Christofascists Rally Around New Faux Study on Sexual Orientation and Gender

As noted in a post earlier today, the Christofascists go to all lengths to avoid admitting that their supposedly inerrant Bible is deeply flawed and in many instances simply untrue.  That same refusal to accept science and objective reality flows over into the never ending effort to sustain the myth that sexual orientation is changeable.  Why?  Because, if homosexuality is a natural phenomenon in nature - in God's plan, if  you will - then their one of their major arguments for condemning homosexuality falls apart.  Likewise, the purported prohibitions in Leviticus are exposed for what they are: the efforts of a small fringe demographic to differentiate itself from older, larger and more advanced surrounding cultures where homosexuality was accepted - e.g., the Persian Empire and Hellenistic cultures.  

In keeping with this seemingly never ending effort to embrace ignorance and rejection of scientific and medical knowledge, the Christofascists are hailing a new "study" that claims that sexual orientation is not fixed - and is therefore changeable - and that rejects much of the existent knowledge on transgender individuals.  In the wake of the repudiation of the sham study done by Mark Regnerus, the Christofascists are desperate for something to keep alive their anti-LGBT lies.  Their lifeline?  A "study" by Lawrence Mayer and Paul McHugh published in “The New Atlantis,” a non-peer reviewed journal co-published by right wing organizations (the current co-chairman of one of them is a founder of the National Organization for Marriage).  For those not knowledgeable about the term "peer reviewed," it means that articles and studys have been reviewed and approved by legitimate scholars and experts.  Non-peer reviewed journals are one step above pay to publish journals which will publish almost anything so long as the author pays the going price to have his/her piece published.  Right Wing Watch looks at the near orgasms being experienced by professional gay haters such as NOM's Brian Brown.    Here are highlights from RWW:

Anti-equality organizations are enthusiastically promoting a new study on sexual orientation and gender, hoping it will be new culture war ammunition.

The study by Dr. Lawrence Mayer and Dr. Paul McHugh appears in “The New Atlantis,” a journal co-published by the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Center for the Study of Technology and Science, which shares an address with EPPC. The New Atlantis is not a peer-reviewed journal, and has critiqued peer review, widely considered the gold standard in scientific publishing.

Among the authors’ contentions are that the belief that sexual orientation and gender identity are innate or fixed properties is “not supported by scientific evidence.” The study also says that the stress of social stigma is not a sufficient explanation for higher rates of mental health and substance abuse problems in LGBT communities.

Mayer says that McHugh initially approached him to review a monograph he had written and the project expanded from there. The prominent but controversial McHugh is a Catholic in his mid-80s who has described himself as “religiously orthodox, politically liberal, and culturally conservative – a believer in marriage and the Marines, a supporter of institutions and family values.” The new study builds on a body of work that dismisses the notion of transgender identity. TransAdvocate and others challenged McHugh’s “selective reading of transgender medical literature” two years ago, and ThinkProgress critiqued his work in 2015.

Brian Brown at the National Organization for Marriage can hardly contain his excitement about the new study, writing in a letter to supporters, “The importance of this new study cannot be overstated.” He urges people to “help spread the word” to “make sure that this groundbreaking research gains the wide hearing it deserves despite what will surely be a concerted effort by the media to bury its findings.”

Also participating in the roll-out is the Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson, one of the most prominent opponents of marriage equality. Anderson says the study’s findings undermine the Obama administration’s requirement that schools accommodate transgender children as well as the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling.

Anderson has written a book and spoken widely about how the anti-equality movement should reject and resist the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling.  Anderson has urged the anti-equality movement to conduct new research (citing  the widely discredited Mark Regnerus study on “family structures”) to create “new insights” that future Supreme Court justices could use as justification for overturning Obergefell.

As readers may recall, the Regnerus "study" was funded by right wing, anti-LGBT organizations and basically picked the conclusion it wanted to reach and doctored the "research" data to achieve that desired result.   Given the authors of this new attack on LGBT individuals, especially Paul McHugh, an ultra-right wing Catholic, I fully expect that dissections of this "study" will similarly tear it to shreds.  Not that the coming repudiation will deter the "godly folk" Christofascists from lying through their teeth.   Other than perhaps Donald Trump, no one lies as often or as viciously as the "godly Christian" crowd. 

Anti-Gay Christofascists Find a New "Expert" on Gay Parenting

For a group of people who claim to worship the Bible - including supposedly the Ten Commandments - and wear their feigned religiosity on their sleeves, no one seemingly lies more often or trots out more utterly bogus "experts" to bolster their hate-filled views than the Christofascists.  Indeed, I often remark that with these peoples' lips are moving, the safest assumption is to believe that they are lying.  You will likely be right 99.9% of the time.  Now, after Mark Regnerus was discredited by many experts and called a fraud by a federal judge, the Christofacscist have found another false expert willing to disseminate lies and bogus research on gay parenting.   This latest faux expert is Donald Paul Sullins, a Catholic priest, who has put out anti-LGBT pieces on a pay to publish website.  Like Regnerus, Sullins is a fraud and his research is bogus.  A piece in Slate looks at this latest unscrupulous attack on LGBT parents.  Here are excerpts:

The religious right is at it again. Despite the Supreme Court having settled the question of whether same-sex couples can marry and, by extension, raise families, we continue to see research studies popping up that claim to find correlations between having same-sex parents and suffering from a variety of ailments including depression, anxiety, suicidality, problems with intimacy, and even risk of parental abuse.

