Fallacies in a Fractured Family Structure

I talk quite often about our lives being in alignment with God's ways. If we are walking in His truth, obeying Him in all things, we will see the faithfulness of the Lord expressed in, through, and around our lives. In Psalm 37, we read:
3 Trust in the Lord, and do good; Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.
4 Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.
5 Commit your way to the Lord, Trust also in Him, And He shall bring it to pass.
There are 3 instructions here:  first of all, we are called to trust God...He desires for us to experience His faithfulness toward us - in light of His Word and the way He has worked in our lives in the past, we can trust Him for the future.  Because we serve a faithful God, we can delight in Him.  And, finally, as we grow in our faith and in our worship of Him, we can develop the state of being totally dependent upon the Lord - we commit our way to Him.   He is calling us into that walk of alignment with - and adoration for Him.

+++++

God has provided a pathway for us in order to please Him, and the following passage in 1st Thessalonians 4 underscores the mindset we can all adopt:
1 Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God;
2 for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
3 For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you should abstain from sexual immorality;
4 that each of you should know how to possess his own vessel in sanctification and honor...

One of the implications of attempts to normalize of homosexual behavior and to establish so-called "same-sex marriage" is how the acceptance of these actions affect children.   The Christian Post reports on a new study on gay parenting, touted as the largest so far, that shows that children do best when raised by their mom and dad.

The study was conducted by sociologist Donald Sullins and published in the February issue of the British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioural Science.

Using several different data sets, including some from the U.S. government, Sullins compiled a representative sample of just over 207,000 children, including 512 with same-sex parents.

The article says that:

Eight of 12 psychometric measures used in the study showed that children with same-sex parents experienced more distress than children of opposite-sex parents. The results were "clear, statistically significant," and "of substantial magnitude," after controlling for age, sex, race, education and income. For four of the measures of emotional and behavioral problems, children raised by same-sex parents were at least twice as likely to experience difficulties compared to children raised by opposite-sex parents.

The Post points out that supporters of same-sex parenting might argue that the results are due to discrimination against gays, or that the children of the same-sex parents were likely adopted and were experiencing the same difficulties as all adopted children. But, the data does not support these hypotheses. Sullins found that not only were children of same-sex parents not more likely to get picked on and bullied, but were less likely to be picked on and bullied than the children of opposite-sex parents, though the difference was within the margin of error.

Sullins did find that a biological parent-child connection helped to explain the differences between same-sex and opposite-sex parents. Since two women or two men are incapable of having a child together, at least one parent will not be a biological parent. Opposite-sex households, on the other hand, can have both biological parents, one biological parent or no biological parent.

Sullins is quoted as saying, "The reduced risk of child emotional problems with opposite-sex married parents compared to same-sex parents...is explained almost entirely by the fact that married opposite-sex parents tend to raise their own joint biological offspring, while same-sex parents never do this. The primary benefit of marriage for children, therefore, may not be that it tends to present them with improved parents (more stable, financially affluent, etc., although it does do this), but that it presents them with their own parents."

He also said, "the two family forms will continue to have fundamentally different, even contrasting, effects on the biological component of child well-being, to the relative detriment of children in same-sex families."

So, here we have another cultural clash between God's ideals and the ways of the world.   While the world is rapidly embracing the concept of same-sex couples getting married, which means that some will adopt and raise children, God's prescription remains intact.  Sure, we have varying family structures in our society, and each family needs to rely on the wisdom of God.  But, it is dangerous to the well-being of children to manufacture a family structure that is rooted in the flawed notion that two people who are participating in a lifestyle contrary to God's principles can expect God-honoring outcomes. 

I also want to take issue with those who say that people of faith ignore science, that the two are incompatible.  Sullins seems to place a high value on biology in his study.   I believe that God's ideal - male and female in a sacred union, a one-flesh relationship, is well-crafted for the creation of children.  A same-sex union cannot, and will never, produce offspring of its own.  The science here - the biology - should communicate to us that these attempts to create a family structure in man's image, not God's, are merely work-arounds to His grand design.   In this case, like so many others, the science tracks with our faith.  And, the social science in the Sullins study shows that there are negative emotional and behavioral implications of departing from God's prescription.