This letter is in reference to the op-ed piece by Dr. Ruth M. Jacobs and Mike McManus (“Why O'Malley is wrong on same-sex marriage,” Jan. 13).

This piece is disturbingly misleading, using the guise of statistics to completely misrepresent the danger levels to children raised by gay couples. Jacobs and McManus start with the banal claim that the “healthiest” children have two parents of opposite sex (presumably both of whom are their biological parents). What does “healthiest” mean? Least diseased, most intelligent, most active in the community, least violent, highest SAT scores, most devoted to church, best athlete?

The claim is so vague as to be nonsensical and has no evidence. Jacobs and McManus turn to statistics and 180-year old dictionary definitions, then, to shore up their belief in the innate superiority of children from traditional marriages to those from gay or single-parent marriages. First, in 1828, Noah Webster claimed that marriage was between a man and a woman. In 1828 that was true. How many of us would rather live in the civil and legal conditions of the 19th century, when blacks could be enslaved, woman could not vote or own property and policy was entirely in the hands of well-to-do white men? It is absurd to cite an 1828 entry on marriage and evidence of the authors’ desire not to maintain any semblance of contemporary relevance in the face of their negative bias.

Next, children from “fatherless homes” (according to which “federal statistics”?) are more likely to commit a flurry of violent crimes. What is lost in this conflation is that lesbian couples make up a vanishingly small proportion of “fatherless homes,” and so all of those harrowing visions of rapists, murderers, carjackers, and pedophiles emerge in the readers mind as they falsely imagine that “fatherless homes” means “lesbian homes.” In 99 cases out of 100, the statistics speak to single-mother households (of heterosexual women), which are often under severe financial, social and time pressure.

In Jacobs and McManus’s order of things, we are hopelessly tied to an outdated, hate-driven, fear-driven society that would choose to ostracize a fair minority (10 percent) in order to entertain the desires of prejudiced individuals against anything other than man-plus-woman relationships. That is not the future, it is the oppressive past.

The increasing acceptance of gay and lesbian individuals in our society is demonstrated by younger citizens, who will not tolerate their elders’ prejudices. Fortunately, there are organizations that provide support to gay families who, by civil law, do not receive equal benefits as heterosexual couples — such as Rainbow Families DC.

Do not be fooled by the “Dr.” crowning Ruth Jacobs’ name. This article has no science, only a quiver of hateful sentiments guided by obsolete doctrine. It should be used in high school English classes to demonstrate rhetorical fallacies.

Dr. Heidi Scott, Hyattsville