The latest is from Catholic University scholar Donald Paul Sullins, a Catholic priest who already has under his belt several studies that make related claims. Sullins’ most recent study was published in an Egyptian-based open access journal that requires authors to pay for publication, creating a conflict of interest since publishers who ought to perform quality control have a financial incentive to accept papers, regardless of quality. The journal’s publisher has been criticized for a lax peer-review process that isn't even overseen by a real editor.

It’s not hard to see why someone like Sullins would turn to a subpar journal to get his paper accepted. For years now, religious and social conservatives have made claims, citing research, that children are harmed by having gay, lesbian, or bisexual parents. The familiar network of anti-LGBTQ behemoths, including the Family Research Council, American Family Association, and several other groups, then spread those claims across the internet, breathlessly asserting they had proof that children need a mom and a dad to thrive and that it’s both immoral and bad public policy to allow gay people to parent—or marry. In [Sullin's study] it, he claims “adults raised by same-sex parents were at over twice the risk of depression” developing later in life as those raised by different-sex couples. He calls it the “first study to examine children raised by same-sex parents into early adulthood” and claims it “contribute[s] new information for understanding of the effects of same-sex parenting through the life-course transition into early adulthood.”

Except, as with the other studies making similar claims, it does no such thing. Sullins found 20 cases of what he calls “adolescents with same-sex parents.” Yet we know nothing about how long these subjects lived with a same-sex couple, much less whether they were “raised” by one. . . . . Sullins thus has no grounds on which to define his subjects as having been “raised” by “same-sex parents,” which would be essential for his entire anti-LGBTQ claim to make any sense.

Indeed, one wonders why this small group of anti-LGBTQ articles published since 2012 is even considered research. Each author is a highly religious man who has made it abundantly clear that his work is driven by his religious faith.

Because their transparent efforts to commandeer an entire social science field to advance a religious agenda makes their scientific claims—and them—into laughing stocks. One thing we can thank God for is the federal court system, which forced them to admit that leaps of faith, not good science, were driving their conclusions.

By contrast, the What We Know Project, which I run at Columbia Law School, has collected 74 peer-reviewed studies concluding that having a lesbian, gay, or bisexual parent causes no harm.

That debate has now been settled by the Supreme Court. There was something reprehensible about spending millions of dollars to try to hijack a scholarly discourse in an effort to advance an extremist religious ideology, especially by claiming to help kids while actually supporting policies that would deny them legal ties to their parents. Now that they have lost the battle, the fact that these social conservatives continue to gratuitously berate LGBTQ families is simply unconscionable.

Conservative Case Against Same-Sex Parenting Falls Apart

This blog has looked at the fraudulent work of right wing researchers who have sought to depict same-sex couples as a danger for children.  Among the most notorious is Mark Regnerus who was called a fraud by a federal judge after his anti-gay testimony.  Now, a new study confirms what most of us have long known: gay parents are good parents and their children do as well or better than those raised in heterosexual households.  Think Progress looks at the new study findings.  Here are excerpts:

Conservatives have long squawked that the studies showing positive outcomes for the children of same-sex couples are lacking methodologically, instead offering their own flawed studies to claim negative consequences. A new study, however, uses their preferred methods — minus the flaws — and proves what the medical community has already long known: same-sex couples make great parents.

[T]he Williams Institute, an LGBT think tank at the UCLA School of Law, decided to call Regnerus’ bluff. Using data from the National Survey of Children’s Health, researchers were able to identify same-sex couples who were raising children and compare them to demographically similar different-sex parents. Because few male same-sex parent households were included in the study, they focused on female couples, identifying 95 that they then matched against similar different-sex households.

The study found only one difference between the families: same-sex couples had more stress than their different-sex peers. But even with that distinction, there was no difference in the outcomes for their children, including their general health, emotional difficulties, coping behavior, or learning behavior.

This juxtaposition actually lends more credence to same-sex parenting. The higher stress rate should have correlated with less favorable outcomes for the children, but it didn’t. This suggests, the researchers reason, that the lesbian mothers might be using additional support systems like parenting groups or counseling services, and likewise, their kids may also develop greater resilience skills having to defend against the stigma of having same-sex parents.

There is an obvious explanation as to why the new study found affirming results while conservatives found negative outcomes in their population-based studies. The new study controls for committed couples; it compares same-sex families who have raised their children from birth with different-sex families who had done the same. None of the same-sex parents who had broken up or divorced were analyzed in the study.

