(AgapePress) - Pro-family groups appear to standing in line to take a swipe at a professional medical association for its proclamation yesterday endorsing homosexual adoption.

The American Academy of Pediatrics should have expected such a reaction when it said in a press release that "there is a considerable body of professional literature that suggests children with parents who are homosexual" grow up no differently than those whose parents are heterosexual. The AAP, which boasts 55,000 members, goes on to say it supports "legal and legislative efforts that provide for the possibility of adoption of those children by the second parent or coparent in same-sex relationships." Pro-family groups across the U.S. are criticizing the medical group for its policy statement -- and questioning the literature upon which that statement was based.

Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women for America, says the AAP's statement is on par with telling the public that a single mom provides as thorough parenting as a mother-and-father team. Rios knows of what she speaks -- she is a single mom and admits it would be better for her son to have a mother and father together. So she wonders why the AAP would "declare such nonsense and disregard its responsibility to care for children." The AAP report, she says, ignores a "mountain of research" that shows children do best in mother-father, married households.

Robert Knight, director of CWA's Culture and Family Institute, fears the AAP report will be used to place young children and even babies in households of homosexual "couples" -- something Knight describes as a "reckless liberal experiment." He also says this is not the first time the homosexual movement has used the AAP as a disguise. He says the medical group has been politicized for years, publishing studies that advocate "safe sex" for youth and helping to legitimize aspects of the homosexual agenda.

The Family Research Council says it is sad the AAP has "succumbed to political correctness" and abandoned what both common sense and sound research demonstrate. FRC says the position taken by the AAP is part of a political campaign to normalize homosexual relationships. "But children are not guinea pigs and should not be used as pawns in some grand social experiment," FRC says in a statement. The pro-family emphasizes that children do best when they are in a family that provides both a mother and father in marriage.

Family News in Focus reports that a professor of pediatrics in Chicago who left the AAP because of its pro-homosexual policies believes the new policy is the brainchild of the "elitist" leadership of the medical association. Dr. Eugene Diamond says there is no evidence that the AAP's membership itself would take a position similar to that announced by the group's leadership. He also describes the research being cited as "advocate science" that is not based on responsible research.

Diamond says the ability of a child to identify with opposite-sex parents is crucial to the child's development and recognition of his or her own sexuality. He adds it would be "utterly confusing" to the child's upbringing to inject homosexual adoption into the picture.

Based on Bad Science
Don Wildmon is president and founder of the American Family Association, a staunch defender of traditional marriage and proponent of biblically-based family values. Like Diamond, Wildmon questions the validity of the research being cited by the AAP. "I'm not sure what 'professional literature' the AAP looked at," Wildmon says, "but as recently as last summer, researchers were calling into question this whole idea that kids raised by homosexuals turn out exactly like those raised by a mom and dad."

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