Focus on the Family must be running out of original content, because they’ve taken to posting “guest” commentaries from subsidiary state groups, even if the content is not new. This week’s commentary is a post from the New Jersey Family Policy Council that was originally published in February of 2012 condemning adoption to justify opposing marriage equality:

Children have a right to a mother and a father. This right is more than a sentimental tie to social custom; it is based on an iron law of biology. We are all created male and female. Although we have devised mechanisms in the last twenty years that allow us to circumvent traditional fatherhood and motherhood, a new life can still not be created without male and female genetic material. Significantly, these artificial means display a grave lack of respect for human dignity.

Though the implication of the piece is that same-sex couples should not have the right to marry, it takes an incredibly strong position against any kind of family that uses assisted reproduction or adoption. Even the National Organization for Marriage has had to take a position against adoption to avoid sounding too anti-gay with its other rhetoric about protecting children. Still, the post doesn’t argue that adoption should be outlawed — only same-sex marriage — and its three arguments are easily refuted.

The first claim is that children are harmed by the “collapse of marriage.” This is true, because children do better when both their parents are still present and supporting the family. It’s a claim that has nothing to do with same-sex marriage, despite Focus on the Family’s many attempts to use “fatherless” studies about single mothers to fraudulently draw conclusions about lesbian couples’ parenting.

The second claim, incidentally made before the infamous Regnerus study was published, is that social science suggests that children do better in a “married-couple family with a mom and dad.” This could be another reference to “fatherless” studies or other conflated conclusions about broken homes. None of the research that actually looked at committed same-sex parents, even in the absence of marriage’s legal protections, has found any adverse outcomes for children.

Lastly, the post concludes that children of same-sex couples suffer because they do not have a biological connection to both parents. The assertion relies on a 2011 report from the conservative Institute for American Values called “One Parent Or Five,” a study that that relied on no actual research about same-sex parents — dismissing all such studies as not being “representative.” Instead, it suggests that same-sex families “most closely resemble” stepfamilies, because one parent is often biological and the other is not. Thus, just like the Regnerus study would later do, the researchers apply evidence about broken homes and separated families to same-sex families, presuming that the biological connection is more important than the parents’ commitment to the child’s well-being.

If conservatives in New Jersey and at Focus on the Family were really concerned that children without a biological connection fared worse, they would actually campaign against adoption and foster care. Instead, they just misapply research and make faulty conclusions to try to persuade their supporters that there is some justification for opposing marriage equality besides anti-gay animus. As far as science is concerned, there is no such justification.

National Organization for Marriage co-founder Robert P. George and his two disciples, Sherif Girgis and the Heritage Foundation’s Ryan T. Anderson, have offered another adapted excerpt from their book opposing same-sex marriage. The clear goal of their book, What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense, is to find ways to argue against marriage equality without sounding anti-gay, and the claims made in their latest post demonstrate the folly of this exercise.

At the root of their argument is an arbitrary definition of marriage using a “conjugal view,” which asserts that there’s something unique about how a man’s penis and woman’s vagina interact — even if they’re infertile — such that marriage must be preserved exclusively for heterosexual couples. Gloating that “there is no inequality in treating fundamentally different sorts of bonds differently,” the authors suggest that none of the legal benefits of marriage require marriage anyway:

But traditional marriage law denies these companionate ideals to no one. It does not discourage anyone from seeking them. Its more specific view of what makes a marriage can even liberate us for emotional intimacy in other bonds. And even if companionate bonds are impaired if deprived of public status, it does not follow that they require legal status. Remarkably, then, one of the most common and powerfully felt objections to conjugal-marriage policy is also one of the easiest to answer. The law simply has much less to do with this than people commonly suppose. We can unpack this all.

Note first that, however the debate about redefining marriage is resolved, two men or two women will still be free to live together, with or without a sexual relationship or a wedding ceremony. (None of this is true, for example, of bigamy or polygamy — crimes rightly punishable by imprisonment.) The debate about same-sex civil marriage is not about anyone’s private behavior, but about legal recognition. The decision to honor conjugal marriage bans nothing.

The line of thinking here mirrors other arguments Anderson has made that opposition to same-sex marriage has nothing to with gay people whatsoever. The authors seem to at least concede that there will always be gay people and same-sex families, but they then proceed to simultaneously erase the lived experience that these families face.

It’s true that through various legal contracts, same-sex couples can access some legal connections between them in some states. Doing so comes at significant legal costs and complications, and even then, they’re not always recognized, as was disturbingly demonstrated by the Missouri couple that was denied hospital visitation despite having power of attorney. All of the protections society grants to committed lifelong partners are defined in the law by “marriage,” and the sole purpose of the marriage equality movement is to ensure that same-sex couples have the same access to those protections for each other and for their children. George, Anderson, and Shirif are either oblivious to the inequitable complications same-sex couples face without access to legal marriage or they are intentionally distorting the truth just to make it seem like not so big a deal.

