Penguin
I dont recall making many assertions which require 'evidence' my position is based the Biblical one. "Immorality is sin" (of all kinds) and if one does not believe that, there is not a lot of point trying to show other evidence. Hence I haven't tried.
If you want evidence to support the biblical position just read Romans chapter 1.

Oh Kenny...

Funny how for you, mainstream = anything that agrees with you, and junk = anything that you don't agree with.

How about we look at the substance of the research? I read the actual paper referred to in New Scientist: Wainright, Russell and Petterson, "Psychological Adjustment, School Outcomes, and Romantic Relationships of Adolescents With Same-Sex Parents" Child Development 75/6 (2004) 1886-1898. This study has serious methodological shortcomings. (1) it is based on just 44 teens out of 12,105 - hardly a suitable sample on which to base such sweeping conclusions. (2) It deals only with teens with lesbian parents. (3) It does not consider the effect of the teen's early childhood experience before their mother's hooked up with another woman. (4) It relies on dubious self-reporting through questionaires and "in-house" interviews. Which lesbian parent is going to paint a negative picture of their relationship with their teen? How many teens are willing to open up and express their most intimate feelings to a complete stranger? ie. there was no observational data used, which the authors themselves admit is a limitation. (5) Questions asked of the teens included "Have you ever been attracted to [another] female?" If they answered "yes" this was interpreted as a same-sex attraction. But what if the teen only had in mind a deep, "soul-mate" friendship? Should have asked: "Have you ever been sexually attracted to [another] female?" (6) The conclusions in the paper itself are nowhere near as clear-cut as the New Scientist article suggests. In fact, the NS article misrepresents the original paper. The authors basic conclusion is: "Regardless of whether they lived with same-sex or opposite-sex couples, adolescents WHOSE PARENTS REPORTED HAVING CLOSE AND SATISFYING RELATIONSHIPS WITH THEM were more likely to have made positive adjustments at schools as well as at home...our findings are consistent with theories that emphasise the importance of adolescent relationships with parents." Duh!

So what really matters is good relationships with parents. But the study does not show that lesbians are just as likely to be good parents. It shows that if, according to the lesbian mother, they have a close relationship with the teen, that teen is more likely to cope with having a lesbian mother.

In any case, S. Sarantakos' study, “Children in Three Contexts” Children Australia 21/3 (1996), a carefully controlled study by a homosexual sympathiser, found that children with gay parents perform significantly WORSe in every educational category except for social interaction where all 3 groups were pretty much equal. His study is also based on a slightly larger data set (58 children), and used their teachers and actual grades to rate the children making it much more objective and less prone to reporter bias.

Also, 57 life-story narratives of children with homosexual parents published by Rafkin in 1990 and Saffron in 1996 were subjected to content analysis. Children mentioned one or more problems/concerns in 48 (92%) of 52 families. Of the 213 scored problems, 201 (94%) were attributed to the homosexual parent(s). Older daughters in at least 8 (27%) of 30 families and older sons in at least 2 (20%) of 10 families described themselves as homosexual or bisexual. These findings are inconsistent with propositions that children of homosexuals do not differ appreciably from those who live with married parents or that children of homosexuals are not more apt to engage in homosexuality. See

Paul Cameron also did research on the abuse of foster children by homosexual carers. While a successful foster-parenting outcome does not make the news, a highly unsuccessful outcome does. If homosexual foster parents do not differ from non-homosexuals, gross failure at foster parenting -- such as the sexual molestation of foster kids -- ought to occur at rates approximately proportionate to the frequencies of homosexual and heterosexual foster parents. Cameron used Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe, an internet search service, scans the whole text of over 50 regional and national newspapers, largely in the U.S., but also including major papers in Australia, England, Canada, and New Zealand (e.g., Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Independent [England], Ottawa Citizen [Canada]). He examined every news story from 1989 through 2001 finding 5,492 stories involving child molestation and foster parenting. Only news stories or first-person accounts were tallied, not editorials nor opinion pieces, so the stories basically covered recent events, not reflections on older items. This technique is obviously different from a comparison study where matched parents -- homosexual and heterosexual -- are randomly drawn from the total set of foster parents to see how they stack up. News stories are reports about ‘the real world,’ and not just responses to questionnaires from people who know they are being questioned or scrutinized.

