I saw that Katy Faust tweeted this article by Mark Regnerus, a sociologist who specializes in dating, marriage and parenting issues. In the article, Regnerus cites the conclusions from several recent research studies. Once we see what he has to say, I’ll pull the data from a Canadian study that he didn’t mention that also shows the effect of same-sex parenting on children.

The article appears in The Public Discourse:

The story of “no differences” between same-sex and opposite-sex households with children hinges on a pair of repetitive themes in the published research: (1) hiding behind small and nonrepresentative samples, and (2) employing analytic strategies that all but guarantee motivated researchers can “explain away” those pesky baseline observable differences between children from same-sex and opposite-sex households.

Baseline differences matter. What happens before control variables matters. Building statistical models to hide differences is called p-hacking, a common but problematic practice. A 2020 study of over 1.2 million children in the (gay-friendly) Netherlands, whose primary media message trumpeted how same-sex parents were better than opposite-sex parents, nevertheless revealed that 55 percent of children living with same-sex parents—the vast majority of which were female couples—experienced the separation of these parents, well above the 19 percent of children of opposite-sex parents who experienced the same. “Controlling” for such instability—in effect implying it doesn’t matter—clears the way to proclaim the benefits of same-sex parents. It’s a common statistical practice, but a deceptive one.

Hence, alternative analyses are always a good idea. For example, a 2020 published reexamination of three nationally representative datasets from the United States and Canada revealed that the presence of children tended to stabilize opposite-sex couples but destabilize same-sex couples. Dissolution rates were 43 percent for same-sex couples, but only 8 percent for opposite-sex couples. Its authors agree, saying that “parental instability is an important factor through which parents’ sexual orientation influences children’s outcomes.”

So, the problem of higher separation between partners in a lesbian relationship is well-known. Lesbian couples have the highest instability rates of any kind of couple, heterosexual or homosexual.

Family Research Council notes:

In the past, same-sex couples who got a slice of the marriage pie immediately wanted their share of the divorce market. In South Africa, couples who were first to wed under a 2006 law also won the race to divorce court only a year later; two Toronto lesbians who wed in 2003 separated after only five days, petitioning successfully in 2004 for a judge to overturn Canadian law so they could divorce. Or take Los Angeles, where 2008’s historic first same-sex couple divorced this summer although they had been together for 18 years! Lest we think these cases are exceptional, of the same-sex couples who did marry in Sweden, males were 35% more likely to divorce than heterosexual couples, while lesbians were up to 200% more likely.

Before same-sex marriage, the concept of marriage included the concepts of permanence and exclusivity. Natural marriage has the production and raising of children at the core. No-fault divorce damaged that core, saying that the happiness of the selfish adults was more important than the children. Then same-sex marriage damaged the core again, saying that producing children isn’t even central to the concept of marriage. As the selfish adults pass more laws against natural marriage, the children suffer more from the decline of permanence and exclusivity.

I found another study related to same-sex parenting, this one out of Canada.

Here is the abstract of the study:

Almost all studies of same-sex parenting have concluded there is “no difference” in a range of outcome measures for children who live in a household with same-sex parents compared to children living with married opposite-sex parents. Recently, some work based on the US census has suggested otherwise, but those studies have considerable drawbacks. Here, a 20% sample of the 2006 Canada census is used to identify self-reported children living with same-sex parents, and to examine the association of household type with children’s high school graduation rates. This large random sample allows for control of parental marital status, distinguishes between gay and lesbian families, and is large enough to evaluate differences in gender between parents and children. Children living with gay and lesbian families in 2006 were about 65 % as likely to graduate compared to children living in opposite sex marriage families. Daughters of same-sex parents do considerably worse than sons.

The author of the study is a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. His PhD in economics is from the University of Washington. A previous study had shown that gay relationships typically have far more instability (they last for more shorter times). That’s not good for children either. Another study featured in the Atlantic talked about how gay relationships have much higher rates of domestic violence. That’s not good for children either. So we have three reasons to think that normalizing gay relationships as “marriage” would not be good for children.

I like to write about how law-abiding Americans use their legal firearms to prevent crimes. The best crime preventing is done when you don’t even fire your weapon, but sometimes you have to go all the way. That’s what happened recently at a mall in Indiana. I thought it might be good to talk about the Good Samaritan hero who used his legal firearm to stop a horrific crime.

Here’s the story from WTHR local news:

An autopsy found the shooter was shot eight times and none were self-inflicted.

What’s interesting about this to me is that it’s usually young, unmarried women who don’t like the idea of men owning firearms, and vote against gun rights. But honestly, this is the kind of young man they should be interested in dating and marrying. He was armed, he had practiced enough to be accurate, and he protected his loved ones from evil. When you take away the guns from the good guys, you can’t expect to find men who can protect you from threats. You can’t expect to call the police and have them show up in time to save you – look at what happened in Uvalde, TX.

Defensive gun usages

Amy Swearer, a writer at Daily Signal, puts out a list of heroic gun usage to prevent crimes, and I link to them occasionally. The last one I linked to was from May 2022. She hasn’t done one for July yet, but here is the one for June.

