It’s almost a foregone conclusion that researchers who compare children raised by heterosexual parents to those raised by a homosexual one will be vilified, harassed, and professionally targeted. An amicus brief filed with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals might explain why.

In their own words, four of these adult children are breaking their silence in an official court document about how growing up with homosexual parents changed their lives. At a time when the Left is desperately trying to prove that all families are the same, these stories – from the powerful to the painful – speak for themselves.

With moving testimonies, the “quartet of truth” bravely pulls back the curtain on the grief and confusion that marked their childhoods without a mom or dad. B.N. Klein remembers growing up “with a parent and her partners in an atmosphere in which gay ideology was used as a tool of repression, retribution and abuse.” In a house where the bedroom was more like a revolving door, she felt more like a “prop to be publicly displayed to prove that gay families are just like heterosexual ones. While I do not believe all gays would be de facto bad parents, I know that the gay community has never in my lifetime put children first as anything other than a piece of property, a past mistake, or a political tool to be dressed up and taken out as part of a dog-and-pony show to impress the well-meaning.”

For Robert Lopez, feeling loved wasn’t the problem. Finding a connection with a father figure was. “My upbringing,” he says wistfully, “represented the best possible conditions for a child raised by a same-sex couple,” but the lack of an adult male role model led him down a harrowing path of homosexual prostitution in a desperate effort to compensate for the dad he never had. “I experienced a great deal of sexual confusion. I had an inexplicable compulsion to have sex with older males… The money was not as impactful as the fact that I needed to feel loved and wanted by an older male figure.”

Now, as an adult, he says his story isn’t all that different from dozens of others who have similar scars from the deep longing for the parents they never knew. For him, just opening up about his experience was a big step because of the retribution that awaited him. “Children raised by same-sex couples face a gauntlet if they break the silence about the ‘no disadvantages’ consensus.” At work, he was targeted and harassed: “In such a climate, I must conclude that placing children in same-sex couples’ homes is dangerous, because they have no space or latitude to express negative feelings about losing a mom or dad, and in fact, they have much fear if they do.”

Katy Faust understands that all too well. “The label of bigot or hater has become a very powerful and effective tool to silence those of us who choose not to endorse the marriage platform,” she writes. “For many years, those devices kept me quiet… But I have come to realize that my silence, and the silence of others, has allowed for the conversation to be dominated by those who claim that only animus, ignorance, or indoctrination could lead one to oppose ‘marriage equality.’”

Now, she says, “we are normalizing a family structure where a child will always be deprived daily of one gender influence and the relationship with at least one natural parent. Our cultural narrative becomes one that, in essence, tells children that they have no right to the natural family structure or their biological parents, but that children simply exist for the satisfaction of adult desires.”

“Your childhood,” Dawn Steanowicz agrees, “is divided to please adults.” Dawn, who was immersed in the homosexual and transgender subcultures, spoke with raw transparency about being exposed to “sodomy, nudity, pornography, group sex, sadomasochism,” and even watching helplessly as her dad propositioned a male high school friend for sex. These are the truths the Left doesn’t want you to know. Like the other three, the anguish Dawn felt was because “there’s a missing biological parent,” not because her fathers couldn’t get married. There are “two rights” every child should share, Katy told the court. “First, the right to live. Second, the right to have a relationship with his/her father or mother.”

Love matters, the four concluded. But, as Mark Regnerus’s research made painfully clear, it isn’t enough.

House Gives Trafficking the Red Light

The biggest news from the Super Bowl may not be what happens on the field, but who’s lurking outside it. Most fans are so preoccupied with the Patriots and Seahawks that they have no idea Phoenix is hosting another event: the Super Bowl of Sex Trafficking. Every year, the FBI gets ready for the dark side of America’s biggest game – rings of child and teen prostitution. Some cities have seen as many as 10,000 girls brought in before the game hoping to do business with men who have “money to burn.”

House leaders are doing their best to put the brakes on America’s trafficking nightmare with a dozen bills aimed at the heart of the trade. [Last] Monday, Republican and Democratic members stood together in a rare show of bipartisanship to protect the victims of this ballooning problem by passing 11 measures that attack the epidemic from every possible angle – from new advertising rules and State Department training to youth runaway prevention and recovery programs.

Two weeks ago, we called on Congress as part of FRC’s State of the Family address to prioritize this issue and help ensure that women, and especially minors, involved in sex trafficking are rescued and cared for as victims – not criminals. Our hats go off to members of both parties who put politics aside to help end the exploitation of women and children. Abortion on demand and human trafficking compose a common league of evil. Ending that league is the abolitionist cause of our time.

Let’s hope the Senate feels the same way and moves to end the greatest human rights crisis in the world today. For more on the victories in the House, don’t miss my radio interview with the sponsor of one of those 11 bills, Congressman Ted Poe (R-Texas).

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.