How should a Catholic respond to growing evidence against church teachings on LGBT parenting?

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Claiming that something seems good, or feels good, isnt “evidence”.
The nazis had lots of evidence that what they were doing was “good”.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
 
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The truth is probably way more complicated.

Have you read the studies? Do you know their methodology or how they selected their subjects?

“Good outcomes” may mean something different to two different people.
Keeping in mind that a huge number of psychiatrists are atheist, above the rate of the population.
 
BrettK said:
How is a catholic or any christian opposed to gay-adoption or the lifestyle of same-sex marriages, etc supposed to help convince an average person that they are correct, when multiple psychiatric and psychological reputable institutions are declaring it to at the very least, not be negative and that the stigma around these issues simply needs to end? What is someone to do when you are morally in line with the teachings of God, but it goes against evidence being presented by the span of scientific evidence?
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First, I have a close relative who is a budding psychiatrist…when it comes to this field, you need to be very careful about using the phrase “scientific evidence.” Psychiatry is not like physics, where things fall nicely into the scientific method, and there is fair amount of opinion.

Second, the gold standard for parenting should be one loving father and one loving mother, everything else, on average, falls short. That does not mean that you won’t find good gay parents…I’m sure you will. It does mean that a child has a right to a mother and a father, and that should always be the first consideration. They are complementary. I provide my children qualities my wife cannot, and my wife provides qualities that I cannot. This should be obvious to reasonable people, but we do not live in reasonable times.

Only the “Father / Mother / Child” model reflects the Trinity, and only this model is what God intended…it is the gold standard. Saying this will make people hate you, but sorry, its the truth.
 
Jupp said:
Families until quite recently included grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, first and second cousins and other extended family members
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Families still often include all those relatives, even traditional families, but children still have one mother and one father.
 
Mythicalbio said:
(This is not saying these children can not be saved, nor their parents. I am more focused on moral ideas. Anyone who God wants to save is saved, anyone for who he has not willed that is not saved. Being raised in a gay household or living a gay marriage is not an impediment for salvation. Creatures can not dominate or stop God’s will, it reaches us all, and brings everything to the end God wants.)
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I realise this is OT but this is a dreadful argument and makes the Christian God look like a monster. It gives the impression that God created humans, like me, simply to torture them for not believing in his existence.
 
Mythicalbio said:
Salvation is by Grace alone, and whoever is saved has been given it. It is entirely unmerited, as St. Thomas says
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We are agreed that grace is unmerited. The phrasing I took issue with in your initial comment was what seemed a suggestion that there might be any person for whom God does not will salvation.

If we are agreed that God wills all to be saved (and that it’s our failure to cooperate with His will that damns us, not God’s failure to will our salvation), that’s enough for me.
 
This is a really big topic but I will just say from my own experience in education and starting a doctorate in educational psychology: people who work in academia are - like everybody else - mortal, frightened human beings, and they are at minimum every bit as much susceptible to peer pressure, fear for their reputation, and their own personal biases as much as any other human being. In some ways, they are actually more susceptible than the average person, because their work gets published and read and criticized and that creates a very powerful pressure in an insulated environment to conform to the new moral order. This is a problem mostly unique to the humanities but it can happen anywhere.

Although studies are purposely designed in ways to eliminate bias, it doesn’t happen to the same extent that it does in, for example, biology or chemistry. Depending on how candidates are selected, the way questions are designed, and an endless number of other variables, a study can reach conclusions that are misleading or at the very least don’t tell the whole story.

It’s too much to talk about but I’ll just give one brief example: heterosexual couples with children range from poor dysfunctional families to the very top and everything in between. For the minority of homosexual couples who adopt a child, I do know off the top of my head that they are vastly higher in the economic and social ladder compared to the average, and so that makes comparisons between heterosexual couples and homosexual couples apples and oranges. Here is a Slate article that briefly talks about it (it is not a Catholic article but it just gives a little insight into it):


But you are correct that the major associations in Western countries are probably going to end up falling more and more to the new moral order. This is mostly explainable for political reasons. The West in general is losing its moral, political, and economic authority year-by-year so this isn’t quite as big of a problem as it sounds like. Things rise and fall. That’s just life and we’re only around for up to a hundred years or so and then we’re gone and we only ever get to see a small slice of the picture.
 
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I stopped viewing the APA as a “medical” association after hearing this on NPR many years ago. I am surprised you can still find it online. I would not take this statement they have made about the outcomes of children with same-sex patenting as having any merit.

 
Jupp said:
The concept of one man + one woman + children being the ideal family is not just new, but ill-conceived and incorrect. Families until quite recently included grandparents, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, first and second cousins and other extended family members - frequently living under the same roof. In the ancient times there was no “family” to speak of. It really “took a village”. If one of the “natural” parents died, it was not traumatic, because there was no “special” bond.

Islam does not discourage “multiple wives” and other cultures have multiple husbands. There is absolutely no evidence that such setups are harmful for the children - quite to the contrary! Maybe there was some extra bond between homosexual or bisexual members in that extended family. And again there is no evidence for any harmful effects. It was considered normal and natural.