Here’s one of 12 defensive gun usages she lists in that article:

• May 30, Fredericksburg, Virginia: A woman was making a bank deposit when she saw a man get into the driver’s seat of her nearby car, police said. The woman confronted the man, who got physical with her.  She drew a gun and pointed it at him, prompting him to walk away as she called 911. Police arrested the man a short time later and charged him with carjacking.

This is the best kind of defensive gun usage – no shots fired, but crime prevented.

The peer-reviewed research

Whenever I get into discussions about gun control, I always mention two academic books by John R. Lott and Joyce Lee Malcolm.

• The Lott book was published by the University of Chicago Press (now in its 3rd edition)
• The Malcolm book was published by Harvard University Press

The book by economist John Lott, linked above, compares the crime rates of all U.S. states that have enacted concealed carry laws, and concludes that violent crime rates dropped after law-abiding citizens were allowed to carry legally-owned firearms. That’s the mirror image of Dr. Malcolm’s Harvard study, which shows that the 1997 UK gun ban caused violent crime rates to MORE THAN DOUBLE in the four years following the ban. But both studies affirm the same conclusion – more legal firearm ownership means less crime.

One of the common mistakes I see anti-gun advocates making is to use the metric of all “gun-related deaths”. First of all, this completely ignores the effects of hand gun ownership on violent crime, as we’ve seen. Take away the guns from law-abiding people and violent crime skyrockets. But using the “gun-related deaths” number is especially wrong, because it includes suicides committed with guns. This is the majority (about two thirds) of gun related deaths, even in a country like America that has a massive inner-city gun violence problem caused by the epidemic of single motherhood by choice. If you take out the gun-related SUICIDES, then the actual number of gun homicides has decreased as gun ownership has grown.

For a couple of useful graphs related to this point, check out this post over at the American Enterprise Institute.

We have an election this year. If you like this article, why not use it to persuade your undecided friends to support gun rights for law-abiding Americans? The life you save may be your own.

My favorite policy-oriented web site is the Daily Signal. I saw a couple of related posts about the Democrat party and their green energy plan. Right now, everyone knows that the Democrats flubbed handling rising inflation. They were taken by surprise. Will they also be surprised by the failure of their green energy policies?

Here’s the first article from Daily Signal, which provides helpful historical context for the second article:

America became energy-independent during the Trump years. This energy independence brought huge advantages. First, America’s fracking boom and the massive expansion of natural gas production that came with it lowered carbon emissions more than any regulation.

Second, American energy independence changed the national security dynamic with respect to huge energy-export countries in the Middle East and Russia. Finally, the lower energy prices that followed led to massive economic and manufacturing growth. Many dormant small towns in America literally came alive as a result.

Throwing all this away without an adequate and, importantly, cheaper alternative in place is almost unimaginable from a policy perspective, but that’s exactly what happened. By promoting so-called environmental, social, and governance investment standards to choke off fossil fuel investments, by canceling pipelines, and by limiting federal oil and gas leasing, the left has reduced American energy production and left America vulnerable to the rest of the world.

All this has come with very little emissions benefit to boot. It has just enabled Russia, Saudi Arabia, and others to displace American fossil fuel production with their own foreign fossil fuel production.

The result? From Biden’s inauguration to the onset of the war in Ukraine—before the much-discussed “Putin price spike,” in other words—American gas prices went up nearly 50%. Those prices are up another 15% on top of that since the war began.

The Biden administration was surprised because they didn’t know how rising energy prices and massive government spending would cause inflation. Since 2021, they said that inflation would be manageable, and no interest rate hikes were needed. Needless to say, if your chief economist is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, then you get surprised a lot.

Similarly with green energy, the Democrats are living in a fantasy land where switching to wind and solar (but not fracking and nuclear, which are just as clean) can be done with a wave of a Green New Deal magic wand.

Here’s what we can expect going forward, according to the Daily Signal:

Texans were advised last Monday and Wednesday to conserve energy as summer temperatures peaked.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid manager for most of Texas, issued a conservation appeal to Texans and Texas businesses as last week’s temperatures were expected to top 105 degrees.

[…][T]he primary reason for the call for conservation was “wind generation [that] is currently generating significantly less than what it historically generated in this time period.” On Wednesday, some forced traditional outages and lower solar output (due to West Texas cloud cover) also contributed.

[…][A]s temperatures and Texans’ need for electricity were soaring, wind turbines across the state were still; and last Monday, they were producing about only 8% of their installed capacity. Operating reserves—the backup generation needed to keep air conditioners blowing and factories working—were shrinking.

Something very similar happened last year during the unprecedented 2021 blackouts when 10 million Texans went without power and 12 million without water, many for several days, during freezing temperatures. Energy analyst Robert Bryce noted at the time, “Roughly 17% of [wind’s installed] capacity was available when the grid operator was shedding load to prevent the state’s grid from going dark.”

It should also be pointed out that solar’s contribution to the grid during those pre-dawn hours was zero.

Is this going to happen in your state this winter? It depends on how much power the secular left has to determine your state’s energy policy. Many voters have this view of America as a magical place, where global warming socialism will really work. But global warming socialism doesn’t work here, either. We know it’s not working in socialist Europe. It’s been tried in big, rich states like Texas and California, and it hasn’t worked. Blackouts are serious – people die from losing power during hot and cold times of the year. I hope people will turn off the TV and think about whether they want to live or die before they vote in November.