GAY TRUTH

For years, LGBT activists have asserted that society’s refusal to fully recognize homosexuality as indistinguishable from heterosexuality was a key contributor to suicide among young gay Americans, but a new study is challenging the notion that the advent of same-sex “marriage” reduced the suicide rate at all. D. Mark Anderson of Montana State University and the National Bureau of Economic Research, along with Kyutaro Matsuzawa and Joseph J. Sabia of San Diego State University’s Center for Health Economics & Policy Studies, released a paper this month analyzing data from State Youth Risk Behavior Surveys to “explore the relationship between marriage equality and suicidal behaviors among LGBQ-identifying youths.” Their conclusion: We find little evidence that SSM laws have reduced suicide attempts among teen sexual minorities, nor have they decreased the likelihood of suicide planning, suicide ideation, or depression.   Instead, we find some evidence that SSM legalizati

It’s high time we consult the all-powerful God Of Science when we assess the effects of children raised in same-sex headed households. On several occasions, people have attempted to refute my position citing the studies that claim there is “no difference” in outcomes between kids raised by same sex-parents and kids raised in heterosexual households. This misapprehension must be corrected because, as Science God has demonstrated through his Omniscient Data, the opposite is the reality.  The children in these new family structures are faring worse than those who are raised by married heterosexual couples. Authors of the “no differences” studies typically use participants derived by non-random methods, employ small samples, and have few controls. They often rely on recruited or volunteer participants, and some simply ask the parents about child well-being rather than studying  actual outcomes  for children. In other words, most do not adhere to best practices for social science .

Gay Couple with child (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Especially distressing to some people was what they viewed as my abandoning Mark Regnerus, the Texas sociologist who was thoroughly defamed in a court decision written by an obviously unprofessional and biased judge. Let me clarify and respond here: First, Mark Regnerus's work was exceedingly important and I do not endorse, nor do I deem acceptable, the attacks on him by people who have engaged in widespread academic negligence. Mark Regnerus, along wtih Loren Marks and Douglas Allen, played an important role in debunking a false and dangerous "consensus" that had been thrown around by gay rights advocates for twenty years. As I stated three months ago in this post , the legal arguments based on a "consensus" about same-sex parenting put forward by groups like the American Sociological Association and the American Psychiatric Association are critically deficient. The studies they cite do not meet the basic sta

November 19, 2012 ( ThePublicDiscourse ) - Seldom has the publication of a dry, factual report in sociology caused such a storm of controversy. In June 2012, the bimonthly peer-reviewed journal Social Science Research published an article by University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus titled, “How different are the children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study.”  The answer to his title’s question was: quite a bit different, and most of the differences are not good. Within minutes, it seemed, Professor Regnerus, a gifted and highly productive scholar with two previous books published on related subjects, was denounced as “anti-gay,” attacked personally and professionally, and his thoughtful, measured research conclusions were buried under an avalanche of invective, abuse, and misunderstanding. For the remainder of the summer months, Regnerus withstood an onslaught of criticism, but as the autumn arrived, it became cl

Gay Couple with child (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) If you want to know how University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus's summer has gone, look no further than The Weekly Standard . On the cover of the conservative magazine's July 30 issue are two hooded henchmen impishly turning the gears on a medieval torture wheel holding Regnerus, sweating beads as he tries to stay in one piece. The cover copy—"Revenge of the Sociologists : The perils of politically incorrect academic research"—hints at the situation sparked by the publication of Regnerus's newest research as well as the broader political discourse over same-sex marriage. The survey, known as the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), is remarkable in its scope. It's a random national sample, considered "the gold standard" of social science surveys. NFSS measures the economic, relational, political, and psychological effects on adults ages 18 to 39 who grew up in families where the father or mot

University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus sparked a firestorm of criticism from pro-homosexual activists when his peer-reviewed scholarly  article  on children raised by homosexual parents was published in the journal  Social Science Research  in June. Using a large, population-based sample, Dr. Regnerus found that children whose parents had a same-sex romantic relationship while the child was growing up suffer deficits compared to children raised by their own married biological mother and father. Dr. Mark Regnerus. Because the study undermined the politically correct claim that such children are “no different” from children with heterosexual parents, and because it reinforced a key point made in defense of the natural definition of marriage as the union of man and woman (namely, that kids need both a mom and a dad), it became urgent for pro-homosexual activists to discredit the study and, if possible, destroy Regnerus. That effort, thus far, has failed. When a libe