More Troubling Questions About the Regnerus Gay Parenting Study

As time goes by the far right funded study - if one can call it that - conducted by University of Texas professor Mark Regnerus (pictured at left) seems to be taking on an ever increasing stench.   And now, it seems someone is lying about how the principal funder, The Witherspoon Foundation and Regnerus got together in the first place.  Typical those doing research seek grants and submit proposals for funding.  However, in this case it appears that Regnerus may have been solicited by The Witherspoon Foundation.  As we all know, the ultimate result was a study that suggests that it was structured so as to reach a preordained conclusion.  Namely, that children of gay parents suffer from numerous problems.   Alvin McEwen has a post at Pam's House Blend that pulls together some of the pieces of information - including new information from a piece in  The Statesman newspaper -  to create a truly unsettling picture.  Here are excerpts:

A new article about the anti-gay parenting study created by University of Texas Mark Regnerus gave some new details about how the study came to being.  And these details should lead to more questions.

A chief complaint has been where Regnerus received his funding. According to Wayne Besen of the group Truth Wins Out, the head of the study, Mark Regnerus, received a $695,000 grant from the Witherspoon Institute for the study.   The Witherspoon Foundation is affiliated with Princeton professor Robert George. At the Witherspoon Foundation, he is a Herbert W. Vaughan Senior Fellow.  George is also a founder and chairman emeritus of the National Organization for Marriage, an organization whose goal is to stop marriage equality.  Since Regnerus’s study was published, NOM and the Witherspoon Institute have been pushing it steadily.

Regnerus has insisted that the study’s funders had nothing to do with its outcome. But this is where the new information comes in from The Statesman newspaper in Texas.  According to an article that appeared on Thursday, Regnerus was approached to do the study by a member of the Witherspoon Institute.
This is noted at least two times in the article:

1. The Witherspoon Institute approached Regnerus, a sociologist, about doing a study on gay parenting and contributed about $700,000 to his project, according to Regnerus and Luis Tellez, president of the Princeton, N.J.-based institute. The Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, supplied $90,000 for the work, according to Regnerus. The Bradley Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.  The grant — the largest the Witherspoon Institute has ever given for faculty research — came with no strings attached and no pressure for a particular outcome, Tellez says.

2. In the case of the Regnerus study, Witherspoon solicited Regnerus for the work, according to Tellez, the institute’s president. Tellez said he sought money to help pay for the study from liberal philanthropists as well as Witherspoon’s mostly socially conservative contributors. But no liberal individuals or groups gave money for the project, he said.

Sorry but I have a hard time believing, in spite of the assurances, that the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative organization with a specific agenda, would approach someone to do a study and freely give what it calls “the largest grant given to faculty research” if it didn’t have expectations of what it would be receiving.  Certain questions need to be asked of the parties involved in the creation of this study – specifically why did the Witherspoon Institute want to create such a study and what did it hope to accomplish?

As noted in earlier posts on this blog, the sampling of "gay parents" in the study seems almost designed to result in a negative, anti-gay outcome.  Precisely what NOM and far right groups such as The Witherspoon Foundation would want.  Indeed, they have used the study for increased attacks on LGBT parenting and the study has been introduced by anti-gay litigants in lawsuits considering the constitutionality of anti-gay statutes. Such as DOMA.  All a coincidence?  I'm with Alvin.  Something smells rotten.   I hope the University of Texas takes its investigation into possible academic impropriety by Regnerus very seriously and that it asks these questions among others.