Arizona Representative Trent Franks
last week made the incorrect claim that gay and lesbian couples don't
make good parents.
Appearing on the Family Research
Council's (FRC) Washington Watch radio program, the Republican
lawmaker linked marriage equality to the recent House fight over
efforts to approve LGBT nondiscrimination rules for federal
contractors.
Franks then claimed that “all of the
research shows” that children raised by heterosexual couples
perform better “on every measurable metric” than kids raised by
gay couples.
“There is no doubt whatsoever that
whether it's caused by divorce or lack of marriage or same-sex
marriage, whatever it is, whenever a child is not in a mother-father
family, traditional family, they have some odds stacked against them
in many areas,” Franks
said.
Most researchers agree that children
raised by gay parents are at no
disadvantage. And there is some research to suggest that the
children of same-sex couples fare better in certain areas.
Franks, a vocal opponent of LGBT
rights, also told FRC President Tony Perkins that liberals “can't
have a reasoned discussion because most of their positions simply
collapse under the weight of reason.”