In the countryside the children were exposed to copulation on farms - animals were procreating in the open. No harmful effects there either. Sex is natural, and only some humans look at it as if it were “special”. How could the most prevalent activity be “special”? And there is no evidence that God would “frown” upon the concept of this “extended family”.

As long as love is present, the rest is irrelevant.
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Really, in the “ancient times” there was no special bond can between parents and child? That’s interesting. For all societies in “ancient times”? Would this includes Jewish and Christian families?
I would like to see a citation please.
 
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I’m not sure what you consider “ancient”, but there are plenty of references to “nuclear” families in ancient literature, even among those (like ancient Israelites) in which polygyny was common. Abraham might have had two wives, but he sure didn’t have a “husband” along with them. And even among the Greeks, homosexuality was considered something of a joke, even if was widespread.

And children are still exposed to copulation by animals on farms. But they also know there are no “homosexual relationships” or “exclusively homosexual” animals among them. People who think they see it don’t know much about animal sexuality.
 
You can continue to oppose gay marriage and adoption on the basis of moral grounds, but don’t expect to persuade many people who don’t share your moral values that you are correct. You don’t have to convince (and probably won’t be able to anyway) an “average person” of anything. You might wish to have a discussion with your own (older) children, however, on what the Church teaches in this regard.
 
There’s no evidence to respond to. Rather, just politically-motivated propaganda from the APA and other biased organizations. Nothing has changed since Freud, who accepted large contributions from rich clients in exchange for telling them what they wanted to hear.
 
Jupp said:
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KMC:
Only the “Father / Mother / Child” model reflects the Trinity, and only this model is what God intended…it is the gold standard. Saying this will make people hate you, but sorry, its the truth.
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You gotta be kidding. Who would be the mother and the child in that model? And, of course no one has any idea what God intended.
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No, not kidding. Basic Catholic theology. Trinity: The Father has an image of Himself, and loves this image so perfectly that it is personified in the Son. The Son, in turn, loves the Father so much that their love is personified in the Holy Spirit. Family: Husband loves wife, wife loves husband, their love is personified in children. As I said, the family reflects the Trinity.

Also. Of course we know what God intended. He told us.
Genesis 2:24
“Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
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Matthew 19:4-5
“He answered, ‘Have you not read that He who made them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one”?’”
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We also know what God wanted from natural law: just look at the basic design of the human body. A man and woman are complementary…the parts are designed for each other.
 
Only last week I had to articulate for myself a difference between ethics and morals. The best I could do was to conclude – morals are determined by an external reference frame in which we can categorise right from wrong. It comes from “outside” of us. For us Catholics, It comes from truths revealed by God - through relationship with His people (The Church) - in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition.

Ethics from its etymology derives from “the science of morals”. It is mans search for “objective truth” by that which can be measured physically. Because it is based on “science”, ethics is inherently limited in its ability to distinguish between right from wrong. This is for the simple reason that science can only explain that which is physical – it cannot explain “everything”. Science is a search for evidence of truth – but it cant explain “truth” itself – because truth is “real” but not physical. Absolute truth is revealed – it unfolds before us and holds us to account.

Therefore science/scientific bodies (APA etc…) have no basis to have a view on “morality” – right from wrong. They can have a view on evidence that informs some ethics. So it is not surprising there can be evidence that shows a child protected and cared for by responsible adults will fare better than one that is not – ethics?. But we would be hard pressed to find secular studies that differentiate these outcomes on the basis of morality. Maybe our Catholic universities should be more active to provide evidence based on Catholic/Christian moral choices.

To bring this back to your question: Rather than try to argue a “scientific” case for SSM, Gay Parents etc, I would seek to have them recognise the difference between morals and ethics.

Disclaimer: I am neither an apologist nor in any way qualified to speak on social science issues. These are just my thoughts.
 
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Church teaching = the teaching of Jesus. So a Catholic response would be to follow Jesus.
 
BrettK said:
Recently, more and more evidence has begun to come out that parents in same-sex relationships who are parenting a child, presents no harmful benefits in comparison to opposite-sex parenting couples.
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I am guessing that “modeling of same sex sexual relationships” did not count as a negative in the research to which you refer?
 
Isn’t there a natural truth to examine. Why and how the body was formed, what functions different systems have? What purpose the systems were originally made for? etc???
 
petra22 said:
Isn’t there a natural truth to examine. Why and how the body was formed, what functions different systems have? What purpose the systems were originally made for? etc???
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You could try but I’m not sure how successful you’d be. Sex is obviously for procreation but not solely for that… even Catholics recognize the unitive aspect. The animal world has many examples of animals using sex for pleasure, to establish dominance and for letting off steam after tense situations. You’d have to ignore all these natural uses to promote the catholic view and in today’s world? I think the moral argument is pretty much all you have with secular society and they mostly will not agree with it.
 
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