Letter: Critic of same-sex marriage bolstered argument with flawed study

While the premise of the letter that only marriage between a man and a woman "provides a safe environment for children (by connecting) them to their two biological parents" and that children raised by same-sex parents would fare worse later in life than those raised by heterosexual couples fails on multiple counts, the most egregious fault is using bad science (the Regnerus study) to support the argument. ("Same-sex marriage amounts to experimenting on children," Sept. 6.)

The Regnerus study itself acknowledges that what is really being compared with heterosexual families are not families headed by same-sex couples, but households in which parents broke up. This has long been established as a risk factor for poor outcomes in children.

In fact, even the editor of Social Science Research which published the article, stated, "No study investigating such crucial questions using data collected in this manner should be published in a top-tier general interest social scientific journal."

The study has also been deemed scientifically invalid by the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American Psychoanalytic Association among others.

Reliance on bad research only fosters instant distrust of all science and in the end fails us all.

Joshua Eaton

Columbia