Salon.com > Sofia Resnick

Controversial gay marriage study provokes lawsuit

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 16:00:00 +0000

In a quest for more answers surrounding the swift publication of sociologist Mark Regnerus’ paper on the controversial “New Family Structures Study” in the sociology journal Social Science Research, independent journalist John Becker filed a lawsuit Monday, seeking access to public records from the University of Central Florida in Orlando, where the sociology journal is housed and where the journal’s editor, James Wright, serves on the faculty. The suit alleges that the state school has violated the state’s public records law by failing to produce documents related to the study’s publication.

Becker filed a request for records last month through Florida’s Public Records Act, asking the school to turn over communications between Wright and other scholars and reviewers regarding the publication of the study.

Controversial gay marriage study author may be political operative

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:56:00 +0000

“You are a researcher, not an advocate. You are simply reporting on what the data tells us.”

This is the first in a long list of media-training guidelines drafted for sociologist Mark Regnerus in preparation for last year’s release of his findings of the infamous “New Family Structures Study,” a flawed, politically motivated study that suggests that children of gay parents experience more unfavorable outcomes compared to children of heterosexual, married parents.

The guidelines instructed the University of Texas at Austin associate sociology professor to focus on the science of his study and to emphasize his apolitical views. Regnerus echoed many of these talking points when his study was first released, taking pains to maintain a neutral front on the gay-marriage debate. He stated in his papers and in interviews that the study was not about gay marriage or even about gay parenting. Regnerus continues to try to appear neutral on these issues in media interviews, recently telling The New York Times’ Bill Keller that, concerning gay marriage, his study “paints the reality of people’s lives as fairly complicated.”

Conservative group tries to sway SCOTUS on gay marriage with flawed study

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:10:00 +0000

The conservative funders who bankrolled a flawed and widely cited academic study that’s critical of gay marriage choreographed its release in time to influence “major decisions of the Supreme Court,” documents show.

The documents, recently obtained through public-records requests by The American Independent, show that the Witherspoon Institute recruited a professor from a major university to carry out a study that was designed to manipulate public policy. In communicating with donors about the research project, Witherspoon’s president clearly expected results unfavorable to the gay-marriage movement.

The think tank’s efforts paid off. The New Family Structures Study came out just in time for opponents of gay marriage to cite it in multiple federal cases involving marriage equality – including two cases soon to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Same-sex parenting study hits courts

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 18:40:00 +0000

Just one day after the results of a controversial parenting study were released to the public, the research was used – and misrepresented – in a federal court brief defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act.

The brief was filed by a conservative medical group at the urging of the Alliance Defending Freedom, an influential religious right legal organization. It illustrates the right’s strategy of using the new research – which was funded by two conservative organizations – in legal battles to preserve bans on gay marriage.

On June 10, the journal Social Science Research published the findings of University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus’ “New Family Structures Study,” which compared people raised in biologically intact two-parent families to people raised in families in which one of the parents had a same-sex romantic relationship at some point. Regnerus found that the children of parents who had a same-sex relationship fared poorly by comparison. Almost immediately, the study was criticized for using a “loaded classification system” to engage in an apples-to-oranges comparison.