135 do FamiLies have a sexuaL orientation? interview with professor Judith stacey R oman k uhaR & J udit t akács Judith stacey is Professor of social and cultural analysis and sociology at new york university. she is the author of numerous books and articles, including unhitched: Love, marriage, and Fam- ily values from west hollywood to western china (20), in the name of the Family: rethinking Family values in the Postmodern age (996), brave new Families: stories of domestic upheaval in Late twentieth-century america (990, reissued in 998) and Pa- triarchy and socialist revolution in china (983). she is one of the leading experts on family and its diversities. In your article “(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?” from 2001, you and your colleague Tim Biblarz point out that findings from the studies on same-sex families are often used and abused in po- litical debates. Furthermore some researchers claim that there isn’t even any point in comparing same-sex families with heterosexual families as that would be like comparing apples with oranges: both are fruits but cannot be compared. What is your opinion about that? I think you could compare an apple with an orange if you knew what it was you wanted to compare about them. you could make comparative statements about how much juice you could get from either one (laughs). In my view, the whole notion of a gay or a lesbian family is kind of ridicu- lous: it implies that a family has a sexual orientation, which is not the case. I think that if you want to compare same-sex parents with different- sex parents who are relatively similar in other aspects, that is a reason- able enough comparison, and there are reasons to want to do that at this stage of history. I think the goal should be eventually to not to need to do that. I don’t think the emphasis ultimately should be on which of these two types of families is best for children because that is where you get beyond apples and oranges into an area where you really cannot make any kinds of judgements that make a lot of sense. that is like asking