A new study reports that zero percent of lesbian couples abuse their children.  Zero.

Meanwhile, 26 percent of all adolescents report being physically abused by their parents or guardians, and 8.3 percent of children are sexually abused.  That’s a lot – a scary amount, in fact.  But none of the children in a 24-year study of lesbian couples reported any abuse whatsoever.

From Huffington Post:

The Williams Institute, a research center on sexual orientation law and public policy at UCLA School of Law, has announced new findings from the U.S. National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), the longest-running study ever conducted on American lesbian families (now in its 24th year). In an article published today in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, the 17-year-old daughters and sons of lesbian mothers were asked about sexual abuse, sexual orientation, and sexual behavior.

The paper found that none of the 78 NLLFS adolescents reports having ever been physically or sexually abused by a parent or other caregiver. This contrasts with 26 percent of American adolescents who report parent or caregiver physical abuse and 8.3 percent who report sexual abuse.

What does this mean?  Nothing conclusive, given the small number of participants in the study, but consider the possibilities.

Maybe only men are to blame for abusive households.  Maybe heterosexual relationships are more prone to bad environments for children.  Maybe gay couples make better parents – after all, they can’t “accidentally” get pregnant, so it would stand to reason that every child they have would be well-planned and provided for.

And for the close-minded critics who claim gay parents will “make” their children gay, the study also found only 2.8 percent of the children of these lesbian couples actually grew up to be gay.

I would love to see more studies like this that would hopefully convince more people that being gay is not something to be afraid of, nor is it something that should have a negative connotation.  It could also convince more states to legalize gay marriage, even.

Portia DeGeneres is currently in talks to be in the first same-sex dancing couple on ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars,” which could mean another barrier broken and another stereotype eliminated in the near future.  Portia recently changed her name from De Rossi after her marriage to Ellen DeGeneres.

Who knows? Maybe we’ll find that lesbian couples make better dancers, too!