Cameron found 30 stories about molestation of foster. In 22 stories foster children were sexually abused. Five stories bore upon the character of the foster parent or guardian, but their foster child was not sexually molested. In 3 stories, foster caregivers molested their charges as they were held in group quarters. In 2of the 12 stories involving gays, the homosexual not only molested his foster son, but prostituted him as well. 3 of the gay foster parents already had ‘a record of child molestation’ and yet were given boys to foster parent! In Los Angeles (5/2/96): For the second time in the year, the state initiated action to revoke the foster home license of "Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services" because an additional number of boys reported having been molested by male staff members (counted as 3 homosexual male perpetrators and 6 boy victims)! Much more discussion and details can be found in "Gay Foster Parents More Apt to Molest" Journal of the Family Research Institute 17/7 (2002).

AK

>Paul Cameron also did research on the abuse of foster children by homosexual carers.

Paul Cameron's 'research' lacks credibility. He's been expelled from numerous professional associations on the grounds of ethical violations and fabrication of data. His membership of the American Psychological Association was revoked as long ago as 1983.

A year later the Nebraska Psychological Association adopted a resolution stating that it "formally disassociates itself from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron in his writings and public statements on sexuality."

In 1985, the American Sociological Association asserted that Cameron "has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism" and noted that "Dr. Paul Cameron has repeatedly campaigned for the abrogation of the civil rights of lesbians and gay men, substantiating his call on the basis of his distorted interpretation of this research."

An ASA committee was formed to critically evaluate Cameron's work. Following its report, the ASA voted to pass the follwing resolution:

"The American Sociological Association officially and publicly states that Paul Cameron is not a sociologist, and condemns his consistent misrepresentation of sociological research."

Furthermore, in his written opinion in Baker v. Wade (1985), Judge Buchmeyer of the U.S. District Court of Dallas referred to "Cameron's sworn statement that 'homosexuals abuse children at a proportionately greater incident than do heterosexuals,'" and concluded that "Dr. Paul Cameron...has himself made misrepresentations to this Court" and that "There has been no fraud or misrepresentations except by Dr. Cameron".

Aslan I went to the CSU web site and looked up Sarantakos it's funny Uni are usually very happy to list papers done by their staff funny thing I could not find anything about any of papers that many Christian groups cite. We often find that some Rabid right winger that work in Uni's will produce papers to support their extremists views that don't seem to make it into peer reviewed journals. As Homo a go go and dealt with the Carmon chap could you please provide the link/info of the peer reviewed journal where the paper "Children in Three Contexts" by Sarantakos was published?
here is a link to CSU citation linker can't find it.
http://cooee.unilinc.edu.au:9003/citation/csu/

BOAZ_David: And I don't recall directly bringing your name up in my postings to this forum (if you read carefully you'll see your name only comes up where I'm quoting somebody else verbatim). But as you insist: Fine, you are of course entitled to live your life in the Bible. I just prefer to live in reality. Let me take a quote of yours to help compare and contrast the two.

The Bible take: "Homosexual behaviour is Sin. Rape is sin, Stealing is sin, Fraud is sin. Not all of those are illegal, but we regard them all as sin."

The Reality take: Rape is illegal. Stealing is illegal. Fraud is illegal. All are crimes that necessarily have victims. Rape especially can cause unimaginable physical and emotional scarring to women for years. For you to even consider putting consensual relationships between two adults in the same category as rape is indicative of your extremist views.

Homosexuality is NOT illegal in Australia, hasn't been since 1994. And there's a reason for this. Our lawmakers, politicians and society in general views the world beyond the blinkered myopism of a literal Bible interpretation, preferring instead to use common sense as their guide. That's why, slowly, despite resistance by the Christian Right, the western world is growing closer to removing all barriers to loving, committed homosexual relationships. Parts of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Belguim, Spain, parts of the US, France, UK, Netherlands and South Africa now have in place or will shortly have in place gay marriages or civil union options. More countries will follow suit. The Christian Right will resist, will refuse to move with the times - as it did with interracial marriages, equal rights for women and the original decriminalisation of homosexuality, to name but three social evolutions - and they'll stall, maybe have the odd victory now and there in deferring the inevitable. Then reality will sweep through once again and they'll lose. Again.

Cheers,

QP

Perhaps BOAZ_David could reminded everyone what the bible says about rape. I seem to remeber soming about if the victim isn't married then she should marry the person who raped them is that right BOAZ_David, timmy? Oh and I think some money should change hands as well.