The attempts by opponents of marriage equality to not sound anti-gay have painted them into strange rhetorical corners, such as having to argue against adoption, even by straight couples. What’s striking is that in their attempts to “protect” marriage from “redefinition,” they themselves are the ones who have redefined it. In this argument, they admit it has nothing to do with legal benefits. By defending infertile straight couples, they admit it has nothing to do with having children. By claiming it has “always been defined as a man and a woman,” they’re admitting it has nothing to do with “tradition” or the Bible. They’ve essentially dismantled every aspect of marriage such that it means nothing except to promote heterosexual supremacy and homosexual inferiority. Of course, that’s all that they’ve really ever argued for anyway.

Germany has recognized registered same-sex couples since 2001, and now the country’s highest court has ruled that those couples deserve equal tax benefits, including backpay for what they’ve overpaid in the past. In accordance with past rulings, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled Thursday that the country’s guarantee of equal rights demands that all couples be treated the same for tax purposes.

According to the Court, there are no “substantial grounds for unequal treatment” and failing to provide the same benefits because of sexual orientation “leads to discrimination against a minority.” Regardless of whether couples raise children, the Court argued, they all commit the same responsibility to their partners and deserve the same benefits from the government. Though Germany does not currently allow same-sex couples the right to jointly adopt a child, step-parent and “successive” adoptions are allowed in some circumstances.

Mark Regnerus, whose infamous study condemning same-sex parenting has been debunked by all major medical organizations, felt it necessary to respond to the large Australian study that has found that the children of same-sex parents are thriving.

His primary complaint is that the Australian study used what’s called a convenience or “snowball” sample to find its 500 same-sex families, such as reaching out to same-sex parenting email lists or organizations like Gay Dads Australia. Regnerus suggests that these parents will all be biased toward positive results, even insinuating — without providing evidence — that the researchers told participants in advance what they would be asked:

I realize that 500 cases is not a number to scoff at, and that such populations are a small minority to begin with. But until social scientists decide to do the difficult, expensive work of locating gay parents through random, population-based sampling strategies — and ones that do not “give away” the primary research question(s) up front — we simply cannot know whether claims like “no differences” or “healthier and happier than” this or that group are true, valid, and on target. Why? Because nonrandom samples are not a representative reflection of the population as a whole, but rather an image of those who actively pursue participating in the study (for whatever reason, which may matter). Who knows — the ACHESS sample of parents and children could be just like the average gay or lesbian household in Australia. I have my doubts, but it’s an unanswerable question.

Regnerus’s critique doesn’t hold much weight. It very much would be ideal to find a sample of families that included a significant number of same-sex families from which conclusions could be drawn, but doing so is wholly improbable. His own study used a sample size of over 20,000 participants — each of whom received $5 for their participation — and only two of those 20,000 had actually been raised by same-sex couples for their entire childhood. Thus, Regnerus had to conflate the results of all participants whose parents ever had a same-sex relationship — mostly unstable families — to draw his fraudulent conclusions about same-sex parenting.

According to Darren Sherkat, the sociology professor who audited Regnerus’s study after it was published and found it to be “bullshit,” Regnerus’s sample wasn’t even random either:

Regnerus and other right-wing activists have been fond of claiming that the study is “population-based” or a “national probability study.” As a scientist, I don’t even know what “population-based” means, and the data used in this study are by no means a probability sample. Regnerus’ data are from a large number of people recruited through convenience by a marketing firm — they are not a random, representative sample of the American population. Science requires random samples of the population, and that is not how this marketing firm collected their data.

While a snowball study may not be ideal, that doesn’t detract from the veracity of the Australian study’s results. In fact, it estimated there are just over 6,000 children being raised by two same-sex parents in Australia (as best they can be identified), so to capture 500 of those families is a significant result. Unlike in Regnerus’s study, all of the participants are stable same-sex families, so no conflation of unstable families is necessary; however the children are doing is how they are doing — and they’re doing great. In the end, multiple studies continue to show that same-sex parents can effectively raise children, while there is only one study that suggests otherwise, and it really didn’t involve the children of same-sex couples at all.

The Australian Study of Child Health in Same-Sex Families is the world’s largest attempt to study how children raised by same-sex couples compare to children raised by heterosexual couples. According to a preliminary report on the study of 500 children across the country of Australia, these young people are not only thriving, but also have higher rates of family cohesion than other families:

An interim report found there was no statistical difference between children of same-sex couples and the rest of the population on indicators including self-esteem, emotional behaviour and the amount of time spent with parents.

However, children of same-sex couples scored higher than the national average for overall health and family cohesion, measuring how well a family gets along.

