If you’ve ever argued against same-sex marriage or same-sex parenting, you’ve probably been hit with what your opponent thinks is a mic-drop: a link to Cornell University’s roundup claiming that 75 out of 79 studies show children of gay or lesbian parents fare no worse than other children.
Thank you for shedding some more thorough and detailed information about this.
Self reporting by gay and homosexual parents without any further investigation and information, details about how the children who were raised with this fared and over the long term.
In addition, now understanding the biological,and developmental importance of both the biological design of mother and father bonding that serves the children best.
Also the dangers of having sexual deviants raising children.
This is very similar to the problems with much of the research purporting to support "gender-affirming care" in kids. In both instances, data from large population studies (such as included in the Regnerus study) that avoid the problems of small studies involving "cherry-picked" patient samples is essential for drawing proper conclusions.
Thanks for the analysis of the so-called evidence for lack of harm. It's what many of us suspect. The ongoing unethical, and amoral research in reproductive science is horrifying. I saw a headline recently which trumpeted the potential ability of scientists being able to create a genetically/biologically related child of two men, using skin cells to harvest dna. How is this even considered a good idea?
Children should be a priority not an accessory. Thank you for this rebuttal, something we all knew as we see and hear with our own eyes and ears. Obergefell must be challenged. Dignity means nothing unless talking about work.
Overlooked are two articles by Schumm in the Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2000, his book on Same-sex parenting in 2018, and other similar articles published in the Linacre Quarterly on methodological problems. Also the 2024 article in The Natural Family, volume 36(3-4), pages 155-176 which showed sixteen ways that researchers cheat to make their results come out as they want them to do. A paper published in Accountability in Research in 2025 shows how one researcher appears to have made up his data from thin air in up to half of his 60 articles and got away with doing that for 20 years while making a huge salary compared to most professors. The most notable recent finding is an article by Carone et al. (2024) that found that 44% of the daughters and 19% of the sons of lesbian mothers were nonheterosexual by age 30-33. The 44% was significantly different than the 19% and both were significantly different from the expected 9% rate. What has to be remembered is that such a situation was vehemently denied since 1975; our review of literature from 2001 to 2017 found that over 90% of literature reviews denied any association between parental and child sexual orientation. Even the few studies that rejected that null hypothesis only cited one or two sources although we published a meta-analysis in 2021 that used several articles as the basis for our conclusion. Kudos to everyone for what you've said but frankly, you are just scratching the surface. However, bucking the system is costly, you can be banned for life from sociological organizations' meetings, can be retired early, be forced to move your office to your home. Don't expect your research to be cited often by those who want to continue to believe the "no difference" hypothesis. I am working slowly on a new review of the literature but am delayed in that because of a focus on deconstructing the research on transgenderism. However, another key issue that is overlooked but may be behind ancient concerns with homosexuality is that homosexuals often enjoy more (men) or better (women) sex but have fewer children, like they want the benefits but not the costs. If you analyze the short-term results of transgender surgeries you will find the same sort of cherry picking of results, get rid of negatives about your natal gender, gain positives about the "new" gender, and avoid most of the negatives otherwise associated with the "new" gender. And yet, much of the time fertility is lost. The Biden influx of unaccompanied children and other adults as well as opposition to voter ID was an attempt, if you dig deep, to compensate for the lower fertility rates of many democrats which otherwise would lead to less political power (fewer votes). In other words, low rates of fertility lead to major problems, as China is dealing with now. And Europe, too. So while fertility seems like an individual choice issue, it has major social impacts on the whole society, especially in welfare states. When any group of women adopts an attitude of "other women will have to have babies, but not us" that has consequences for them and for the rest of us.
