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.

Welcome to episode 68 of the Knight and Rose podcast! In this episode, Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss the the progressive miseducation of America, with Dr. Corey Miller. If you like this episode, please subscribe to the podcast, and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We would appreciate it if you left us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Podcast description:

Christian apologists Wintery Knight and Desert Rose discuss apologetics, policy, culture, relationships, and more. Each episode equips you with evidence you can use to boldly engage anyone, anywhere. We train our listeners to become Christian secret agents. Action and adventure guaranteed. 30-45 minutes per episode. New episode every week.

Episode summary:

Wintery Knight and Desert Rose welcome Dr. Corey Miller to discuss The Progressive Miseducation of America. They examine how universities promote scientism, cultural Marxism, and postmodernism, undermining morality and fueling issues like divorce and fatherlessness. Miller critiques the secular drift and offers practical guidance, highlighting Ratio Christi’s tools to equip young people for the intellectual and moral challenges of high school and university.

You can find the details about his new book here, and if you sign up for the Ratio Christi newsletter on that site, you get the first two chapters FOR FREE!

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Episode 68:

Speaker biographies

Corey Miller grew up in Utah as a seventh generation Mormon. He came to Christ, and later became a pastor, philosophy professor, campus minister, and now serves as the president/CEO of Ratio Christi (RatioChristi.org). He has authored or edited five books and holds three master’s degrees, along with a PhD from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. His thought is centered on the intersection of faith, reason, and culture. His newest book is entitled “The Progressive Miseducation of America: Confronting the Cultural Revolution from the Classroom to Your Community “, published by Harvest House Publishers. It will be available on October 14, 2025.

Wintery Knight is a black legal immigrant. He is a senior software engineer by day, and an amateur Christian apologist by night. He has been blogging at winteryknight.com since January of 2009, covering news, policy and Christian worldview issues.

Desert Rose did her undergraduate degree in public policy, and then worked for a conservative Washington lobbyist organization. She also has a graduate degree from a prestigious evangelical seminary. She is active in Christian apologetics as a speaker, author, and teacher.

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Before we start, here are two articles explaining why men are supposedly not marrying. First one from a pastor. Second one from a sociologist. And this is, I think, the majority view: men are to blame for the decline of marriage, because men are stupid, weak, lazy and lacking ambition. Feminist women are great. Marriage laws are fair. Family courts are impartial. But is that all true?

Now, if you ask an actual man whether these are his reasons for not marrying, he will have a different list:

• women initiate the majority of divorces
• young women are increasingly politically leftist
• men can easily be fired for false accusations at work
• men are sentenced far more severely than women are sentenced, for the same crimes
• the Sexual Revolution encourages women to be promiscuous with the men who they find the most physically attractive
• family courts are biased against men, punishing men with alimony, child support, loss of custody, loss of visitation
• majority of student loan debt is held by women
• concerns about the moral impact of the books, music, TV shows and movies that are popular with young women

And so on.

I think if good Christian men had to pick just one factor that is deterring them from marriage, it would be no-fault divorce.

On this blog, I’ve covered several cases of the “nightmare scenario” facing men in divorce. One of those cases is the case of Rob Hoogland, which occurred in Canada.

There’s some new news about his case, reported in the London Daily:

A Canadian man, involved in a legal battle over his right to object to hormone treatment for his teenage trans child, has reportedly been jailed and denied bail for violating a gag order banning him from discussing the story.

Robert Hoogland was denied bail by the Vancouver Supreme Court on Friday and will remain in the North Fraser remand prison, according to news website the Post Millennial. He was arrested this week for contempt of court, due to his continued violation of an order restricting his speech regarding his transgender child.

I also reported on the case of an Apple senior software engineer named Ted Hudacko.

Here’s a report about him from City Journal:

Shortly after returning from a trip to New York with their two sons, Hudacko’s wife, Christine, told him that she wanted a divorce—and that their oldest son identified as transgender. During divorce proceedings, the presiding judge, Joni Hiramoto… stripped him of all custody of his trans-identified son. Hudacko was concerned about administering experimental drugs and preferred to wait and see if his son’s gender issues might resolve on their own, as usually happens in such cases. To the California judge, this confirmed his unfitness as a father.

I also reported on the case of a father from Texas named Jeff Younger, whose ex-wife wants to trans their kid.

And there a recent report about the status of his case in the New York Post:

A California judge dealt a devastating blow to a Texas father in his years-long fight to stop his ex-wife from allowing their pre-teen son, who identifies as a girl named “Luna,” to receive gender-affirming care.

