Exiting The Hornet's Nest

"I study how we organize things."
"There really are no decent empirical studies on whether gay marriage is a beneficial or non-disruptive institution. That includes me."
"I don't believe the question of [same-sex marriage] rests heavily on the outcomes of children. I think that matters, but it is not the key issue."
"[After his] public blogger flogging, part of me wants to fight back, and to stand up for the principles of academic freedom, the freedom of expression, and the freedom of religion."
"On the other hand, I'm not sure if asked again whether I would have the strength to say yes."
Douglas Allen, professor of economics, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia

Bill Pugliano, Getty Images

Professor Allen was asked to testify in Detroit at the State of Michigan's case that to overturn its ban on gay marriage would represent a grave societal error. Professor Allen was interrogated by prosecuting attorneys for over four hours relating to his body of research on same-sex parenting. He sought to defend statistical studies demonstrating purportedly that same-sex parenting does not compare favourably to same-sex parenting in its outcomes.

And then the question was put to him by attorney Ken Mogill during the cross-examination: "Is it accurate that you believe the consequence in engaging in homosexual acts is a separation from God and eternal damnation from God?" And Professor Allen responded viscerally, reflecting his religious views, leaving aside his academic credentials: "Without repentance, yes." That unedited response led to what Professor Allen later described as his "social media lynching".

Academically Professor Allen is an exceptionally good instructor who has won teaching awards, and the respect of Simon Fraser University which handed him an endowed chair in economics in 2000. Despite his notoriously difficult final exams, his former students repeatedly praise their professor. In the last thirty years he has written close to one hundred academic papers, his style of applied economic theory to non-traditional subjects like "information sharing" during the Klondike Gold Rush, and the "economic origins of Roman Christianity" recognizing him as an original thinker.

And he has studied and written about the economics factoring in the intimate relationships between couples through marriage. "I find marriage a fascinating institution", he says. It is, in fact, an exercise of attempted understanding of motivations and hormones geared to the first laws of survival. He was asked a decade ago by the Canadian Department of Justice to look into the economics of same-sex marriage, when he acted as a marriage expert in a 2003 Ontario Court of Appeal case that legalized same-sex marriage performed in Toronto.

Since then, his reputation made, he has been invited to present his views as an expert for same-sex marriage challenges in Ireland, California and elsewhere, and he has written papers on the issue of same-sex marriage. In 2012 he wrote an article for the Harvard Journal of Law of Public Policy featuring the argument that marriage represents an "economically efficient" institution moulded around child-rearing heterosexuals, arguing that homosexuals aspiring to marriage would stand to be better served by a gay-specific, separate form of marriage.

That suggestion/recommendation is an entirely reasonable one; the institution of marriage has traditionally revolved around the religious or state-institutionalized vows of the marriage contract between people of opposite gender. Introducing an entirely new and quite different quotient of two individuals sharing the same gender, should logically represent an opportunity for society to accept a specially-differentiated same-sex marriage relationship, even if it effectively reflects similar qualities and expectations to the traditional marriage contract.

Professor Allen studied Canadian census data to gauge graduation rates of children from same-sex households, coming to the conclusion that "children living in both gay and lesbian households struggle compared to children from opposite-sex married households." The gay household offspring appeared "65% as likely" to graduate as the children of traditionally heterosexual households. That conclusion provided a contrast to a similar analysis of U.S. census data prepared by Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld whose outcome was no difference existed.

In a March 5, 2013 photo, April DeBoer, second from left, sits with her adopted daughter Ryanne, 3, left, and Jayne Rowse, fourth from left, and her adopted sons Jacob, 3, middle, and Nolan, 4, right, at their home in Hazel Park, Mich. DeBoer and Rowse are challenging Michigan's gay marriage ban. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, file)

The introduction of the legal equality of same-sex marriages to the social contract in jurisdictions where it has become lawful is in its infancy. And there are other circumstances that could conceivably factor into the results of children's academic performance. There is a wide range of circumstances; children originally part of a heterosexual family, converting with a parent to a same-sex family, for example; the greater mobility of same-sex families than heterosexual families. Children of gay families may have suffered the trauma of divorce; but then the same is true of children of traditional marriages.

Philip Cohen, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, points out that since American judges overturned interracial marriage bans in the 1960s, the country has never decoded civil rights "based on grade-point averages of the children." Socially consequential outcomes are in fact difficult to prove. In the wake of Professor Allen's testimony in that Detroit courtroom in March, Michigan named it an "absurdity" to ban marriages on the grounds that they might yield "sub-optimal" opportunities for the children out of those same-sex marriages.

U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman legalized Michigan gay marriage, ruling that Professor Allen's research represented a "fringe viewpoint". "Taking the ... position to its logical conclusion, the empirical evidence at hand should require that only rich, educated, suburban-dwelling ... Asians may marry, to the exclusion of all other heterosexual couples", wrote Judge Friedman. Though same-sex couples in Michigan are rushing to the wedding canopy, the state, evidently, plans to appeal.