Any time Christians raise moral concerns about same-sex surrogacy or same-sex parenting...
…the cultural response is as instant as it is predictable:
"What hateful, bigoted intolerance!"
And yet, at the heart of the Christian view of family is a simple conviction affirmed by Scripture, natural law, and most of human history:
Every child has a right to his or her own mother and father, and to deprive them is injustice, not "progress."
Recent analysis of the widely circulated Cornell University "studies" of children raised by same-sex parents seems to vindicate that truth. The indefatigable Katy Faust and her team at Them Before Us have blown a whistle worth listening to.
For years now, the Cornell "roundup" of various studies has given the illusion of a consensus that there is "no difference" in children raised by opposite-sex parents and same-sex parents.
But as it turns out, most of the studies included by Cornell suffer from methodological problems so glaring that they would be laughed out of any other field of child-welfare research.
For instance:
1. The parents knew the point of the study.
If you're told you're part of a project evaluating same-sex parenting, self-report bias is guaranteed.
2. Samples weren't random; they were recruited.
Most studies recruited same-sex parents through social circles or advocacy networks, meaning the participants were wealthier, more stable, and more motivated than the general population.
3. Sample sizes were tiny.
Many had fewer than 40 children, which is far too small to detect meaningful outcomes.
4. Almost no studies measured actual child outcomes.
Instead of examining medical records, teacher reports, or adult outcomes, they simply asked parents to rate their own parenting.
If Big Tobacco submitted studies like this, do you suppose Cornell would have published similar conclusions?
Yet these deeply flawed studies were exactly what courts and legislators have cited as "proof" that mothers and fathers are dispensable in pursuit of progressive social engineering.
Take the "gold standard" study - Wainright and Patterson. For years it has been regarded as the definitive, rigorous, "trustworthy" confirmation that children raised by lesbian couples did just as well as those raised by a mom and dad.
But when Dr. Paul Sullins revisited the same dataset, he discovered a massive problem: Most of the children labeled as having lesbian parents were not actually raised by two women. Some were simply children of mothers who identified as lesbian, even if the father was present or the mother had never parented with a same-sex partner.
Once the data was corrected, the sample plunged, and so did the alleged "no differences." As it turned out, Wainright and Patterson's study reveals that children genuinely raised by two women showed:
Higher depression
More anxiety
Lower autonomy
More behavioral issues
Lower academic achievement
In same-sex married households, the outcomes were even worse.
And here's a jaw-dropper: If methodologically compromised studies are discarded, and only those using large, random samples or population-based data are considered, the Cornell roundup doesn't show 75 studies demonstrating "no difference."
It leaves one that itself could not confirm whether the children involved had actually been raised from birth in a same-sex household.
Meanwhile, credible studies with sound methodology (Allen, Sullins, Regnerus) consistently show measurable disadvantages for children raised in same-sex households, particularly in emotional stability, educational outcomes, and long-term mental health.
The pattern is straightforward:
The more rigorous the research, the more clearly mother-and-father advantage appears.
Christians shouldn't be surprised by this. It's consistent with Scripture, with nature, and with common sense.
Once again we wayward humans learn that God knew better than us:
Mothers and fathers are not interchangeable.
Biology matters.
Maternal love and paternal love shape children differently and necessarily.
Losing a biological parent is inherently traumatic.
Same-sex parenting, especially when pursued through surrogacy, requires a child to lose a mother or father by design. It turns parental loss from tragedy into strategy.
Children in these environments are always:
Missing either a mother or a father
Raised by at least one unrelated adult
Cut off from half their ancestry
Denied a fundamental human relationship every other child is owed
That is not a neutral choice. It is an immoral one.
We cannot ignore the fact that Jesus issued one of His harshest warnings about those who would harm or mislead children:
If anyone causes one of these little ones… to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. (Matt. 18:6, NIV)
That's how seriously God takes the wellbeing of children. And it's why Christians must speak to the issue - not out of hostility toward adults, but out of obedience to a moral order that places the protection of children above the preferences of grown-ups.
Cling to the wisdom of God over the appetites of man.
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Not the Bee or any of its affiliates.
