what page is this quote on:

“While their samples may not be random, they may be no worse than the convenience and snowball samples used in much of previous researcher with gay and lesbian parents;”

need the reference for an open letter I’m working on and I don’t want to buy the study (but I will if need be)

feel free to email me as well. (I’m assuming my address will be visible to Jim Burroway/others at Box turtle)

Did anyone else notice that one of the books Jim listed as a source for this “study” is “Trans Forming Families: Real Stories About Transgendered Loved Ones?” If one claims to have performed an analysis of current research regarding whether the sexual ORIENTATION of parents affects the sexual ORIENTATION of their children, then how would a book of stories about parents with gender IDENTITY issues be relevant? (Yes, I know – to the anti gays homosexuality and gender identity issues are one and the same. But scientifically they are not, so if one purports to have studied some aspect of homosexuality, only those transgendered individuals who are ALSO homosexual should have been included). As a matter of fact, *several* of the books include stories of children raised with a transgendered parent. Did Schumm include their data in his “analysis?” If so, did he differentiate between those who are transgendered *and* gay, and those who are trangendered and straight?

Furthermore, I looked up a few of the books used for Schumm’s “study” on Amazon, and a couple of them were written several years ago, and at the time the interviews for the stories were conducted, the “children” were in their 20′s-30′s. This is relevant because many of the subjects were actually raised by what they believed at the time were *heterosexual* parents. It wasn’t until the kids were well into their teens that they discovered one parent was gay – after their parents divorced, found a same-sex partner, and came out. So it’s ridiculous to claim they were somehow influenced to “become gay” by a gay parent they didn’t know they had until their mid-to-late teens.

Who are you addressing in your comment? It seems you’re just repeating Jim’s point exactly: the underlying “studies” weren’t studies, thus the meta-analysis isn’t useful. Did you read this post?

I’m not saying the stats are accurate becuase we all know statistics can be made to say a lot of things, but if they were it could be more about acceptance than about influence.

I haven’t seen a whole lot of research tying lesbianism to be “multigenic or semi-dominant genetic.” Do you have a source for that?

Almost all of the “maternal effects” that I’ve seen so far in male homosexuality has not been genetic, but hormonal. Although that doesn’t rule out an as yet unknown genetic basis, I haven’t seen anything yet in genetic research that has been identified as suspected areas in the genome.

Male homosexuality is either mostly not clearly genetic in origin or obeys (to some degree, and likely more than any other mode) semidominant or recessive ‘maternal effect’ genetic inheritance. (Where the genetic makeup of the mother is the deciding fact. This would appear as linkage to the maternal X chromosome but to no particular gene in it in genetic studies. As Hamer discovered to be the case in some kindreds.)

These two things would suggest that in large populations the daughters of lesbian women would have an elevated rate of being lesbian but their sons would have the background rate of male homosexuality. The children of gay men would have the background rate of homosexuality, but the next generation (i.e. grandchildren) would have a higher rate of male homosexuality.

Well, one might say, it is more likely that gay children were adopted. Okay, fair enough, for gay men that is more likely. For gay women, it’s probably more likely that their children are their biological children. So lesbians have gay children at the same rate as straight people but gay men have a higher proportion of gay children. Wrong! That’s the exact opposite of what Schumm found. “Daughters of lesbian mothers were most likely (33% to 57%; odds ratios from 4.5 to 12.1) to report non-heterosexual identities.”

Of course this assumes that the etiology of male and female homosexuality are the same. It assumes that the sperm donors had no family history of homosexuality. For gay men, they’re more likely to adopt or seek surrogates but they’re also more willing to adopt and foster children and teens who are already thought or known to be gay. And in the case of surrogates, again, the genes are being passed on directly rather than indirectly through siblings.

And then the data were crap anyway….sigh.