SSM and the APA

From a comment at the Family Scholars Blog SSM and the APA:

Chairm wrote:

"Bill, do you mean to claim that 5% of the adult population is sexually attracted, exclusively, to their same sex? That is different from what you first claimed, as others have pointed out."

Where? Who? I usually say up to 5%. Estimates vary. How can we say when we can't know how many gays are still closeted? If it's 2%, not 5% does it make any difference? Funny thing, I've never seen any estimates regarding what % of the population are asexual, not attracted to either men or women, yet I've met a number, usually women. The difficulty is, they have no idea what they're missing. The greater pleasure is pleasing the other. Imagine how frustrating this is to their partner.

"By far, most same-sex households with children include at least one adult who had previously been in a procreative relationship with someone of their opposite sex (i.e. marriage) and have brought the children with them."

That's right, about 85%

"So it is demonstrably untrue that such people are incapable of forming positive marital relations with the other team."

Well... They did divorce, didn't they?

Note from the APA Answers to Your Questions About Sexual Orientation and Homosexuality web page:

Sexual Orientation is an enduring emotional, romantic, sexual or affectional attraction to another person. It is easily distinguished from other components of sexuality including biological sex, gender identity (the psychological sense of being male or female) and the social gender role (adherence to cultural norms for feminine and masculine behavior).

Sexual orientation is different from sexual behavior because it refers to feelings and self-concept. Persons may or may not express their sexual orientation in their behaviors. (Emphasis added)

Behavior is voluntary, so a gay man could marry a women in order to adhere to "cultural norms for masculine behavior." Other considerations besides romantic love for the woman would be factors. What happens when this charade ends? The wife and the kids realize that the marriage was a sham the whole time. There's an ex-Governor McGreevey moment when everything comes apart. There's no way a counselor can put humpty-dumpty back together again. Far better to avoid this catastrophe by marrying someone of the same sexual orientation in the first place. A loveless marriage does everyone ill.

"Bill, where did you get the statistic of 300,000 same-sex couples with children? That number looks about twice the estimate of the Census, for example."

Pollsters are plagued by the "socially correct answer" problem. For example, in an in depth survey of why people voted as they did in a presidential election where 52% actually voted, 64% of respondents said they had. About 12% said they did when they didn't rather than admit they did the socially incorrect thing by not voting.

Surveys of gays and lesbians have the opposite problem. The social stigma prompts many to say that they are heterosexual. Surveyors have ways to help correct this problem, doing face to face interviews where they can gain the persons trust and elicit more honest answers and so on. They add history from prior surveys and computer analysis and they come up with an estimated correction factor. The census provides raw data with no corrections as Congress requires. The correction factor raises the census figure to 300,000 give or take. I was also interested to see that the census reported that the mean income for gay households was $5,000 above the overall average.