Was The Anti-Gay Parenting "Study" Politically Calculated?

Having followed the anti-gay propaganda disseminated by a number of "Christian" and "family values" organizations for well over a decade, the one thing that I've come to know is that no one lies more often or more deliberately that the "godly Christian" crowd that pretends to be concerned about "protecting marriage" or "the needs of children."   As I often point out, if their lips are moving, it's about a 99.99999% chance that they are lying.  So much for the Commandment against lying and bearing false witness.  Now, there is growing evidence that the recent "study" on gay parenting - which (i) was fatally flawed from the get go given it's disingenuously structured "sample" group and (ii) truly only showed that children from more impoverished homes and single parent homes did less well than those from affluent and intact home settings - may have been deliberately coordinated for release in the run up to the 2012 elections where same sex marriage will be on the ballot in multiple states.  Think Progress looks at this likely politically contrived "study."  Here are highlights:

Mark Regnerus’ parenting paper, with its faulty negative claims about gay parenting, has been roundly criticized by LGBT groups and mainstream psychological organizations and widely praised by anti-gay groups, in particular the National Organization for Marriage. Regnerus’ paper was published simultaneously in Social Science Research with a brief by professor Loren Marks critiquing the American Psychological Association’s support of same-sex parenting.

Scott Rose at The New Civil Rights Movement is building a compelling case that the publication of these two papers was coordinated with anti-gay groups who would capitalize on its political implications. Here are some of the clues Rose has discovered:

• Regnerus and Marks published their pieces together, but Marks cited Regnerus’ paper, so he clearly had foreknowledge of its conclusions. This suggests it is likely they intentionally published simultaneously as a “one-two election year punch.”
• Marks was originally called to testify in favor of Proposition 8, but admitted in deposition that he only had read parts of the studies from which he drew conclusions and had considered no research on gay and lesbian parents. His present research, published just two years later, attempts to make the same claims.
• Marks also made his paper available for the House Republican legal team defending the Defense of Marriage Act long before it was published in a peer-reviewed journal.
• There are multiple obvious ties between NOM co-founder Robert George, the Witherspoon Institute (which funded Regnerus’ research), Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion (which is defending the research), National Review (where NOM’s Maggie Gallagher frequently writes and where she has promoted the paper), and Mark Regnerus himself, suggesting particularly convenient collusion for spinning the political implications of the paper’s publication.

If these suspicions prove true, one can only hope that Regnerus will soon be regarded as the modern day Paul Cameron and likewise regarded as a charlatan.