Register Radio: Supreme Court Decision & Dangers of Same-Sex Parenting

Law Professor Helen Alvare and Correspondent Sue Ellen Browder

Today on Register Radio, George Mason University law professor Helen Alvare tackled the Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act. She noted three aspects of the decision.

"First, the bulk of the law was upheld, which means that the violations to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion which it spawned are still there," said Alvare. "Secondly, Congress has limited powers: the commerce clause and the tax and spend power. The Supreme Court said that Congress doesn't have authority to expand the commerce clause. Even though the Obama administration denied this was a tax and used the language of a penalty, the Court said that the argument that people should purchase insurance or pay a fee to the IRS acts like a tax. Lastly, the law required states to expand Medicaid insurance or risk losing all federal Medicaid funds. The Court held that this was too coercive. Congress cannot threaten the states."

Alvare added that the decision bodes well for the future of a more limited federal government.

"The law is with us, but the scope of Congress' power will be with us for a long time," said Alvare.

"The fight against the trampling of religious freedom goes on," said Alvare. "Coercing religious institutions to provide things that go against their teachings and conscience is a violation of the 1st Amendment and Federal Law. It is ridiculous that the Obama administration went to such extremes in this law."

Ultimately, she said that she is hopeful that those fighting the HHS mandate will prevail.

"I am more hopeful that we are going to win this argument in the end," she concluded.

Dangers of Same-Sex Parenting

In our second half, Register correspondent Sue Ellen Browder talked about her recent article examining the social science research study recently published in Social Science Research, which found that children raised by homosexuals fared significantly worse than those raised by a mother and father in at least 25 of 40 measures.

According to Browder, the New Family Structures study, done by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus, found for example, that young adults between the ages of 18 to 39 who grew up in families where either parent had a same-sex romance were over three times as likely to be unemployed, they did worse in school, they had used marijuana, were more likely to have been arrested, and were more likely to have thought about suicide.

"Children raised in lesbian households were 11 times more likely to be sexually abused," noted Browder, "contradicting the popular wisdom that says that if you have a lesbian mother or two mothers, you're less likely to be abused."

Asked how this study differs from others like it, Browder explained that Regnerus screened 15,000 Americans.

"It's the biggest study of its kind," said Browder. "Most studies of homosexual families have been done with a small sample of white, well-educated, homosexual mothers and they compare them with single mothers rather than families with a mother and father."

Critics of the study, noted Browder, have said the data is flawed because it's difficult to find intact homosexual households that last, so the study compares solidly married families with broken families.

"What the study did not find is that homosexuals are bad parents, or that they caused all of the problems," noted Browder. "It's a correlation. These problems went hand-in-hand with having a homosexual parent."

To learn more, listen to today's show at 2 p.m. EASTERN Friday on any EWTN Radio affiliate. The program re-airs at 7 p.m. EASTERN on Saturday and 11 a.m. EASTERN on Sunday, and is also available on the Register Radio web page, and via podcast.