A classic `Brandeis brief' - American Sociological Association in the DOMA case

SCHOLARLY CONSENSUS IS CLEAR:
CHILDREN OF SAME-SEX PARENTS FARE
JUST AS WELL AS CHILDREN OF
OPPOSITE-SEX PARENTS

That is the conclusion and first point of the amicus brief of the American Sociological Association in Hollingsworth v. Perry, and U.S. v. Windsor , the attacks on California Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act.  Both were recently argued in the Supreme Court.  Justice Anthony Kennedy, feeling the peer pressure of Justice Antonin Scalia, suggested the court was constrained to act by the limited evidence that children of same-sex couples suffered no harm.  That seems to reverse the burden of proof, since the challenged laws are facially discriminatory and thus contrary to the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
So as Bill Keller explains in today';s Times, we should be grateful for the ASA's systematic review of the literature so far on the subject.  The sociologists conclude:

when the social science evidence is exhaustively examined—which the ASA has done—the facts demonstrate that children fare just as well when raised by same-sex parents.  Unsubstantiated fears regarding same-sex child rearing do not overcome these facts and do not justify upholding DOMA and Proposition 8.

Now that  Cardinal Dolan has said that the Catholic Church needs to be friendlier to gays and lesbians, rather than act like "God's Rottweiler", one can hope that the Church's social welfare agencies will agree to allow adoptions by same-sex couples.