According to Dr. Simon Crouch, lead researcher on the study at Melbourne University, the way same-sex families have to cope with bullying and homophobia could impact how they relate to each other. A study recently found that 70 percent of gay and lesbian students in the Australian state of Queensland experience bullying from both students and teachers, so the children of same-sex couples likely experience similar taunts. If a student experiences stigma at school, the researchers hypothesize, the families are “generally more willing to communicate and approach the issues,” resulting in a closer family dynamic.

The Australian Senate defeated marriage equality last September and will not take the issue up again until after this September’s general election. Former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently came out for marriage equality, explaining that concern about the children of same-sex couples was previously his primary obstacle. Hopefully this research will convince additional Australian lawmakers to support marriage equality when it next comes up for a vote.

On Sunday, the Louisiana House gave final approval to SB 162, a bill that limits surrogacy to married (heterosexual) couples. According to the new rules for surrogacy, “intended parents” must be married:

“Intended parents” means married persons who contribute their gametes to be used in assisted reproduction, and who enter into an enforceable gestational surrogacy contract, as defined in this Chapter, with a gestational carrier pursuant to which they will be the legal parents of the child resulting from that assisted reproduction.

Because Louisiana’s constitution bans the recognition of same-sex marriages and civil unions, the bill effectively bans same-sex couples from using surrogacy to have a child. A lesbian couple could still utilize a sperm donor, but a gay male couple would be prohibited from from asking a woman to carry a child to term for them.

It’s unclear if Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) will sign the bill, but interestingly, conservative groups are also opposed to the bill. According to the Louisiana Family Forum, other aspects of the bill make it “morally questionable and potentially exploitative.”

The Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson, a disciple of National Organization for Marriage former chairman Robert George, has become a national spokesperson for opposition to marriage equality. In a new piece for Focus on the Family co-written with Heritage’s Andrew Walker, they make “a Millennial case for marriage,” citing a litany of arguments about the importance of not “redefining marriage.” Strikingly, not one of their arguments actually addresses the lives of gay people, and in turn, not one of their points would actually be compromised by same-sex couples marrying.

Here are some of their claims, many of which derive from an arbitrary definition of marriage that “men and women are different and complementary”:

Children Need To Have Fathers

Borrowing a tactic from NOM, Anderson and Walker invoke President Obama’s concerns about how growing up without a father has a significant negative impact on children.  They conclude, “fathers matter, and marriage helps to connect fathers to mothers and children.” But abandoned single mothers have nothing to do with same-sex couples, and studies about “fatherlessness” do not even include lesbian families in their samples. Heterosexual men deserting their families is a legitimate societal concern, but it has nothing to do with same-sex families.

Children Do Best With A Mother And Father

Without referencing a single citation — not even Mark Regnerus — Anderson and Walker proclaim, “For decades, social science has shown that children tend to do best when reared by their married mother and father.” It may be true that children do better with both of their parents as opposed to only one, but social science has found that committed same-sex couples are just as capable of effectively raising children.

They later acknowledge that a “relatively small number” of gay or lesbian couples “would be” raising children — avoiding the reality that they already are — but offer no thought as to how those families would actually benefit from the protections of marriage outlined throughout the rest of the post.

Men Will No Longer Stay Committed To Their Wives

This continues to be one of the most absurd arguments against marriage equality: “Redefining marriage would diminish the social pressures and incentives for husbands to remain with their wives and their biological children, and for men and women to marry before having children.” Whether men will cheat on their wives has nothing to do with whether same-sex couples can marry.

Marital Norms Will Dissolve

Anderson and Walker’s slippery slope suggests that if marriages were reduced to just “intense emotional regard,” they would not have to be permanent, limited to two people, sexually exclusive, or oriented to raising families. But all of these points are already true of opposite-sex couples: many divorce, some practice polygamy, plenty cheat or are open, and none have any obligation to raise children. This argument also undercuts the important protections that couples themselves gain from marriage through that “intense emotional regard,” particularly as they age. Because they don’t have access to marriage, older same-sex couples struggle economically and face extra hurdles to care for each other.

Marriage Equality Discriminates Against Christians

Somehow marriage equality “further marginalizes those with traditional views and erodes religious liberty.” Anderson and Walker are concerned that people who are prejudiced against same-sex couples marrying will be perceived as prejudiced, which just isn’t fair. Borrowing another popular talking point, they claim that Catholic Charities in Massachusetts was “forced to discontinue adoption services,” when in fact they voluntarily shut down because of their insistence on discriminating. They’re also afraid elementary school children will learn that same-sex couples exist, ignoring that they’ll already learn that if their classmates’ parents are same-sex couples. The underlying objection here seems to be that marriage equality will make it harder for Christians to discriminate against the gay community — discrimination for discrimination’s sake.

