This is my first blog for my Family Relations class. We learned so much in the first two weeks of classes. Family Relations can affect so many parts of the world just by one person’s idea of what a family means to a group, entity, and culture.
We discussed gay and lesbian marriage and how Californians
had to vote if marriage between two men or two women was unconstitutional, called proposition 8. It was voted down by most of the people, but
some voters did not agree with the decision, and it was taken to the U.S. Supreme
Court.
There are nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court and four
decided to vote it was unconstitutional to not allow gays and lesbians to marry
and four voted that it is constitutional for them not to allow them to get
married, but there was one justice who was undecided. Justice Kennedy wanted to know if gays and lesbians
married how would it affect the children in their marital bond?
There was a brief written by the American Psychological
Association in 2005 stating that there were 59 research studies on the idea of how
it affected the children of gay and lesbian families. The studies were to compare heterosexual
parents to gay and lesbian parents.
The research was supposed to be on the long-term effect on adolescence
and adults in gay and lesbian families, but the APA noticed in the research
studies that most of the comparison data were done with some form of bias on
the researcher’s part and a lack of children in the study.
Most of this research was done between 1979 and 2003. Out of
59 studies, 10 studies were done with single mothers. They compared these single mothers to lesbian
white women who were executive secretaries, I say secretaries because in those days
women were not high-ranking executives. Women’s
rights had a long way to go.
When I saw the comparison of the two categories I realized there
could not be a comparison between them, or the researchers did not see lesbians
as married only single and would only compare them to single women with
children. In the 80s and 90s, most women were categorized as single or married,
whether they were lesbian or heterosexual.
Most researchers were probably white men speaking with white women executives
about lesbian marriage.
My main thought was the single mother, who did they speak
with? In the 80s and 90s, most single
mothers were African American, how did they go about speaking with these women
about their children? Did they go to
welfare offices, doctors’ offices, or unemployment offices? Did the researchers use their own bias to
report on single mothers? In the 80s and
90s, it was frowned upon to be a single white woman with a child, who did these
men speak with? We may never know the
answer to this question.
Comparing a single mother to an executive woman was not in
the best interest of the child. When you look closely at the APA brief you see
that most of the studies between the executive and the single mother were about
the psychosexual development of a child. There was no discussion about emotional development,
social development, health development, education development, or self-esteem development
of the child. There is more to family
life than sex.
At the end of this brief, the American Psychological
Association issued an official assertion: “Not a single study has found
children of lesbian or gay parents to be disadvantaged in any significant
respect relative to children of heterosexual parents.”
How could these researchers have these two categories of a
single mother and white executive woman and expect to have a positive outcome,
they didn’t want a positive outcome.
These comparisons were done on purpose to make sure that gays and
lesbians stay where they belong, in the closet, and never come out.
In the end, Justice Kennedy decided it was unconditional not
to allow gays and lesbians to marry. It would make no difference between heterosexual
parents and gay and lesbian parents how the outcome of the child would be.
Nowadays families are so different they can’t just be called
Mother, Father, Sister, and Brother.
