Suspect Science: How the RW bought the study used for SCOTUS DOMA Case
The most recent edition of the Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report Included this article and interview. The author discusses not just the Anti-LGBT study done but also the calculated move by the right to influence academia. For those familiar with rwnj it's one of the "7 mountains" of influence they plan to take over.
In July 2012, the journal Social Science Research published a study by University of Texas at Austin sociology professor Mark Regnerus that seemed to indicate that the children of LGBT parents are more likely to get involved with self-destructive behaviors like using drugs and to suffer from depression than those raised by heterosexual parents, despite many studies that have indicated otherwise. The Regnerus study was immediately trumpeted by anti-gay groups as proof that children are in danger in LGBT households. Just a day after its release, for example, it was cited in an amicus brief by the American College of Pediatricians, a tiny anti-gay breakaway from the main pediatricians’ professional association, that was filed in support of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). At press time, the U.S. Supreme Court was weighing arguments on DOMA’s constitutionality
But the study also engendered serious criticism. More than 200 other sociologists signed a letter to journal editor James Wright that decried the study’s allegedly faulty methodology, and major medical and psychological associations criticized it for similar reasons. Regnerus himself subsequently conceded that his study had problems (key reasons are detailed in the interview below), and he also said his analysis did not conclude that “gay or lesbian parents are inherently bad.” But at the same time, he has continued to defend the study’s results and to push them in anti-LGBT circles. This summer, he is to speak about it to a gathering sponsored by the anti-marriage equality National Organization for Marriage (NOM
Questions were also raised about Regnerus’ motives, seeing as how he’d accepted almost $700,000 for the study from the Witherspoon Institute, a think tank that opposes same-sex marriage and includes fellows like Robert George, one of the founders of NOM. The Bradley Foundation, another conservative think tank, gave over $60,000. Most recently, documents obtained by the American Independent suggest that Regnerus’ funders choreographed the timing of the study’s release to influence “major decisions of the Supreme Court.” The court this spring heard both the DOMA case and another involving an anti-gay marriage California referendum.
CLIP
Isn’t a key criticism also that the study doesn’t actually address children growing up in households of self-identified LGBT parents?
The key measure of gay and lesbian parenting is simply a farce. The study includes a retrospective question asking if people knew if their mother or father had a “romantic” relationship with someone of the same sex when the respondent was under age 18. This measure is problematic on many levels.
Regnerus admits that just two of his respondents were actually raised by a same-sex couple, though I doubt that he can even know that, given his limited data. Since only two respondents were actually raised in gay or lesbian households, this study has absolutely nothing to say about gay parenting outcomes. Indeed, because it is a non-random sample, this study has nothing to say about anything
You mentioned what you see as a trend in academia, the rise of conservative ideologies in science and in funding for research. How widespread is that?
There is in fact a movement to change the intellectual and cultural climate of academics. This has been going on for over 30 years. Look at things like James Davidson Hunter’s Evangelicalism: The Coming Generation, where he talks about the growth of these more intellectual conservative evangelical types in Christian colleges like Wheaton and Gordon and Calvin, which is Regnerus’ alma mater. They’ve actively courted the young, successful people in these colleges to become professors, to become intellectuals, and they support their careers.
One thing that’s disturbing to me about the Regnerus study is that Regnerus received a large amount of money from these foundations and this creates a very different scholarly and intellectual atmosphere. It creates a playing field that’s not level. Someone like Regnerus is now able to go out and buy his own data, if we’re to accept data of this quality.
Even if we were to say it’s high-quality data, he is able to get a million dollars’ worth of influence — he was able to generate that kind of funding from these conservative foundations in a way that other intellectuals are not able to do. All of the traditional sources of social scientific funding have dried up over the last 20 years and there’s nowhere to go to get money, but these guys have it. There are talks in Congress about cutting the entire social science budget at the National Science Foundation. That is chilling, because then we’ll be completely reliant on people like Mark Regnerus and Brad Wilcox [of the University of Virginia] and Christian Smith [of Notre Dame University] and people like that for our information about potentially crucial or controversial issues
More at the link: http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2013/summer/suspect-science
