EXPERTS DISPUTE BUSH ON GAY-ADOPTION ISSUE: From the New York Times

...The experts, who cross the political spectrum, say studies have shown that on average, children raised by two married heterosexual parents fare better on a number of measures, including school performance, than those raised by single parents or by parents who are living together but are unmarried.

But, said Dr. Judith Stacey, a professor of sociology at New York University, "there is not a single legitimate scholar out there who argues that growing up with gay parents is somehow bad for children."

Dr. Stacey, who published a critical review of studies on the subject in 2001 and has argued in favor of allowing adoption by gays, added, "The debate among scientists is all about how good the studies we have really are."

Since 1980, researchers have published about 25 studies comparing children from same-sex households with peers in traditional families, using measures of social adjustment, school performance, mental health and emotional resilience. Some of the studies have focused on elementary-school children, others on those not quite teenagers, a few on adolescents; a handful have followed children for years. Uniformly, the authors have reported that there are no significant developmental differences between the two groups of children.

Yet the field is still highly controversial, in part because the research on gay households with children has so far tended to be small; usually no more than a couple of dozen families have been involved. ...

"In many of these studies, they simply aren't asking hard questions," said Lynn Wardle, a law professor at Brigham Young University who has agued against adoption by gay couples.

The researchers, Professor Wardle said, ask the families about the children's self-esteem, "about whether they have friends--soft and fuzzy questions--but not about sexual behavior, sexually transmitted disease and drug use." ...

As the political debate over same-sex parents becomes more contentious, the quality of the research appears to be getting better, some social scientists say. Last month psychologists at the University of Virginia and the University of Arizona published a study of 44 adolescents from all over the country being raised in female same-sex households.

The families, with a variety of income levels, were drawn from a huge, continuing national family survey. The survey was random, and therefore unaffected by the sort of volunteer bias created when, say, families with good stories to tell respond to advertisements placed by investigators. In addition, the interviews were conducted by a team of government researchers who were interested in a wide array of social and demographic factors, all but eliminating the researcher bias that some critics point to. The survey's results, published in the journal Child Development, confirmed some previous findings: the 44 girls and boys were typical American teenagers, the researchers found, no more confused or moody than a comparison group of 44 peers from similar but traditional families.

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