Marriage equality: the cold, hard facts

She has found that married same-sex partners have stronger relationships, a greater sense of commitment and security, and participate more in their extended families.

She also found the children of these couples experience an increased sense of security, recognition and inclusion that is directly related to their parents' marriage and sense of well-being.

It's obvious but it needs to be said: the reason marriage is good for children is that it is good for their parents. Badgett's research shows this to be true for no-one more than same-sex couples and their children.

But in case that's not clear enough, the son of one of the same-sex couples who will have dinner with the Prime Minister later in the year to discuss marriage equality has written a letter for his parents to give Julia in which he encapsulates the truth the research has shown: "when my mums are happy I'm happy too".

The second fact that disrupts the descent-into-fatherless-chaos narrative is that the children raised by same-sex couples have the same level of intellectual, emotional, social, sexual adjustment as their peers.

If you don't believe me then here's the Australian Psychological Society position on the issue.

"...parenting practices and children's outcomes in families parented by lesbian and gay parents are likely to be at least as favourable as those in families of heterosexual parents, despite the reality that considerable legal discrimination and inequity remain significant challenges for these families."

The American Psychological Association, the American Paediatric Associations and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry all agree. Here's the latter two:

"Research comparing children raised by homosexual parents to children raised by heterosexual parents has found no developmental differences in intelligence, psychological adjustment, social adjustment, or peer popularity between them."

"Outcome studies of children raised by parents with a homosexual or bisexual orientation, when compared to heterosexual parents, show no greater degree of instability in the parental relationship or developmental dysfunction in children."

Whoever it was trashing shops in London three weeks ago, we can be sure most of them were not the children of gay and lesbian parents.

To be fair, a lack of empiricism is not only a problem on the religious right. It is also a handicap for the sexual left.