Regnerus — seemingly intentionally — didn’t account for family structure.  . . . Regnerus’ data only included two children who had been raised from birth by committed same-sex couples, and their outcomes were just fine. . . . . Similar population-based surveys from Donald Paul Sullins and Douglas Allen used the same trick of comparing unstable same-sex families to stable different-sex families.

In some ways, the new study isn’t groundbreaking. There has already been scientific consensus in support of same-sex families for decades. With the Supreme Court’s marriage equality decision last year and the recent conclusion of the challenge to Mississippi adoption ban, same-sex adoption is now legal in all 50 states.

 Despite the study findings, it is a safe bet that the "godly folk" will continue to tell the same tired lies about gay parenting.  The truth simply does not matter to them.

New Research Further Debunks Mark Regnerus Study On Gay Parenting

One of my last posts on Mark Regnerus involved efforts by students at the University of Texas to have him disciplined - read fired - in the wake of his bogus research on gay parenting being rejected by a federal judge in Michigan last year and the University's sociology department formally distancing itself from Regenus and his "research" which was funded by far right anti-gay groups.  Now, two researchers who have been reviewing Regnerus' fraudulent study are about to release a study of their own which concludes that when all of the false data is stripped from Regnerus' work, it actually supports gay parenting.  Right Wing Watch looks at the coming release:

In an upcoming article, a pair of sociologists are putting what they call the “final nail in the coffin” of the much-criticized study by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus that purported to show that being raised by gay and lesbian parents harms children. The Regnerus study has become a favorite tool of Religious Right activists seeking to show that households led by same-sex couples are bad for children. At the same time, the study has come under scrutiny for the funding it received from anti-gay groups and for its lack of respondents who were actually raised in same-sex parent households.

Indiana University's Brian Powell and the University of Connecticut’s Simon Cheng didn’t just find methodological flaws in Regnerus’ research — they took the data he collected, cleaned it up, and redid the study, coming to a very different conclusion about families led by same-sex couples. Their article will be published in “Social Science Research,” the same journal that published the Regnerus study.

By eliminating suspect data . . . . and correcting what they view as Regnerus’ methodological errors, Cheng and Powell found that Regnerus’ conclusions were so “fragile” that his data could just as easily show that children raised by gay and lesbian parents don’t face negative adult outcomes.

“[W]hen equally plausible and, in our view, preferred methodological decisions are used,” they wrote, “a different conclusion emerges: adult children who lived with same-sex parents show comparable outcome profiles to those from other family types, including intact biological families.”

In other words, as University of Maryland sociologist Philip Cohen put it, “when you clean the data and fix the things that are fixable, the results just don’t hold up.” 

[O]ver one-third of the 236 people whom Regnerus classified as having been raised by a lesbian mother or gay father “should absolutely not have ever been considered by Regnerus in this study.”

Reanalyzing Regnerus’ data after eliminating respondents who offered dubious biographical information and recategorizing people who clearly were not raised by gay parents, Cheng and Powell found only three statistically significant differences between  the respondents raised by a lesbian mother and those who reported having been raised in “intact biological family” households. Only one of those differences could be considered a negative adult outcome — those respondents were more likely to have had an affair while married or cohabitating.

If the University of Texas cares about its reputation, Regnerus needs to be sent packing.  He is a liar and a fraud - which, of course, is why he's a darling of the Christofascists.

University Papaer Calls on University to Address Mark Regnerus' Ethical Lapses

Click image to enlarge - Photo Credit: Alex Dolan | Daily Texan Staff

Despite being located in a state where Republicans seem to celebrate the embrace of ignorance and condone shameless lying to further their racist, homophobic, reverse Robin Hood, agenda, the University of Texas at Austin is over all a top notch university.  Now, the student newspaper is calling on the University administration to deal with the ethical lapses and fabricated lies of Mark Regnerus who has pocketed money from far right anti-gay groups, generated false studies, and been slammed by federal judges.  Even his own department has distanced itself from his bogus claims and studies.  A piece in the Daily Texan suggests that students think that Regnerus needs to go and are questioning why Regnerus hasn't been disciplined or fired.  One obvious question is that of who is protecting him?  Here are article highlights:

As another gay marriage case goes before the Supreme Court, Mark Regnerus has once again been spared further university scrutiny for his New Family Structures Study.

Since 2012, the associate sociology professor has courted controversy for publishing observed differences between the children of parents who had a same-sex relationship and children living with both biological parents that suggested that the latter do better than the former in life. The criticisms have focused mainly on flaws in the study’s methodology, which established no causal link between the parents’ sexuality and the observed outcomes. Ethical concerns also include Regnerus’ alleged misuse of his findings in court and failure to stop misuse and misrepresentation of his findings by conservative groups such as Focus on the Family and the Heritage Foundation.

In early March, College of Liberal Arts Dean Randy Diehl wrote a letter, obtained by the Texan through an open records request, to Robert Crosnoe, chair of the sociology department. In the letter, it is revealed that despite objections from key figures in the college, no action will be taken on the ethical concerns raised about the NFSS, and Regnerus’ post-tenure, or six-year performance, review rating will remain “exceeds expectations.”

