The caricature of Psychiatrists is that they offer their patients too little feedback and are too often silent. Here is one occasion when some silence would have been helpful. There is really no need for the American Psychiatric Association to take a stand on gay marriage, civil unions, or many other social issue. While one could make a peripheral argument about the merits of a child growing up in a household with two committed men or two committed women, versus a married, heterosexual couple, that is an opinion with very little data to support it one way or the other. If we made the choice between a healthy gay relationship and the foster care system in crisis, as in New York or Florida, there would be no discussion; most Psychiatrists would agree that the children would be much better off with the loving gay parents, while recognizing it is easier to grow up in this culture with married, heterosexual parents.
Any other discussion is about the political and social significance of gay marriage, civil unions, etc, and Psychiatrists are no more learned in the realm of politics and culture than anyone else. I would not ask a Physicist, even a very talented one, how to diagnose a Schizophrenic, and I would not volunteer how he should go about measuring quantum effects. Let's restrict our "official" imprimatur for things we are trained for.
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