"[W]ith brain scanning, we can discern physiological differences between the average male and the average female brain. For example, the average man's cerebrum (the area in the front of the brain concerned with higher thinking) is 9 percent larger than the average woman's. Similar, though less distinct, overgrowth is found in all the lobes of the male brain. On average, men also have a larger amygdala (an almond shaped structure in the center of the brain involved in processing fear and emotion), and more nerve cells. Quite how these differences in size affect function, if at all, is not yet known.

In women, meanwhile, the connective tissue that allows communication between the two hemispheres of the brain tends to be thicker, perhaps facilitating interchange. This may explain why one study from Yale found that when performing language tasks, women are likely to activate both hemispheres, whereas males (on average) activate only the left hemisphere.

Psychological tests also reveal patterns of sex difference. On average, males finish faster and score higher than females on a test that requires the taker to visualize an object's appearance after it is rotated in three dimensions. The same is true for map-reading tests, and for embedded-figures tests, which ask subjects to find a component shape hidden within a larger design. Males are over-represented in the top percentiles on college-level math tests and tend to score higher on mechanics tests than females do. Females, on the other hand, average higher scores than males on tests of emotion recognition, social sensitivity and language ability.

Many of these sex differences are seen in adults, which might lead to the conclusion that all they reflect are differences in socialization and experience. But some differences are also seen extremely early in development, which may suggest that biology also plays a role. For example, girls tend to talk earlier than boys, and in the second year of life their vocabularies grow at a faster rate. One-year-old girls also make more eye contact than boys of their age.

In my work I have summarized these differences by saying that males on average have a stronger drive to systemize, and females to empathize. Systemizing involves identifying the laws that govern how a system works. Once you know the laws, you can control the system or predict its behavior. Empathizing, on the other hand, involves recognizing what another person may be feeling or thinking, and responding to those feelings with an appropriate emotion of one's own.

Our research team in Cambridge administered questionnaires on which men and women could report their level of interest in these two aspects of the world - one involving systems, the other involving other people's feelings. Three types of people were revealed through our study: one for whom empathy is stronger than systemizing (Type E brains); another for whom systemizing is stronger than empathy (Type S brains); and a third for whom empathy and systemizing are equally strong (Type B brains). As one might predict, more women (44 percent) have Type E brains than men (17 percent), while more men have Type S brains (54 percent) than women (17 percent)."

(Source: Simon Baron-Cohen, "The Male Condition," The New York Times, August 8, 2005; http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/08/opinion/08baron-cohen.html?th&emc=th.)

"Then the LORD God said,

'It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.' So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Then the man said,

'This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.'"

(Source:  Genesis 2:1-23, The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers, 2001.)

Since they cannot by nature procreate, homosexuals have been pushing to change state laws to allow them to adopt children. Some have even argued that what makes for good parenting is not the gender complimentarity of parents, but the devotion of parents (or adoptive parents). While not all husband-wife couples make the best parents, a study by Tami M. Videon of Rutgers University highlighting the independent influence of fathers on the emotional health of adolescents suggests that child well-being depends not on the contributions of mothers or fathers, but upon the contribution of mothers and fathers.

Using the first two waves of data (1994-95 and 1996) from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, the professor of psychiatry examined the impact of father-adolescent relationships on depressive symptoms of more than 6,500 boys and girls from intact, two-parent families. In her first model, she found that higher levels of satisfaction with fathers are correlated with fewer depressive symptoms among both boys and girls (p <.001 for both).

These statistically significant relationships held true in her second model, which controlled for relationships with mothers (which also correlated inversely with depressive symptoms for boys and girls). The magnitude of the effects of the father-adolescent relationship were somewhat reduced in this model, "indicating that the mother and father relationship [each] explain a portion of the same variance in adolescent psychological well-being." At the same time, adds Videon, "the father-adolescent relationship has a significant influence on children's well-being beyond the impact of the mother- adolescent relationship."

While Videon clearly intents her research to demonstrate the shortcomings of single motherhood, her findings nonetheless also implies that gay adoption is not a good idea, as well.