I imagine it must have gone something like this:

Honolulu Police Blotter

One “American Psychological Association” (a.k.a. APA) was arrested on Friday, July 27, 2004, for DWI (Driving While Intoxicated). Subject was apprehended careening wildly down Queen Kameamea Blvd., attempting to evade the obvious during a high-speed chase which resulted in the APA running down truth and backing up over reason to see what it hit. When apprehended, Subject was babbling “Studies show!” and “Research says!” followed by a string of nonsense and obscenities. Subject was transported via ambulance to the Honolulu General Hospital psychiatric ward for detoxification and treatment.

This is the only possible explanation I can think of to explain the American Psychological Association's recent press release endorsing gay “marriage” by stating that “same-sex couples are remarkably similar to heterosexual couples, and that parenting effectiveness and the adjustment, development and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation.”

I will give those poor sots points for creative writing, although the assertions strain any resemblance of credulity. To be fair, it is true that on respected measures of relationship satisfaction, heterosexual and homosexual couples report similar degrees of satisfaction and dissatisfaction. But that is where the similarities end. Reliable studies from non-biased sources show clearly that there are significant and important differences between heterosexual and homosexual relationships in three areas: how long they last, how faithful they are and how safe they are.

For example, according to the National Center for Health Statistics (Centers for Disease Control), 50% of heterosexual marriages last 20 years or longer. Now, that's not great, but compare this to a study by the Gay/ Lesbian Consumer Online Census, which shows that 71% of homosexual relationships are kaput in seven years, 31% are over in 1-3 years, and 85% do not survive past 11 years.

In fact, despite the multitude of press reports celebrating loving, long-term homosexual couples-next-door, only about 5% of gay and lesbian relationships make it to the 20-year mark or beyond. Whatever problems heterosexual couples have (and admittedly, they can be legion), gay activists' own data show that even in this rampant culture of divorce, heterosexual relationships are 10 times more stable than the overwhelming majority of same-sex relationships. Unfortunately, in their thorough analysis of the situation, the American Psychological Association decided that — by some strange and wonderful magic — all the studies showing the increased rates of depression, chemical abuse, poor school performance and worse among children of divorce would not apply to the children experiencing the exponentially greater risk of breakup of homosexual “families.”

Which leads us to the second problem. Heterosexual couples differ dramatically from homosexual couples with regard to sexual fidelity, and therefore, relationship stability. Studies show that 85% of married women and 75% of married men report fidelity in marriage compared to only about 4% of homosexual men. The Catholic Church teaches (and many sociologists agree) that the family is the basic unit of society. The values and structure of the family, in turn, become the values and structure of the larger society. In an age of HIV/AIDS and with epidemic levels of sexually transmitted disease, how could the association possibly think it would be good to promote a model of “family” — and therefore, a model of society — built upon the instability that results from chronic infidelity? Has the association not looked at the research exposing the damage marital infidelity does to children? Truly, homosexuality must be quite a wonderful thing if somehow children, who can be so damaged by the dalliances of their heterosexual parents, could be spared the damage that would be inflicted upon them by homosexual parents who would be 19 times less faithful.

The third difference is that there is significantly greater physical violence in homosexual relationships than in heterosexual marriages. According to statistics from the Department of Justice, 2.6% of married women and .05% of married men experience physical abuse in marriage.

By contrast, a whopping 11.4% of lesbians and 15.4% of homosexual men experience intimate-partner violence. Statistics from the Department of Health and Human Services National Clearinghouse on Abuse and Neglect tell us that children who witness domestic violence are significantly more likely to suffer from higher levels of aggression, disobedience, fear, anxiety and depression. They have poor peer, sibling and social relationships; lower cognitive functioning; poor school performance and limited problem solving skills; higher levels of adult depression; trauma symptoms; and increased tolerance for and use of violence in adult relationships.

But, according to the American Psychological Association, none of this matters. The rights of homosexual couples are so important to the association that children should just get over it. Finally, psychologists have found something even more important than self-esteem: gay rights.

As even these few facts illustrate, contrary to the association's wishful thinking, there are important differences between the relationships of heterosexual and homosexual couples and their potential effect on children. Last year, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, which warned that children would be harmed if gay “marriage” (and same-sex parenting) is allowed to become the law of the land. Specifically, the congregation asserted, “Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in (homosexual) unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.”

Clearly, when one looks at the data, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was right. In fact, it was more than right. It was downright prophetic.

Read author Gregory K. Popcak at www.exceptionalmarriages.org.