A new study
has just been published in Australia about children raised by families in which
at least one parent has a same-sex attraction. It has been covered
enthusiastically and uncritically in many media, including here at the Huffington Post.

The study seems to ‘prove’ that children
raised in such families do at least as well as children raised by heterosexual parents.
Needless to say, the study proves no such thing.

In fact,
all the study really proves is that studies such as this will always receive an uncritical reception in the media because they suit the media’s pro-same-sex marriage and pro-same-sex parenting agenda.

Therefore, our media will very rarely subject the flawed methodologies of these studies to any
real critical scrutiny.  

And so the
fact that the sample this study is based on is non-random hardly gets a look-in.
Likewise the fact that it is based on a convenience sample and a snowball recruitment
technique (meaning essentially that the participants help recruit one another).

Nor it is
pointed out that the study asks the parents how they think their children are
doing meaning the study is highly subjective.

The
children are sometimes asked how they think they are doing, which is also
subjective, but a bit better than asking only the parents admittedly.

(It should be asked whether it is possible that the parents and children taking part in this study would have
an interest in putting the best foot forward knowing that a good result will
further their ideological agenda?)

The very
odd nature of the sample isn’t properly pointed out in most media reports either.
If a child is being raised in a family where at least one parent is merely ‘same-sex
attracted’ does this make it a same-sex family at all?

And so it
goes on.

The
uncritical reception for this study contrasts in the sharpest possible way with
the ultra-critical way in which the Mark Regnerus
study on children raised by same-sex parents was received.

That study
challenged the cosy view that children raised by gay or lesbian parents do just
as well as children raised by their own biological parents.

The study
wasn’t perfect by any means but it did draw its sample from a large and random
population sample. That is, it was neither a convenience sample nor did it use a snow-ball recruitment technique.

That makes
it vastly more reliable than the vast bulk of other studies to date of children
raised by gay or lesbian parents.

But of
course the reason its methodology was scrutinised to the last inch, and the methodology of this new Australian study has barely been scrutinised at all is
clear; naked ideological bias. 

In any case, the results of this latest study purporting to show that ‘the kids are alright’ is being vastly oversold. As usual.