The twists and turns this story has taken are sometimes convoluted, but the potted history, at least as it pertains to this letter, is thus:

When Regnerus’ post-tenure review committee met in 2013-2014, it determined that his performance “exceeded expectations” based on his publication record. However, then-department chair Christine Williams disagreed, citing the controversy surrounding the methodology and conclusions of the NFSS.

[D]eferred to Robert Peterson, associate vice president for research, and his supervisor, Juan Sanchez, vice president for research. They did not believe that the charges leveled met the standards of scientific misconduct and declined to investigate.

The post-tenure review committee met again in January of this year and was tasked by Diehl with considering only methodological problems. Based on this charge, the committee found the following, as summarized and endorsed by Diehl: “Valid methodological concerns have been raised. … A key one is this: Because the design of the study ensured that the parental same-sex relationship variable was confounded with the family structure stability variable, it is not possible to conclude that the different life outcomes between the two groups were caused by the parental relationship variable.” Diehl, citing this finding and Regnerus’ original caution that the article did not deal with same-sex marriage legal rights, agreed that “no policy implications about same-sex parenting should be drawn from the study.” But the fact is Regnerus did use those findings in court.

[W]e are disappointed that he didn’t act on the serious ethical dilemmas caused by Regnerus’ reckless misuse of his study, not only because they don’t even give Regnerus a slap on the wrist, but also because his assertion that post-tenure review committees should not concern themselves with ethical issues sets a dangerous precedent and is also inconsistent with the University’s Comprehensive Periodic Review Guidelines. Section 10 of the guidelines states that “incompetence, neglect of duty, or other good cause” may be used to to initiate “appropriate disciplinary action.”

We don’t fault Diehl for having the impulse to keep the peace, but it should have been outweighed by the blinding  scientific errors and ethical lapses demonstrated by Regnerus.

Regnerus’ post-tenure review decision is final. However, for years now, Regnerus has turned a blind eye, and contributed directly, to the perversion of his findings by right-leaning activists. Diehl shouldn’t repeat his mistake. Instead of sitting idly by, he should take real action and more forcefully condemn not just the methodological, but also the ethical, shortcomings of Regnerus’ work.

Given the extreme anti-gay animus of the Republican controlled Texas legislature, one cannot help but wonder whether the university is afraid to fire Regnerus because of the political - and funding backlash - that might go with it.  Meanwhile, the University's reputation continues to be sullied by Regnerus' continued presence on the faculty.  Should Regnerus and/or his study be slammed in the coming U.S. Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, the damage will only be magnified.  Regnerus needs to be fired and relegated to working some place like Liberty University or Regent University where no sane, thinking person takes the institution seriously.

Conservatives Praise Severely Flawed Study About Same-Sex Parents

Dishonest "researcher" Donald Sullins

This blog has noted a number of times the hugely flawed gay parenting "study" issued by Mark Regnerus.  Indeed, the study was so flawed that Regnerus' own department trashed both Regnerus and his anti-gay report that was funded by right wing anti-gay groups,  Now, Donald Paul Sullins, a Catholic priest and sociology professor at Catholic University of America who is also a fellow of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute, a project of Family Research Council, a certified hate group, has authored a similar study that seeming decided the anti-gay findings it wanted to derive and then manipulated data and facts to purportedly support the preordained conclusions. As I have said many, many times, no one lies more often or more deliberately than the "godly folk."   Both Regnerus and now Sullins need to be expelled from the faculties of their respective universities.   Think Progress looks at this latest religious extremist propaganda smear piece.  Here are highlights:

Conservatives are excitedly promoting a new study that supposedly reveals negative outcomes for the children of same-sex parents. Like the infamously flawed Mark Regnerus study rushed out two years ago, the new study seems timed to impact the Supreme Court’s upcoming consideration of marriage equality for same-sex couples. It suffers, however, from some of the same flaws and biases as Regnerus’ study, and doesn’t actually support the argument against marriage equality that it tries to make.

The new study comes from Donald Paul Sullins, a Catholic priest and sociology professor at Catholic University of America. Sullins is a fellow of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute, a project of the anti-LGBT Family Research Council, and a Fourth Degree member of the Knights of Columbus, which has funneled millions of dollars into fighting marriage equality over the past decade. In 2010, he co-wrote a study suggesting that female homosexuality was somehow connected to growing up in a broken home, and when he has written about same-sex marriage, he uses scare quotes around the word “marriage.”

Sullins conducted an analysis of data from the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) that had been collected from 1997-2013. He concluded that information about the 512 same-sex parents identified in the study demonstrates that their children have more emotional problems compared to couples raised by their biological different-sex couples.

One of the first major flaws, however, is the fact that Sullins has no information about whether the same-sex couples were actually married. As he notes, “Almost all opposite-sex parents who are raising joint biological offspring are in intact marriages, but very few, if any, same-sex parents were married during the period under observation.”

No conclusions can actually be drawn about the impacts of legalizing same-sex marriage because the study, by its own admission, collected no data about same-sex marriage or its effect on children. 