Society Will ‘Self-Correct On Marriage Over Time’

Anderson and Walker conclude their piece by constructing a narrative of momentum for opposition to marriage equality, imagining “Americans committed to marriage coming out of the shadows.” This optimism for their cause ignores that people of all ages are increasingly supporting same-sex marriage, a trend driven most robustly by the young people they claim to represent. Their hope is that when young people marry, they’ll appreciate the “gendered nature of parenting,” but what seems more likely is that they will only further appreciate just how much respect and security is denied to same-sex couples.

Portugal has offered marriage equality to same-sex couples since 2010, but until now had not allowed those couple to adopt each other’s children. Today, the Portuguese Parliament passed a bill 99-94 to allow adoption, ending the discrepancy in what it means for same-sex couples to be married. Portugal is one of the few countries in the world that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation in its constitution. (HT: Joe.My.God.)

Recently, opponents of marriage equality have focused more on their objection that laws will no longer recognize the uniqueness of husbands and wives or mothers and fathers. Just this weekend the coalition opposed to Minnesota marriage equality used Mother’s Day to mourn that “Mother” will be removed from marriage laws, having previously warned not to “erase moms and dads.” Family Research Council senior fellow Cathy Ruse has attempted to make a similar argument, complaining about the Department of Education’s decision to recognize same-sex families when assessing need for financial aid:

I carried my children for 9 months in my womb, I endured the pain (and joy) of birth, I nursed them for many months after they were born, and every morning they jump into my bed screaming, “Mommy!”

But the federal government says I’m Mommy no more.

I am Parent 1.

Or maybe Parent 2.

Kind of like Thing One and Thing Two. But Dr. Seuss was being ironic.

Mr. President, I dare you to tell my daughters I’m not their mother.

Ruse’s quibble aptly reveals how little substance this argument has. No one is telling her she’s not her children’s mother. Likewise, lesbian moms are mothers too. The reason for the change is to recognize that not all families are alike, and thus should not face discrimination when simply filling out a form because it has gendered language.

The argument mirrors the rhetorical question asked by 11-year-old Grace Evans during a Minnesota House committee hearing: “Which parent do I not need, my mom or my dad?” This ruse ignores that children of same-sex couples could ask the very same question. For example, Eagle Scout and LGBT ally Zach Wahls could easily ask, “Which of my moms do I not need?” and thus highlight that marriage equality has nothing to do with taking a parent away.

Perhaps Ruse is Parent 1 some days and Parent 2 other days. She has the freedom to be whatever kind of parent she wants to be to her children, including a mother that hyper-conforms to gender norms. What guarantees that privilege is the protections she and her family have because she is legally recognized as one of her children’s parents — the same protections that same-sex couples are seeking for their families through marriage equality. If Ruse has been relying on the federal government to inform her of her gender and parenting role, perhaps she should simply take her kids’ word for it when they call her, “Mommy!”

Yesterday, Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) announced that they plan to reintroduce the Every Child Deserves a Family Act, which would prevent child welfare agencies from discriminating against LGBT Americans who wish to become foster or adoptive parents.

There are currently 400,000 children in the foster care system and studies show that removing barriers that prevent LGBT people from fostering and adopting children could significantly help solve nation’s foster care crisis.  Researchers estimated that as many as 2 million LGBT people are interested in adoption.

Whereas some states outright ban LGBT people from adopting, a vast majority of states are merely silent on the issue, which means it is perfectly legal for child welfare agencies to discriminate against potential foster and adoptive parents who are LGBT. This is especially problematic when states in need of adoptive homes for children consistently report finding interested, qualified families who want to adopt as one of their biggest obstacles. Discriminating against LGBT people willing and able to provide loving, stable homes to foster youth puts the best interests of vulnerable children at stake.  The Every Child Deserves a Family Act would limit federal funds to agencies that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and marital status, and give children a greater opportunity to find foster and adoptive homes.

The agencies and programs that discriminate against LGBT people allege that it is not in a child’s best interest to be adopted by a same-sex couple, a concern which is not only insulting but completely unsubstantiated. In October, UCLA released a study that found that same-sex parents are just as effective at raising foster children as heterosexual couples and concluded that there is no scientific basis to discriminate against gay and lesbian parents. This holds true with the conclusions drawn by the American Sociological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and a host of other reputable groups that, “whether a child is raised by same-sex or opposite-sex parents has no bearing on the child’s wellbeing.”

If passed, the bill would also prevent child welfare programs from discriminating against children who are LGBT. LGBT youth are overrepresented in the foster care system, in part because of the discrimination they experience in their schools and families of origin.

Christopher Frost, intern, and Katie Miller, Special Assistant, are part of LGBT Progress.