Quote:

---

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) says it’s “in the best interests” of the children.

The influential group of pediatricians released a policy statement in support of same-sex parents’ right to wed as well as to foster or adopt children. The policy was guided by the organization’s belief in gay marriage “to promote optimal health and well-being of all children.”

“We know enough about child development that we can say that children are nurtured when they have two loving, supportive, committed-to-each-other adults to take care of them,” says Dr. Ben Siegel, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at Boston University School of Medicine and a co-author of the policy statement. ”Kids growing up with two same-sex parents are as normally developed as the rest of the population.”

According to the statement, which notes that married people have a groundswell of legal, economic and social support:

Quote:

---

Scientific evidence affirms that children have similar developmental and emotional needs and receive similar parenting whether they are raised by parents of the same or different genders. If a child has 2 living and capable parents who choose to create a permanent bond by way of civil marriage, it is in the best interests of their child(ren) that legal and social institutions allow and support them to do so, irrespective of their sexual orientation.

---

Is it unusual that the 60,000 pediatricians who comprise the AAP are wading into politics? “Our goal is to support the best interests of children,” says Siegel. “If people understand that as political, so be it. Our politics is what’s best for children.”

The timing of the report — published as the Supreme Court is considering the legality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex unions in states that allow them — is sheer coincidence, says Siegel. The committee has been reviewing hundreds of studies for more than five years in preparation for the statement and the accompanying in-depth report . More at http://healthland.time.com/2013/03/21/pediatric-group-supports-same-se
x-marriage/]
Amusingly, it also notes an opposition study which supposedly found that children raised by gay parents were more likely than those raised in a heterosexual household to require therapy for depression or anxiety, and less likely to have a formal education or a full time job. The problem is that study defined gay parents as anyone who had had a same-sex relationship at one point in their lives. Rather that tracking children raised in households by parents in a stable gay relationship, the study, which took place at a time when gay unions were not as accepted legally or socially, instead documented the effects of the broken homes that resulted when gay parents left their initial, heterosexual relationships.

And that's how you skew "data" to "prove" your point...

That study is the New Families Structure Study (NFSS) by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus ( http://www.prc.utexas.edu/nfss/)...I'm sure it's still being cited by many opposed to gay marriage, who conveniently neglect to notice that, in a new interview with Focus on the Family — a group invested in continuing to cite the study to oppose LGBT equality — it's author even openly admitted "that the foundation of his study is too weak to draw the conclusions that many have made". Also, that an internal audit by the academic journal that originally published it ( http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/controversial-gay-parenting-stud
y-is-severely-flawed-journals-audit-finds/30255) found the conclusions to be “bullshit” (literally!).

But I have no doubt it will continue being cited as an "authority" by the anti-gay-marriage bunch. Ain't "science" fun?