APA Blasts Biased Wingnut Funded Report on Gay Parents

Since its release the far right funded "study" on gay parenting has been increasingly ripped apart for its flawed methodology and bizarrely fabricated "sample" of children of LGBT parents.  Like many of the right wing funded faux studies, it seemed to decide what it wanted to conclude and then cooked the data to support the preordained result.  Box Turtle Bulletin has another good take down on the "report" and the American Psychological Association ("APA") has joined the fray and slammed the study and rejected its conclusions.   First, these highlights from The Advocate on the APA's slamming of the biased report:

A recent study called into question the ability of gay parents to raise well-rounded children, but the report has been widely blasted as biased, manipulative, and agenda-based. Now the American Psychological Association has stepped in to reiterate its belief that gay parents are just as good as straight parents.

"On the basis of a remarkably consistent body of research on lesbian and gay parents and their children, the American Psychological Association and other health, professional, and scientific organizations have concluded that there is no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental sexual orientation," the APA announced on its website earlier this week. "That is, lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children. This body of research has shown that the adjustment, development, and psychological well-being of children are unrelated to parental sexual orientation and that the children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish."

The APA was responding to the "New Family Structures Study," which called into question the effectiveness of gay parenting.  .  .  .  .  . for the most part, the paper doesn't even look at same-sex couples raising a child together in a longterm committed relationship."

Many of the study's children considered to be raised in gay households were not being raised by parents in a committed same-sex relationship, whereas many of the children in heterosexual households had two married parents. Children of parents who had at one time in their lives been in a same-sex relationship were considered to be part of a "gay household." 

It comes as no surprise that NOM and the Mormon Church have jumped on the flawed study as support for their demonizing of LGBT individuals and families.   As noted, Box Turtle Bulletin looks at the study's author as he proves unable to refute the blistering attacks.  Here are excerpts:

Children whose “moms had a lesbian relationship” weren’t necessarily “raised in a same-sex household” — the children might have never even met their mother’s lesbian partner, much less have been raised by her. Jim Burroway has done some great work pointing this out, and I’d like to extend it. In fact, I’d like to go so far as to show that Regnerus himself admits that he has, well, nothing.

Regnerus’s team interviewed 15,058 people. Few of them had a gay parent; even fewer lived with their gay parent’s partner for a significant time; and fewer still came from what Regnerus calls a “‘planned’ gay family.”

A couple points:

• Regnerus is fond of talking about “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers,” but he defines them as adults who have ever had a same-sex romantic relationship, even if it only happened once, even if it only lasted a few days.

• Regnerus has no data on “planned gay families.” He derived those numbers from looking at “respondents who claimed that (1) their biological parents were never married or lived together, and that (2) they never lived with a parental opposite-sex partner or with their biological father.” The numbers are a guess.

Back to those numbers, though. Regnerus obviously can’t draw any conclusions male same-sex parenting based on a sample of less than 1. How about lesbian same-sex parenting? Is his sample of 30-45 respondents enough to significantly describe the broader population?  No. Not unless the total nation-wide population of adults raised by two lesbian parents is about 50 or fewer.

Now here’s why this is so ugly.

• In the study’s introduction, Regnerus frames it as an examination of same-parenting and a corrective to flaws in earlier, positive studies on same-sex parenting.

• But Regnerus’s data on same-sex parenting contains the same sample-size flaws for which he which criticized those other studies.

• So once he leaves his introduction and enters analysis, he abandons all pretense of studying same-sex parenting and focuses instead on parents who have ever had a same-sex romantic relationship, regardless of whether they raised a child with that same-sex partner.

• Nevertheless, he does not correct his introduction in order to frame the issue properly.

• And finally, he grants interviews to conservative outlets, claiming that his study shows the harm of same-sex parenting, even though his own words, in his own study, demonstrate that he knows his sample size is just too damn small to say anything with confidence.

Indeed, Regnerus' work is reminiscent of the biased crap that Paul Cameron has churned out over the years to provide the anti-gay Christofascists with faux expert "studies" to support their unrelenting campaign of anti-gay hate and bigotry.  One has to in fact wonder how a reputable university could allow a faculty member to turn out a report that will result in little but embarrassment and derision.