Father of two Jeff Younger, 59, announced on X that he “lost all parental rights” over his twin sons after Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mark Juhas granted his estranged pediatrician ex-wife Anne Georgulas the authority to “castrate” his 12-year-old son James.

I blogged on all of these cases, but it’s doubtful that pastors and pro-marriage sociologists have heard of any of them. They just want men to use their strength and finances to make women happy, and they don’t care about the actual risks and costs that men are facing.

But there’s been another case in the news just in the past week, reported in The Federalist:

After raising concerns about his then-13-year-old son taking puberty blockers and starting on a path to irreversible, experimental, and life-long medical interventions to “transition” into a girl, the Colorado government stripped father Robert Cameron of all rights to protect his child.

Colorado was able to do that because the child’s mother and Cameron’s ex-wife, Nancy Drake, used Colorado’s “affirmation only” legal structure to wage a war against Cameron through the courts. Drake, who joined forces with an activist therapist, has been able to use government force to push the now-14-year-old boy into the transition interventions which, if pursued in full, have the power to sterilize, reduce brain development, and cause bone density issues, among a host of other gruesome effects.

“My child is more important to me than whatever the court system may do to me. If my child needs to be saved, it’s my job as a parent to save him, and he needs to be saved right now. He needs to be saved from predation and manipulation,” Cameron told The Federalist. “I haven’t slept well in forever because I’m afraid for my child. I also see the adults preying on this child’s innocence. This all falls under the sexualization of children that we are engaging in as a society. That’s absolutely appalling. And I’m not even talking about the medical experiments we’re doing on children.”

[…]Cameron’s primary goal is to have his son be able to wait until he is 18 to make the decision, but Drake, who appears to have trigger-happy, extraordinarily litigious lawyers behind her, need the transition to start now, no questions asked — literally.

Drake, an academic in a left-wing community in Colorado with whom Cameron shares joint custody, successfully got the state of Colorado to block Cameron’s oversight over their son’s medical treatment or even speak to him about transgenderism…

[…]Drake did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment, but within minutes of the request being sent, she threatened Cameron with calling Child Protective Services if he spoke to the media, claiming doing so means that he “intended [their son] to be harmed” and that it is “proof of child abuse.”

[…]Some weeks ago, Drake also attempted to stop Cameron’s ability to speak to pretty much anyone by requesting a gag order on top of the others already issued that would encompass “friends … anyone in our social circle … activists, and … the media,” claiming it puts their children (their son is one of two twins, the other, a girl) in “physical, medical, and psychological danger,” according to an email sent to the case arbitrator reviewed by The Federalist.

Drake threatened Cameron’s ability to have parenting time with their children at all.

Now, in every case I presented, I blame the MAN 100% for the problems he is facing. Why? Because people don’t change after you marry them. These women were terrible secular leftists before marriage, and these foolish men all chose to marry them anyway. Maybe because men tend to value youth and beauty above character. Men are responsible for marrying badly. And I have the same view when women marry badly. It’s the women’s fault.

My point is that good men who are not yet married look at these cases, and it causes them to want to decline to participate in dating and marriage. They don’t like the fact that these social workers, therapists, lawyers, judges, etc. have this VERY LOW VIEW of fatherly authority and leadership. They don’t want to be judged in a system run by man-haters. This is especially true for men who are well-educated and high earners. They don’t want to be ruined.

So, what should we think about pastors, sociologists, and feminist Christians in general, when they try to blame the decline of marriage on men? Well, an excellent question to ask them is “what reasons do conservative men who are well-educated, and financially successful have for declining the offer of “feminist” marriage?” If their answer is to blame and shame men some more, just understand that you are dealing with someone who is not interested in solving the underlying problem.

When I ask questions like this to social conservatives, even the ones who claim to be against divorce, they cannot bring themselves to take seriously the dangers of marriage for men. Instead, they try to make it seem that a man taking these risks is “brave” and “strong”. When I ask them if they shoe was on the other foot, and it was women who were facing these same risks, should she marry? And they say “Of course not. That’s unfair!”

Why is there this double standard? Could it be because even in the Christian church, there is a double standard that asserts that Christianity is really about making women happy, no matter what, and that men are expendable for this purpose? I’m not saying that the Bible teaches this. But I’ve found this view of Christianity to be extremely popular, and not just among egalitarians, but among complementarians, too. Especially the ones who redefine “male headship” to mean “servant leadership”. That really turns men off of marriage, because it makes them think that Christianity is being run by the ex-wives in these stories, and there is no support for male leadership at all.