Michael Knowles claims LGBTQ+ people have 'pretend' families with queer parents 'not fit to raise a child'

Michael Knowles, a far-right-wing media commentator and host on The Daily Wire, is being criticized after he made inflammatory comments delegitimizing LGBTQ+ families. On Wednesday’s episode of The Michael Knowles Show, he argued that same-sex couples are unfit to raise children, calling their families “pretend” and claiming they undermine traditional family values. Knowles’s comments have sparked outrage across social media and among LGBTQ+ advocates, who have denounced his remarks as harmful and rooted in ignorance.

During his podcast, Knowles referenced a 2022 comment by controversial University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, who said that gay couples are not fit to raise children. “That’s just obviously true,” Knowles said in agreement with Wax, adding that because same-sex couples cannot biologically produce a child together, they are inherently unqualified to parent. He further criticized LGBTQ+ families who use assisted reproductive technology, such as surrogacy and in vitro fertilization, arguing that these couples are “pretending” to be legitimate parents. According toGallup, 69 percent of Americans support marriage equality.

Knowles went further to demean LGBTQ+ families, comparing the use of surrogacy to purchasing a luxury item. “Even if they go to the baby store and purchase the eggs from one woman and rent the womb of another woman and create a child as though the child were a handbag to be purchased at Ferragamo or something,” Knowles said, “they’re not fit to raise a child.”

His comments drew condemnation from LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, which noted the damage such rhetoric can inflict on families. GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis, a married mom raising twins with her wife, responded to Knowles’s remarks in a statement to The Advocate.

“Those trying to define a family by excluding some families are just out of touch with reality, apparently trying to selfishly profit or score political points off of their nonsense,” Ellis said. “Families come in all configurations including one parent, step-parents, grandparents, lesbian aunts and gay uncles, trans-parents, two moms and two dads. Research shows children of same-sex parents fare as well, and sometimes better, than kids of straight parents.”

Comprehensive analyses overwhelmingly support LGBTQ+ parenting, with researchers showing that children raised by same-sex couples experience no disadvantages compared to those raised by heterosexual parents. Family Equality reports that between 2 million and 3.7 million children in the U.S. are being raised by LGBTQ+ parents, with 191,000 of those children raised by same-sex couples.

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Studies also show that children of LGBTQ+ parents often perform at least as well, if not better, academically than children of cisgender straight parents. For example, a 2020 study published in the American Sociological Review found that children of LGBTQ+ parents, particularly female children of lesbian parents, were more willing to pursue careers considered atypical for women.

Moreover, LGBTQ+ people are seven times more likely to adopt or foster children than their heterosexual counterparts, according to a 2018 Williams Institute study.

Knowles’ comments are part of a larger pattern of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. Just last year, during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference, Knowles made headlines when he declared that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely.”

Knowles has long been an outspoken critic of LGBTQ+ rights and has a history of making inflammatory remarks. In December, he suggested that IVF is “immoral” and should be banned, even arguing that doctors performing IVF should be prosecuted. His extreme positions on LGBTQ+ families and reproductive technologies have made him a prominent figure in the far-right movement, where he continues to push back against progress toward LGBTQ+ equality.

Knowles’s comments come at a time when LGBTQ+ families and rights are under attack from conservative lawmakers and activists. Republican-led states have proposed and passed laws — more than 530 in 2024 alone, according to the American Civil Liberties Union —restricting adoption rights for same-sex couples, limiting gender-affirming care for transgender youth, and banning LGBTQ+ -inclusive education. Knowles’s rhetoric aligns with these broader efforts to erode LGBTQ+ rights under the guise of protecting “traditional” family values.

The latest GLAAD Accelerating Acceptance Study found that 93 percent of non-LGBTQ+ Americans believe children should be taught to accept people as they are, while 89 percent believe LGBTQ+ people should have the freedom to live their lives without discrimination.

“All successful families raise children to believe in themselves and use those powers to help lift up others, and that makes our whole society safer and stronger,” Ellis said. ”Everyone benefits when all families and children are seen, accepted, and celebrated.”