Regnerus himself provides an overview of the research. In his attempt to defend it, however, he in turn reveals that it also has the very same flaws as his own study.

As a vehicle for opposing same-sex marriage, the study severely lacks integrity, as its political positions don’t jibe with its data.  

Conservatives praise these studies for their large samples, eagerly highlighting their negative results while ignore the distortions required to arrive at them. A recent large study from Australia with a similarly-sized pool of same-sex parents who had actually raised children together as couples found that the children have quite positive outcomes. Indeed, there are ample studies that consistently justify the medical community’s support for same-sex couples to have equal access to marriage and joint adoption for their families. As Regnerus himself pointed out, when researchers don’t conflate same-sex families with unstable homes, the results are positive.

It is also noteworthy that Sullins is a 4th Degree Knight of Columbus, an organization that has consistently supported bishops and cardinals who covered up for and abetted predator priests and threatened and intimidated abuse victims and their families.   The K of C was founded to protect widows and children but over the years its main focus has been to support the corrupt Church hierarchy and throw children under the bus. 

Vatican Uses Videos of Discredited Mark Regnerus at Marriage Confab

I pondered whether or not Pope Francis can be trusted on LGBT issues in a post this morning.   If I was leaning towards answering "No" to that question this morning, tonight the answer is a resounding "No"!  Why?  It turns out that the videos shown at the Vatican during Pope Francis' meeting with a gathering of American anti-gay hate group leaders were the handiwork of Mark Regnerus, the discredited "researcher" who was found testimony was found to be borderline fraudulent by a federal judge in Michigan.  My blogger friend Jeremy Hooper connected the dots and blew the Vatican's cover.  Here are highlights from Good As You:

A few months back, I played a clip where Mark Regnerus of the infamously shoddy study that hoped to discredit gay parents mentioned he was filming videos around the world. Today, Baptist writer and activist Denny Burk answers the question of what videos he was filming.

Yes, that's right: He was filming those anti-gay videos that I have been showing you all week. You know, the ones from the pointedly discriminatory Vatican conference that has been going on for the past three days? Those anti-gay, propagandistic clips come courtesy of the very same man who tried to sway the public with an anti-gay, propagandistic study. 

What a truly bizarre choice. Like almost too bizarre to be believed, frankly. It seems that the Vatican isn't only courting "culture war"—it's begging for one.

 I can only hope that Andrew Sullivan and those like him who are having near orgasms over Francis' supposed movement to change the Catholic Church will stop gasping and open their eyes.  As I have said, NOTHING has changed under Francis and my bet is that nothing will other than much slicker PR.   Meanwhile, I continue to wonder when

63 Texas Republicans Sign Brief Saying Gay Marriage Will Lead To Incest and Pedophilia

Texas Conservative Coalition marriage brief

If the gathering in Ames, Iowa mentioned in the last post doesn't do enough to convince you that the Republican Party has become a sectarian party, then pay attention to Texas Republicans, 63 of whom just signed onto a brief filed with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that alleges that legal same sex marriage will lead to the legalization of incest and pedophilia.  Yes, you read that right.  A piece in the Huffington Post looks at the batshitery and shameless self-prostitution of these Republicans who, other than the dictates of the Christofascists they pander to, have nothing to back up their claims.  Here are article highlights:

In support of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s efforts to reinstate the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, more than 60 Texas lawmakers signed an amicus brief Monday arguing that recognition of gay marriage could lead to the legalization of incest, pedophilia and polygamy. 

Filed with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, 63 members of the Texas Conservative Coalition, the state legislature’s conservative caucus, advanced the notion that legalizing same-sex marriage could provide legal justification for the recognition of various moral taboos, including incest and pedophilia.

“The district court broadened the definition of the ‘existing right to marry’ as one that includes the right of people to ‘select the partners of their choosing’ for marriage, without regard to sex,” the brief contends. “If the right to select ‘partners of their choosing’ is the criterion used to invoke marriage as a fundamental right, then marriage restrictions on age, polygamy, and consanguinity are also ripe for challenge.”

As first reported by Lone Star Q, signatories include the GOP nominee for lieutenant governor, state Sen. Dan Patrick, Texas House Speaker Pro Tempore Dennis Bonnen (R) and state Sen. Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee for attorney general. 

“Another ground cited by supporters of Texas’s marriage laws and subsequently dismissed by the district court is that recognition of same-sex marriage ‘could lead to the recognition of bigamy, incest, pedophilia, and group marriage,’” the brief continued. “As already discussed in this brief, restrictions on marriage relating to these moral considerations remain valid. Thus, the goal of actively trying to prevent those practices from becoming valid is entirely rational public policy."

While the Republican lawmakers concede that “recognition of pedophilia or other morally reprehensible actions” may not actually be the “logical next step” following marriage equality, they maintain that legislators enacted Texas’ marriage laws "with the intention of supporting marriage arrangements that they believe support valid goals related to those concerns.”

The friend-of-court brief comes one week after Abbott’s office filed an appellants brief urging the appeals court to reverse U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia’s February decision, which deemed the state's same-sex marriage ban in violation of the 14th Amendment’s due-process and equal-protection clauses.