For example of how people cheat. One article that has been cited many hundreds of times in support of transgenderism for children reported that across three age groups of children comparing trans kids, a control group of kids, and a sibling group, there were allegedly no differences. I noticed that they did not report the overall difference, combining all three age groups, which is contrary to usual scientific procedure. The authors did provide me with the overall means and standard deviations but there is a website where you can input the group scores and get the overall results. That result was statistically significant with a small to moderate (0.26 if I remember correctly) effect size in which the transgender children, even with parental support (which wasn't actually measured, just assumed), had worse mental health. When they broke down the sample into three groups they cut the alpha by three so even when one of the three groups, the largest one, had a significant result, it didn't show up as such since .05 had been cut to .017 for required significance. So the assumed conclusion was that if parents supported their trans kids, then all was well but what it actually showed was that even if parents supported their trans kids, they were still worse off. Sometimes this is almost funny. One study looked into stability of same-sex parenting relations and found that the instability rate was 25% for same-sex couples with children but was 8% for heterosexual parents, but since N = 4 for the former the difference could not possibly be significant (if it had been 25% vs. 1%, it would have been significant) despite the 3:1 different rates. It was also complicated because the study assumed that if the other person had died, the relationship was declared to be stable. One of my colleagues said what are you upset about Walter? Dead is REALLY stable! That logic would lead to murder of your spouse as a way to get to a really stable, long-lasting marriage, right? The same study claimed to use a complex multivariate analysis to prove that same-sex relationships are just as stable as heterosexual ones but it was all based on that N = 4 subsample, which is just plain ridiculous, but the complexity obscured the simplicity of what the actual data were (or were not). If you look up my name and islam in Google Scholar you will find how I've helped to disprove the early history of Islam with statistics. Although Harremoes (2023) did a much better job in the journal Entropy under a title of rate distortion theory which seems unrelated to Islam but uses the issue as an example inside the paper. You can always email me at schumm@ksu.edu for more information or questions.
I've heard it said that around 50% of recent papers published in the social sciences are fraudulent. Not "based on bad data" or "insufficiently rigorous methodology," but flat-out "the authors know this is nonsense and they deliberately tortured the data to get a desired conclusion" fraudulent.
It would seem that the deeper you go into ideological territory, the higher that percentage rises.
Thank you for shedding some more thorough and detailed information about this.
Self reporting by gay and homosexual parents without any further investigation and information, details about how the children who were raised with this fared and over the long term.
In addition, now understanding the biological,and developmental importance of both the biological design of mother and father bonding that serves the children best.
Also the dangers of having sexual deviants raising children.
This should not be an option.
At all.
This is very similar to the problems with much of the research purporting to support "gender-affirming care" in kids. In both instances, data from large population studies (such as included in the Regnerus study) that avoid the problems of small studies involving "cherry-picked" patient samples is essential for drawing proper conclusions.
Thanks for the analysis of the so-called evidence for lack of harm. It's what many of us suspect. The ongoing unethical, and amoral research in reproductive science is horrifying. I saw a headline recently which trumpeted the potential ability of scientists being able to create a genetically/biologically related child of two men, using skin cells to harvest dna. How is this even considered a good idea?
Children should be a priority not an accessory. Thank you for this rebuttal, something we all knew as we see and hear with our own eyes and ears. Obergefell must be challenged. Dignity means nothing unless talking about work.
Thank you for doing the research on this. I truly appreciate it.
