Thursday, April 11, 2013

Social Science Study Spooks Gay Advocates


By Austin Ruse


WASHINGTON DC, April 12 (C-FAM) Homosexual advocates seem obsessed by a social science study that goes against them. They say the research is unimportant but can’t stop talking about it.

A year ago Dr. Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas published a 15,000-person study showing that children do best in a household with their married mother and father. He further found that no other family structure works this well and by contrast often did worse.

A tsunami of protest and personal attacks engulfed him. His university and the journal where he published his findings investigated the research and cleared him of any suspicion. Even so, the attacks on him and those who use his research continues.

Dr. Susan Yoshihara, research director of C-FAM, used the Regnerus study before the legislature in Rhode Island and came under attack by political fact checkers who claim some of her testimony was false. Yoshihara countered the popular wisdom that it makes no difference whether gay or biological parents raise a child. She said such claims have been “shattered by the latest and best social science research.”

Yoshihara also pointed to a study that challenges social science claims that sexual orientation of parents makes no difference. Loren Marks of LSU analyzed 59 studies used to make this claim and found all of them scientifically wanting.

Politifact, a self-styled watchdog of political truth, branded Yoshihara’s claim as false. Yoshihara, however, says the Politifact piece itself backed up her claim when they quoted a “prudent scholar” who said the issue is not settled in the scientific literature, which was Yoshihara’s claim in the first place.

The Regnerus study came up again this week in the pages of the New York Times. Former Times executive editor Bill Keller said, “The study was pretty well demolished by peers.”

And the Huffington Post got into the Regnurus act this week by reporting that he had media training before his study came out last year and that he received money for his study from a conservative foundation and had spoken to conservative groups.

The Huffington Post also pointed out that Regnerus signed a friend of the court brief submitted to the Supreme Court in their deliberations on same-sex marriage. They called his “little noticed” though out of nearly 50 briefs from both sides it was one of the only ones discussed during oral arguments.

Yoshihara said she brought the Regnerus study to the Rhode Island legislature because at similar hearings last year the committee chairman insisted there was no “peer reviewed” literature rebutting the “it makes no difference” claim. The Regnerus study scientifically rebuts that claim and is peer reviewed, which appears to have spooked the New York Times, Politifact, the Huffington Post and many other advocates for homosexual marriage.


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