhibit further inquiry. "It's kind
of sad," he tells AOL News.
As if expecting a political backlash himself, Schumm concludes his study
with 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." |
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