[Vision2020] Study Used by Opponents of Same-Sex Marriage Discredited

Tue Feb 25 11:30:11 PST 2014

In Michigan, Same-Sex Marriage Goes to Trial Today. Opponents Will Cite
This Study. Too Bad It's Already Been Discredited.  by Nora
Caplan-Bricker<http://www.newrepublic.com/authors/nora-caplan-bricker>|
February 24, 2014 *The
New Republic*

On Tuesday, when a federal court in Michigan hears arguments about the
state's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, a single study will play
an outsize role. It's come to be known as the "Regnerus study"--after its
author, Mark Regnerus, a University of Texas sociologist. Opponents of
same-sex marriage say it's the best evidence yet that children raised by
gay parents suffer a disadvantage. Most experts take a different view--like
Darren Sherkat, the sociologist who was tasked with completing a definitive
review in 2012, they think "It's
bullshit<http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/controversial-gay-parenting-study-is-severely-flawed-journals-audit-finds/30255>
."

The study's formal title is "How Different Are the Adult Children of
Parents Who Have Same-Sex Relationships?"--and it set off a storm of
criticism almost immediately upon publication in 2012. *The New York Times*'
Erik Eckholm summarized it
neatly<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/us/opponents-of-same-sex-marriage-take-bad-for-children-argument-to-court.html?hp>
on
Friday, but the story is worth revisiting here--primarily because, no matter
how many times and ways other scholars try to discredit the study, it
continues to shape policy in state legislatures and amicus briefs. Michigan
is only the latest example.

Regnerus interviewed 3,000 young adults, including 248 who reported that at
least one parent had engaged in a same-sex relationship. That group showed
consistently lower psychological and behavioral wellbeing, Regnerus
said<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000610>.
And the largest gap, he reported, was "between the children of women who
have had a lesbian relationship and those with still-married (heterosexual)
biological parents."

A large group of Regnerus's peers were alarmed by his methodology. Some 200
of them signed a
letter<http://familyinequality.wordpress.com/2012/06/29/200-researchers-respond-to-regnerus-paper/>
expressing
"serious concerns about the scholarly merit of this paper." Among the
problems they cited: The study classifies as "lesbian mothers" and "gay
fathers" any people who have had same-sex relations since becoming parents.
More than half of the subjects who Regnerus holds up as victims of same-sex
parenting are, in fact, the products of heterosexual marriages that fell
apart--they are part of his dataset because a parent later went on to have a
same-sex partner, casual or otherwise. Regnerus judges the effect of
"same-sex relationships" by looking at subjects who, for the most part,
were not raised by a same-sex couple.

Many experts concluded that Regnerus had merely documented the
well-established effects of broken families on kids--and nothing unique to
same-sex parenting. That was the essential conclusion of the American
Sociological Association, which has rejected the study's
findings<http://www.asanet.org/press/asa_files_amicus_brief_in_same-sex_marriage_cases.cfm>
and
said publicly: "If any conclusion can be reached from Regnerus's study, it
is that family stability is predictive of child well-being."

Critics have also taken notice of the study's backstory, which would seem
to suggest a clear political agenda--by the groups who funded it, and
perhaps the scholar himself. As Eckholm
explains<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/23/us/opponents-of-same-sex-marriage-take-bad-for-children-argument-to-court.html?hp>,
Regnerus was recruited and his work partially funded by the Witherspoon
Institute <http://winst.org/>, a religious-conservative research center. He
also recieved $90,000 from the Bradley Foundation, which backs conservative
causes.

In addition, the University of Texas, where Regnerus works, hired an
academic consultant named W. Bradford Wilcox who was a fellow at
Witherspoon, and who had been in the institute's employ when the idea for
the study came about. As Zack Ford at ThinkProgress has
reported<http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/11/1697801/documents-reveal-anti-gay-parenting-study-was-manipulated-to-influence-supreme-court/>:
"Regnerus reached out to Wilcox back in September of 2010 for input about
'their hopes for what emerges from this project.' Wilcox also suggested the
study be pitched to the journal *Social Science Research*, where Wilcox
sits on the editorial advisory board." At one point, the president of the
Witherspoon Institute, Luis Tellez, wrote directly to
Regnerus<http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/03/11/1697801/documents-reveal-anti-gay-parenting-study-was-manipulated-to-influence-supreme-court/>
to
tell him, "It would be great to have this before major decisions of the
Supreme Court" (a.k.a. the DOMA and Proposition 8 decisions on same-sex
marriage).

