Children raised by same-sex couples dominated the federal trial over Proposition 8 on Friday as the measure's proponents attacked studies that showed children of lesbians and gays are just as "well-adjusted" as children with opposite sex parents, reports the LA Times.
On the fifth day of the trial in San Francisco, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker heard testimony from Michael Lamb, a Professor and Head of the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology at Cambridge. He testified that children raised by gay parents are not more likely to be maladjusted.
"We have a substantial body of evidence documenting that a child being raised by same-sex parents are just as likely to be well-adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents," testified Lamb.
"For a significant number of these children [raised by same-sex couples], their adjustment would be promoted were their parents able to get married," he continued, adding a study by the American Psychological Association, which stated that "there is no scientific basis for concluding that lesbian mothers or gay fathers are unfit parents on the basis of their sexual orientation. On the contrary, results of research suggest that lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children."
He also testified that children of gay and lesbian parents are just as likely to be heterosexual as other children, adding that gender was not an important measure of good parenting.
Lawyer David H. Thompson rejected Lamb's testimony and then went on to discount the entire psychology profession, saying, "and the psychological community was entirely wrong, wasn't it?"
Called to the stand by the plaintiffs Friday was author Helen Zia of San Francisco. Zia testified that when she married her lesbian domestic partner, "It changed things on a very huge level" in the way their families related to them as a couple, Zia said. "That's because, as I've always read and am just beginning to understand, marriage is the joining of two families."
Zia and her partner married in June 2008, during the short five-month period in which the right to same-sex marriage in California was in effect.
The trial resumes Tuesday, when the court is expected to hear the testimony of William Tam, a controversial Prop 8 proponent who alleged that same-sex marriage advocates also supported the legalization of sex with children.
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