The AMA’s position statement on same-sex marriage has become an ideological battleground
In the debate over whether Australia should legalise marriage between two adults of the same sex – which would make it the last English-speaking nation to do so – supporters and opponents agree on one thing: doctors’ opinions do count for a lot.
That’s why the accusation the AMA suppressed evidence of harm to children in its position statement on marriage equality as a health issue is sensational stuff.
The claim is the starting point of a 15-page “medical critique” released by a group of dissenting doctors which says the AMA made “demonstrably false” claims about the well-being of children raised by same-sex couples.
“We reference peer-reviewed articles that do find poorer outcomes for children raised by same-sex couples, and we also show the AMA was aware of this evidence of detriment to children,” the document says.
The six-member group, led by Dr Chris Middleton, a former AMA Tasmania president, issued the document with an accompanying press release after the government announced last month that all Australians would have their say on marriage equality in a non-binding survey conducted by post.
“The (AMA) position statement has very little to say about medicine and was little more than a politically motivated, ideologically driven opinion piece which is dressed up as evidence-based health policy,” Dr Middleton told The Australian newspaper.
He said he had resigned his AMA fellowship after the organisation refused to retract its position statement, which it had released in May to a generally warm public response.
The dissident group was back in the news a week later, announcing it had sent the critique to federal MPs with the signatures of 368 doctors attached, including five former AMA state presidents and 26 professors and associate professors.
The AMA has not dignified the protest with much of a response beyond reaffirming its stance. President Dr Michael Gannon said the organisation was satisfied its position was the correct one, adding the issue of children was “not in play” in the marriage-equality argument.
However, many more doctors have condemned the dissident group’s action as harmful to patients and joined the campaign for a “Yes” vote in the upcoming survey.
The emotional distress to the LGBTIQ community of having a group of doctors publicly speak out against them would show its effects in “increased depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicidal behaviours”, medical student Carolyn O’Neil said in an open letter she posted on the internet. Nearly 400 doctors and medical students put their names to the letter in just a few hours.
Early last week, the O’Neil letter had been signed by more than 2000 doctors and 257 medical students.
“For 370 doctors to come out and say they disagree with the AMA stance, and say it was not representative of the general membership, to the public that sends a strong message,” the University of Western Australia student told The Medical Republic.
“I felt we needed to make a counterpoint to that, and I was correct in that assumption, because within a matter of days people were quoting it on Facebook and saying, look at this, doctors disagree with marriage equality,” Ms O’Neil said. “The amount of vitriol being displayed is unbelievable, and the ridiculous assertions are quite frightening.”
“What does it do to a child to see the argument being put forward that your parents or their style of parenting is likened to paedophilia or bestiality, and to be told that you are clearly being damaged and they are selfish for having had you?”
Predictably, the AMA is under attack on some social-media sites, such as Family Voice, for allegedly “knowingly misleading the public”.
Melbourne GP Dr Ruth McNair said she feared for the mental health of LGBTIQ young people in the current climate.
“But equally, I have seen a lot of older LGBTIQ people who are coming in because their mental health is becoming more unstable in relation to all of this discussion,” she said.
Conservative commentator Andrew Bolt urged readers of his Herald Sun blog to get hold of the Middleton critique, describing its revelations as “devastating”.
On examination, however, the document seems to fall at the first hurdle by citing studies that have been widely disputed, if not discredited outright, for their methodology and ideologically driven conclusions.
Exhibit A is a paper published in 2015 by Professor D.P. Sullins, a US sociology professor and Catholic priest, which purports to show that children with same-sex parents suffer serious emotional problems at more than twice the rate of children with opposite-sex parents.
As many scholars have pointed out, Sullins’ findings show no causal link between same-sex parenting and troubled kids. There’s no way of knowing how they were raised, and whether they experienced a family breakdown, only that they had a parent who identified as same-sex-attracted at the time of various surveys between 1997 and 2013.
The Middleton critique says: “His findings are statistically robust and were published in a journal that has one of the highest rankings possible for rigour of the peer-review process.”
But if you follow a footnote to check the source of that claim, there is no mention of the journal – The British Journal of Education, Society and Behavioural Science – in the rankings cited.
It turns out the journal’s publisher is an online pay-to-publish outfit whose only listed telephone contact is in India. Its website employs contorted English, with a disclaimer indicating “British” has been, or will be, dropped from the name.
Dr Simon Crouch, a Melbourne public health doctor and researcher, said his study of 315 same-sex couples and their 500 children, published in 2014, showed no adverse outcomes, except where the children had experienced stigma.
“That is something that would be a concern at the moment, where there is a lot of negative press and negative discussion,” he said.
“I think one of the reasons why my study had such positive results is that we had quite a lot of young families where you had same-sex couples raising children from birth – ironically, in a traditionally more stable situation, where you have two parents in a stable relationship.
“Some people would say, actually, marriage equality would be good for children, because same-sex couples are already raising children and marriage would potentially bring increased stability to those families.”
