Taking care when taking part in public debate

To the Editor

In March this year, a group of medical practitioners, including eight who self-identified as Fellows of the College, made a submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Marriage Equality Amendment Bill 2010. It stated that ‘marriage as [currently legally] defined was the basis of a healthy society’ (Doctors for the Family, 2012). In May, the submission was released to the media and its arguments were widely aired.

Central to their submission was the claim that ‘the evidence is clear that children who grow up in a family with a mother and father do better in all parameters than children without’ (Doctors for the Family, 2012), the clear implication being that medical science had provided proof that children brought up by same sex parents fared worse than children with parents of opposite sexes, and as a consequence same sex marriage should not be legalised.

As most readers will know (although the signatories apparently did not know), there is no evidence that children of same sex parents are disadvantaged in any way. The submission cited two references to substantiate their counterclaim, but neither of these was relevant to the issue at hand. One was a study comparing children brought up by biological parents with children brought up by single parents and by cohabiting step-parents (Manning and Lamb, 2003). The other was a report commissioned by the Australian Christian lobby that made no mention of the worth or otherwise of same sex parenting (Parkinson and Kazzi, 2011). In fact, both documents suggested that children fared better when their parents were married and therefore provide ammunition for those in favour of same sex marriage, not those opposed to it!

Not only was the empirical basis of the submission flawed, so was its logic. Even if there were evidence that children of same sex couples were, on average, less likely to do well than those with parents of opposite sexes, this finding would not support an argument against same sex marriage. Leaving aside the fact that people do not have to be married to have children, if we were to find that the offspring of a particular group in society were disadvantaged, that would be an argument for giving those families greater support, not for banning their unions.

Psychiatrists are the holders of specialised knowledge and can potentially make real and valuable contributions to public discourse. They are held in high esteem and are likely to be influential voices in such debates; however, this sort of status is always fragile. Fellows should take care to check the accuracy and rationality of any statement to which they intend to lend their names and our letters. To do otherwise is to risk all of our reputations. In this case, the signatories risked that their carelessness be mistaken for bigotry.