Deadbeat Dad Joe Walsh: Children Should Be Raised In A Household With A Father And A Mother

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) — who has been embroiled in a personal scandal surrounding late child support payments — suggested that gay people don’t make for good parents during a recent town hall in Crystal Lake, Illinois. The Tea Party congressman said he believes in “traditional marriage” and that children do best when raised in a home with a mother and a father:

Roberts’ wife, Dayle, brought up the topic of gay marriage and the rights for those involved in those unions.

Walsh is a supporter of traditional marriage between a man and a woman for economic reasons. He also stated that studies have shown it is more beneficial for a child to be raised in a home where a mother and father are present rather than in same-sex households. The congressman, however, said he was open to further information and research that might disprove that.

Setting the irony of Walsh’s own situation aside, studies haven’t shown that children do worse in households headed by two parents of the same sex or that sexual orientation is related to parenting ability. Conservatives like to site a government study — which found better health outcomes among children in nuclear families — as proof that gay couples should be prohibited from adopting children, but as Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) explained during the recent Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, that study included same-sex couples in its definition of family.