Not surprisingly, the brief cites the discredited "research" of Mark Regnerus which has been disavowed by even his own department at the University of Texas.
 

Mark Regnerus Attacks New Study on Children of Gays - Is He Out for Career Suicide?

With the Christofascists and their paid whores - both in the realm of politics and faux experts - who make sex workers look forthright and virtuous in comparison, objective facts simply do not matter.   It is all about trying to maintain an increasingly discredited ideology without which the Christofascists seemingly would go into psychological melt down.  Just as some of the most untethered from reality far right evangelicals are in denial that they are losing the war against same sex marriage, so too some of the faux experts favored by the Christofascists are so obsessed with supporting the anti-gay evangelical agenda that they seem to be willing to destroy what's left of their already careers.  A case in point?  Mark Regnerus who, after a lambasting in the Michigan gay marriage ban lawsuit, seems heel bent to become little more than a quack relegated to securing a position at some small extreme Christian college.  As noted before, one has to wonder how long it will be before the Universality of Texas finds an excuse to remove Regnerus from the faculty.  A piece in Slate looks at Regnerus' latest insanity.  Here are highlights:

You might think that a researcher who was repudiated by his own department, caught lying about the role of funding in his research, and generally made the laughing stock of serious scholars in his field would lay low for a while. If this researcher had any desire to rehabilitate his career, you might assume, he would avoid repeating the same line of ungrounded, politicized, and harmful claims about LGBTQ families that badly marred his career in the first place.

But if you were speaking of Mark Regnerus, you’d be wrong. A young, conservative Catholic professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Regnerus gained renown in recent years for getting through peer review a fundamentally flawed study that claimed children of same-sex parents fared poorly, when the study didn’t even examine, well, children of same-sex parents. Numerous investigators from within and outside academia showed definitively that the study—from conception to design to funding to execution and roll-out—was a conservative PR campaign meant to influence court cases to block same-sex marriage by denigrating LGBTQ families with false claims about child outcomes. And all of this with no regard for the stigmatizing impact on those families, particularly children, in whose names conservatives have famously waged their anti-modernist campaigns.

In the wake of yet another study showing the kids are all right, Regnerus has again taken up his pen, this time trying to skewer the latest data by hurling at them the same criticisms that discredited his own study. Yet the facts are simple, and they’re not remotely on his side. 

[O]f the 15,000 people Regnerus screened, only 248 even had one parent who had had a same-sex relationship, and of those, only two were actually raised for any significant period of time by a stable same-sex couple.  

Regnerus’ sample size was two. Two children with same-sex parents. Which gives new meaning to the phrase, “unusual sample size.”

By contrast, the Crouch study that Regnerus condemns looked at 500 children with a gay parent, more than twice as many as Regnerus found. And even though they were not all in stable, two-parent homes, the children fared better on several measures.

It’s no surprise that a federal judge in Michigan earlier this year dismissed Regnerus’ testimony against same-sex marriage as a farce, saying: “The Court finds Regnerus’s testimony entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration.” Hopefully the rest of the world will follow suit.

Again I ask the question: when is the University of Texas going to send Regnerus packing?  His very presence combined with more batshitery is only harming the university's reputation. 

Religion - The Sole Basis For Opposition to Gay Rights

I have long maintained that the Christofascists hate gays because our very existence and normalcy suggest that the Bible's supposed prohibitions on same sex relationships is perhaps false.  For those who for whatever twisted psychological reasons cannot deal with uncertainty or anything that suggests that they cannot be assured of a good after life by dutifully checking off the boxes on the church sponsored check lists, this is absolutely terrifying.  And despite efforts to depict opposition to gay rights as based on anything but pure religious animus - e.g., the bogus Regnerus "study" and claims of faux experts are examples of this - in the final analysis religion is the sole justification for anti-gay laws.  Stupidly, in my view, many of the more recent Christofascists protests ranging from The Family Foundation outside the Norfolk federal courthouse to NOM's failed "March for Marriage" only have served to underscore this reality.  Think Progress interviewed some of the participants at NOM's pathetic event who by their statements highlighted religious based discrimination - something already illegal even in Virginia - was their true motivation.  Here are highlights:

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) hosted its second annual “March For Marriage” Thursday in front of the U.S. Capitol, a rally with speakers opposing same-sex marriage followed by a march to the Supreme Court. An estimated 2,000 people participated, many of whom had traveled by bus from New Jersey and New York City. After last year’s march, which was held in conjunction with the Supreme Court hearing on the Defense of Marriage Act, NOM attempted to inflate the numbers, but this year’s crowd was smaller than even the most conservative estimates from last year.

Both on the dais and in the crowd, religious beliefs were the driving force behind attendees’s opposition to same-sex marriage.

ThinkProgress spoke with several members of the crowd to get a sense of why they were participating, and most cited their religious beliefs as their primary motivation. In particular, many were religious leaders themselves or specifically came to the march with a church group.  