After the study set off a media maelstrom, *Social Science Research* asked
Sherkat, a member of its editorial board, to perform an audit into whether
the journal had erred in publishing the study. His answer: yes. As Tom
Bartlett at *The Chronicle of Higher Education* reported at the
time<http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/controversial-gay-parenting-study-is-severely-flawed-journals-audit-finds/30255>,
three of the study's six peer-reviewers were on record opposing same-sex
marriage, and were "not without some connection to Regnerus," Sherkat
wrote<http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/controversial-gay-parenting-study-is-severely-flawed-journals-audit-finds/30255>.
"Obviously, the reviewers did not do a good job."

Regnerus, for his part, has said he didn't intend the study to serve as
conclusive evidence in the same-sex marriage fight. "Plenty of social
conservatives made more of it than it deserves, while many social liberals
went in the opposite direction, mindlessly denouncing it as having nothing
interesting to say at all," he told *The Dallas Morning News* in a defense
of his work in June<http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/sunday-commentary/20130614-mark-regnerus-defending-my-research-on-same-sex-parenting.ece>.
Asked if a parent's short-term, casual same-sex relationship could be
relevant to how a child turned out, he replied that his dataset included
such scenarios because it "is billed as a general overview" and "stability
in such households was quite uncommon in the population at large." He
added, "How relevant a parent's same-sex relationship experience is for a
child's upbringing is, of course, a viable empirical question, but ... not
every good question has data to answer it yet."

The denunciations of Regnerus' work haven't kept it from having influence.
The study appeared in amicus
briefs<http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/02/05/1545021/mormons-and-evangelicals-to-scotus-ignore-preponderance-of-science-on-same-sex-parenting/>
during
the DOMA and Prop
8<http://thinkprogress.org/lgbt/2013/01/30/1515501/catholic-bishops-to-scotus-deny-marriage-equality-because-being-gay-is-just-conduct/>
cases
that went before the Supreme Court in 2013. According to the Human Rights
Campaign (HRC), which has tracked mentions of the study, it has come up in
legislative debates in Hawaii<http://www.regnerusfallout.org/the-impact#Hawaii>
, Illinois <http://www.regnerusfallout.org/the-impact#Illinois>,
Colorado<http://www.regnerusfallout.org/the-impact#Colorado>
, Maryland <http://www.regnerusfallout.org/the-impact#Maryland>,
Minnesota<http://www.regnerusfallout.org/the-impact#Minnesota>
, Rhode Island <http://www.regnerusfallout.org/the-impact#RhodeIsland>, and
the U.S. Congress <http://www.regnerusfallout.org/the-impact#Congress>.
Before Regnerus was scheduled to testify in Michigan, his study was used as
evidence in cases that went to court in Hawaii and New Mexico. Regnerus'
work has even influenced debates abroad--especially in Russia, where Yelena
Mizulina, the chairwoman of the Duma's committee on family, women and
children, cited him
<http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/globalizing-homophobia-part-3-new-life-discredited-research>to
argue for a law banning same-sex adoption, which was enacted this
February<http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/13/world/europe/russia-same-sex-marriage-adoption-ban/>
.

The lawmaker who introduced a bill to allow the state to remove children
from gay parents, Alexei Zhuravlyov, also
quoted<http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/globalizing-homophobia-part-3-new-life-discredited-research>the
study. (His bill was withdrawn before the Olympics, but could be
reintroduced.)

HRC is currently
funding<http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/judge-orders-disclosure-of-documents-detailing-publication-of-regnerus-junk>a
gay rights activist's lawsuit against the University of Central
Florida,
which houses *Social Science Research*, seeking to obtain emails between
editors and scholarly reviewers and other documents that could further
explain how the journal allowed the study to go to print. But judging by
the year and a half since publication, Regnerus isn't going away--no matter
what new information emerges.

Source URL:
http://www.newrepublic.com//article/116741/regnerus-study-same-sex-marriage-michigan-must-defeat-bad-science
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