Overlooked are two articles by Schumm in the Journal of Sexual Medicine in 2000, his book on Same-sex parenting in 2018, and other similar articles published in the Linacre Quarterly on methodological problems. Also the 2024 article in The Natural Family, volume 36(3-4), pages 155-176 which showed sixteen ways that researchers cheat to make their results come out as they want them to do. A paper published in Accountability in Research in 2025 shows how one researcher appears to have made up his data from thin air in up to half of his 60 articles and got away with doing that for 20 years while making a huge salary compared to most professors. The most notable recent finding is an article by Carone et al. (2024) that found that 44% of the daughters and 19% of the sons of lesbian mothers were nonheterosexual by age 30-33. The 44% was significantly different than the 19% and both were significantly different from the expected 9% rate. What has to be remembered is that such a situation was vehemently denied since 1975; our review of literature from 2001 to 2017 found that over 90% of literature reviews denied any association between parental and child sexual orientation. Even the few studies that rejected that null hypothesis only cited one or two sources although we published a meta-analysis in 2021 that used several articles as the basis for our conclusion. Kudos to everyone for what you've said but frankly, you are just scratching the surface. However, bucking the system is costly, you can be banned for life from sociological organizations' meetings, can be retired early, be forced to move your office to your home. Don't expect your research to be cited often by those who want to continue to believe the "no difference" hypothesis. I am working slowly on a new review of the literature but am delayed in that because of a focus on deconstructing the research on transgenderism. However, another key issue that is overlooked but may be behind ancient concerns with homosexuality is that homosexuals often enjoy more (men) or better (women) sex but have fewer children, like they want the benefits but not the costs. If you analyze the short-term results of transgender surgeries you will find the same sort of cherry picking of results, get rid of negatives about your natal gender, gain positives about the "new" gender, and avoid most of the negatives otherwise associated with the "new" gender. And yet, much of the time fertility is lost. The Biden influx of unaccompanied children and other adults as well as opposition to voter ID was an attempt, if you dig deep, to compensate for the lower fertility rates of many democrats which otherwise would lead to less political power (fewer votes). In other words, low rates of fertility lead to major problems, as China is dealing with now. And Europe, too. So while fertility seems like an individual choice issue, it has major social impacts on the whole society, especially in welfare states. When any group of women adopts an attitude of "other women will have to have babies, but not us" that has consequences for them and for the rest of us.
Thank you for weighing in, Dr Schumm!!
For example of how people cheat. One article that has been cited many hundreds of times in support of transgenderism for children reported that across three age groups of children comparing trans kids, a control group of kids, and a sibling group, there were allegedly no differences. I noticed that they did not report the overall difference, combining all three age groups, which is contrary to usual scientific procedure. The authors did provide me with the overall means and standard deviations but there is a website where you can input the group scores and get the overall results. That result was statistically significant with a small to moderate (0.26 if I remember correctly) effect size in which the transgender children, even with parental support (which wasn't actually measured, just assumed), had worse mental health. When they broke down the sample into three groups they cut the alpha by three so even when one of the three groups, the largest one, had a significant result, it didn't show up as such since .05 had been cut to .017 for required significance. So the assumed conclusion was that if parents supported their trans kids, then all was well but what it actually showed was that even if parents supported their trans kids, they were still worse off. Sometimes this is almost funny. One study looked into stability of same-sex parenting relations and found that the instability rate was 25% for same-sex couples with children but was 8% for heterosexual parents, but since N = 4 for the former the difference could not possibly be significant (if it had been 25% vs. 1%, it would have been significant) despite the 3:1 different rates. It was also complicated because the study assumed that if the other person had died, the relationship was declared to be stable. One of my colleagues said what are you upset about Walter? Dead is REALLY stable! That logic would lead to murder of your spouse as a way to get to a really stable, long-lasting marriage, right? The same study claimed to use a complex multivariate analysis to prove that same-sex relationships are just as stable as heterosexual ones but it was all based on that N = 4 subsample, which is just plain ridiculous, but the complexity obscured the simplicity of what the actual data were (or were not). If you look up my name and islam in Google Scholar you will find how I've helped to disprove the early history of Islam with statistics. Although Harremoes (2023) did a much better job in the journal Entropy under a title of rate distortion theory which seems unrelated to Islam but uses the issue as an example inside the paper. You can always email me at schumm@ksu.edu for more information or questions.
I've heard it said that around 50% of recent papers published in the social sciences are fraudulent. Not "based on bad data" or "insufficiently rigorous methodology," but flat-out "the authors know this is nonsense and they deliberately tortured the data to get a desired conclusion" fraudulent.
It would seem that the deeper you go into ideological territory, the higher that percentage rises.