Mary from Virginia Beach explained to ThinkProgress that she is a devout Catholic who believes that marriage is a covenant between a man, a woman, and God, and “we cannot change what the Bible defines.” She actually suggested that she would be okay with civil unions for same-sex couples, but she was also concerned that children would read books and learn that same-sex marriage is okay, even though it’s against their families’ beliefs . . . she believes that acting on homosexuality is a sin.

Jasmine came to the march from New York City because she was asked to by her church: “I was told by my church ministry to come out here and support what we believe in, which is a man and a woman to get married and unite and have children… If a man and a man were to get married, that would violate that law.” 

Some said that they believe that there are consequences to legalizing same-sex marriage. A.J. from New Jersey told ThinkProgress that he believes God might flood the world like he did in the times of Noah as punishment for society’s sexual sins

Emily came from Jersey City, New Jersey because she believes that “homosexual marriage” is “completely immoral and wrong.” She doesn’t want the kids she’ll eventually have to live through this because “you want your society to be the way you are.” Joe rode down to the march with his church from the Bronx. Since New York passed same-sex marriage, he has noticed same-sex couples holding hands in public more often, admitting, “It makes me uncomfortable.”

The "godly Christian" crowd consistently depicts gays as being "sick" and "broken" yet in reality, it is they themselves who are the ones who are sick and broken - mentally ill, perhaps. 

Does the University of Virginia Have Its Own Mark Regnerus?

I have written numerous times about Mark Regnerus at the University of Texas and his discredited "study" funded by right wing ultra right anti-gay organization which was used by Christofascists to oppose marriage equality and adoption and foster care by gay couples.  Now, some wonder if something similar may have gone on at the University of Virginia with Professor Douglas Laycock, who is married to UVa President Teresa A. Sullivan.  Laycock has authored pieces that support misnamed "religious freedom laws" that the Christofascists want to grant themselves the right to ignore laws they do not like and to discriminate based on claimed religious belief.  Laycock likewise supports Hobby Lobby in its ongoing case before the U.S. Supreme Court case involving Hobby Lobby's desired to ignore the contraception coverage requirements of the Affordable Health Care Act.   Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed to investigate what funding has been used by Laycock to back his support for religious extremist positions.  Here are highlights from the Richmond Times Dispatch:

University of Virginia legal scholar Douglas Laycock is facing criticism from gay rights groups for his support of religious freedom laws that activists say could lead to discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Activists also are upset at his support for Hobby Lobby in an ongoing Supreme Court case involving contraception coverage.

Laycock, who is married to UVa President Teresa A. Sullivan, is the subject of a Freedom of Information Act records request by two UVa student activists - Gregory Lewis and Stephanie Montenegro. In an open letter to the professor, Lewis and Montenegro said that while they respect Laycock's right to academic freedom, they believe his writings supporting controversial religious freedom laws are holding back progressive causes such as access to contraceptives and gay marriage.

"Most recently, your legal work on the topic of 'religious liberty' has been used as a basis of discrimination bills like the one that went into effect in Mississippi and nearly in Arizona," read the letter. "Your work has also been used in efforts to resist the requirement in the Affordable Care Act that employers cover the cost of contraception."

Montenegro and Lewis are seeking, among other things, university-funded travel expenses and cellphone records for the past two-and-a-half years. The students wrote that the request - a copy of which was sent to The Daily Progress - was in the public interest, seeking "a full, transparent accounting of the resources used by Professor Laycock which may be going towards halting the progress of the LGBT community and to erode the reproductive rights of women across the country."

"These laws mostly address miscellaneous conflicts between the practices of assorted religious groups and government regulations," Laycock said.

But lately, the laws have been in the headlines as the battle over gay marriage continues around the country. Some anti-gay-marriage groups see it as a way to allow businesses to discriminate against gay and lesbian couples, said Heather Cronk, spokeswoman for the national gay rights advocacy group Get Equal.

"There shouldn't be a need for a new law ... if there are already protections under freedom of religion," Cronk said. "There are no protections for LGBT people in place," she added.

Among the records requested by Lewis and Montenegro are emails between Laycock, Alliance Defending Freedom and the Becket Fund.  Laycock said he believes the campaign is based on guilt-by-association.

"'He's giving aid and comfort to the enemy' - that's their position," Laycock said "My position is civil liberties applies to both sides. It applies to all Americans."

One can only hope that public funds have not been used to further discrimination and extremist positions.  Given the controversy that  surrounded his wife's tenure as president of the University, one would hope that Laycock isn't another Regnerus.

Pundit Fact: Ralph Reed is a Liar When It Comes to Gay Parenting

As some readers will recall, Ralph Reed's version of an Easter message of love was to appear on ABC’s Easter Sunday edition of This Week proceed to lie about gays and gay parenting.  Reed - who I suspect is a self-loathing closet case based on our meeting years ago when I was active in the GOP - among other things stated "Social science is irrefutable" that children are better off being raised by a mom and a dad.  Like so much else that comes out of the mouths of the "godly Christian" crowd, Reed's statement was patently untrue.  Thankfully, Pundit fact has taken Reed to task.  Here's the take down via Politifact.com:

Faith and Freedom Coalition founder Ralph Reed told Raddatz he doesn’t support gay couples raising adopted children.

"This is about what's best for children here in the United States. And the social science is irrefutable," Reed said. "And it is that a child who grows up in a home without the mother and father present and they both play very unique procreative, nurturing and socializing role, they're nine times more likely to end up dropping out of high school. They're five times more likely to end up in poverty. And they're three times more likely to end up addicted to drugs and alcohol."

PunditFact wanted to know what social science has to say about the effects gay parents have on children compared to straight parents.

The social science statistics Reed called "irrefutable" actually have nothing to do with gay couples raising kids. Instead, they’re focused on the effects of children who grow up without a father in a one-parent household. Put another way, the studies focus on the quantity of parents and not their gender.

We decided not to investigate further the specific stats Reed cited once we realized they weren’t measuring what he said they were.

Comparisons like Reed’s are "a complete misuse of the research," said Judith Stacey, a New York University sociologist.

We did find one study funded by conservative organizations as showing gay parents are worse than straight ones, but it’s been denounced by the American Sociological Association, the researcher’s own university and many reputable sociologists. In conducting the study, Mark Regnerus loosely defined same-sex couples and, in doing so, only spoke with two children who were actually raised by gay parents.

Our ruling
Reed said there’s "irrefutable" social science to show that children are better off being parented by a mother and father. That’s not right. What studies really show is that children are better off with two parents. Those studies do not focus on gender.

All reputable research so far indicates that children brought up by gay parents are just well off as those brought up by straight parents.  We rate Reed’s statement False.

With mouth pieces like Reed knowingly telling lies it is little wonder that the under 30 generations hold Christianity in such low regard.  In some ways, I hope Reed and his hate merchant allies continue to lie - they are killing the Christian brand and personally, I look forward to the day when self-identifying Christians are a minority in America. 

American Sociological Association Files Brief in Bostic v. Rainey

4th Circuit Court of Appeals

One of the constant mantras one hears from the extreme Christofascists at The Family Foundation - an affiliate of the hate group Family Research Council("TFF")  - is that "ever child deserves a mother and father" and the claim that children raised by same sex parents do not thrive and succeed as fell as those with heterosexual parents.  These claims are backed by nothing other than TFF's virulent anti-gay animus and its desire to force all Virginians to live in accordance with TFF's extreme religious beliefs.  TFF is in short the Christian version of the Taliban.  The legitimate research shows that children do just as well in same sex parent headed homes.  This is the point that the American Sociological Association ("ASA") drives home in its amicus brief filed in Bostic v. Rainey now pending before the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.  LGBT Weekly has details on the ASA brief:

The American Sociological Association (ASA) filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit today supporting the fight to overturn Virginia’s gay marriage ban and continuing its now 14-month effort to highlight the overwhelming body of social science research that confirms “children fare just as well” when raised by same-sex or heterosexual parents. The Fourth Circuit is scheduled to consider the lawsuit challenging the ban in the near future.

“The amicus brief reflects the ASA’s ongoing commitment to ensuring that U.S. courts considering lawsuits to legalize gay marriage know that social science research shows parents’ sexual orientation has no bearing on their children’s well-being,” said ASA Executive Officer Sally T. Hillsman. “The claim that same-sex parents produce less positive child outcomes than heterosexual parents is contrary to the scientific data, and the ASA will continue to publicize the facts”

This is the fourth time in the past 14 months that the ASA has backed challenges to same-sex marriage bans through amicus briefs. In March 2014, the ASA filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit that addressed gay marriage bans in Utah and Oklahoma. In October 2013, the ASA submitted a brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit regarding same-sex marriage bans in Nevada and Hawaii. Similarly, in February 2013, the ASA weighed in with the U.S. Supreme Court on Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California, and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which banned among other things federal recognition of valid same-sex marriages.

“For as long as is necessary, we will continue to provide the courts with the clear social science research consensus that children raised by same-sex parents fare just as well as children raised by heterosexual parents,” Hillsman said. “We will also continue to correct the record when gay marriage opponents misinterpret or misrepresent social science research to support their position, which unfortunately happens all too frequently.”

“The Regnerus papers, among other sources gay marriage opponents continue to invoke, provide no basis for their arguments because that research does not directly examine the well-being of children raised by same-sex parents,” Hillsman said. “These analyses, therefore, do not undermine the social science research consensus and do not establish a scientific basis for gay marriage bans.”

Rather, social science research suggests same-sex marriage may be beneficial for children. “I have said this before, but it bears repeating: The research supports the conclusion that the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples has the potential to improve child well-being insofar as the institution of marriage may provide social and legal support to families and enhance family stability — all of which are key drivers of positive child outcomes,” Hillsman said.

Note how the ASA again slams the dishonest and fraudulent Regnerus study that was funded by right wing organizations and which increasing appears to have had a predetermined outcome.   No one is more dishonest than the "godly folk."