Mark Regnerus
LGBT advocates are denouncing a study from a University of Texas researcher that claims children with gay or lesbian parents don’t fare as well as children of heterosexuals. (Media Matters picked the study apart and found at least five ways the study is flawed.)
“Flawed methodology and misleading conclusions all driven by a right-wing ideology,” said Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of the Family Equality Council, in a statement. “That alone should raise doubts about the credibility of this author’s work. But on top of that, his paper doesn’t even measure what it claims to be measuring.”
The study was done by Mark Regnerus of the department of sociology and the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
For his heterosexual control group, Regnerus used children living in stable, two-parent homes. For his group of children of gays and lesbians, he used what was described as a hodgepodge of families that included any child whose parents had ever had a same-sex relationship, even if the child did not live with that parent.
“Because of the serious flaws, this so-called study doesn’t match 30 years of scientific research that shows overwhelmingly that children raised by parents who are LGBT do equally as well as their counterparts raised by heterosexual parents,” said Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin.
In the study Regnerus showed that some disadvantages children of gays and lesbians face are a result of the discrimination against the LGBT community. That includes the added expenses and other hurdles gay and lesbians encounter because of the lack of relationship recognition. While not its intention, the study actually makes a good case for marriage equality.
Other studies show that children of gays and lesbians fare equally as well or better than the children of heterosexuals.
The Family Equality Council, HRC, Freedom to Marry and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation issued a joint statement slamming Regnerus and attacking the study’s funding.
Funding came from the Witherspoon Institute and the Bradley Foundation, both known for their support of conservative causes. The Witherspoon Institute has ties to the Family Research Council, the National Organization for Marriage and ultra-conservative Catholic groups like Opus Dei.
I saw the impact firsthand–for years: The life of a child after one of the first court decisions in US awarding child custody to the father because of the mother’s sexual orientation.
The child, now 32, ultimately had FIVE different “mothers” who lived at some point with his mother. They each eventually left–on to another relationship!
The adults involved focused more on ensuring their own “needs” were met than on the needs & best interests of this child.
The father was humiliated, hurt, & angry over being left for a WOMAN & soon became controlling & physically abusive with the child. He was too afraid to tell the court; he’d only be hit harder when he got home.
And this strange “family” situation made him feel isolated & different from the other kids.
Believe me, the child!’s life was NEVER a bowl of cherries, no matter what studies the far-left Media Matters may cite.
Get real!
Fed up: Those are people who shouldn’t be parents. You need a license to drive. I’m all for issuing licenses to parent. But please get off your damn high horse and stop pretending it’s only gay people who have no business being parents.
The point is the UT study compared kids of straight people in stable relationships with kids of gay people who were not. Either compare kids of straight people in fucked up relationships with kids of gays and lesbians in that situation or stable homes to stable homes. When stable homes are compared, the kids of gays and lesbians usually are indistinguishable from the kids of straight people. In a few studies, the kids of gays and lesbians scored higher. In no study do they score lower.
Everyone NEEDS to understand that Dr. Regenerus did NOT study families with mommy+ mommy or daddy+daddy. In fact he only found out of his whole sampling, TWO straight up lesbain women who raised children and in an e-mail to me he says these children turned out GREAT! :
Dr. Regenerus’s Respondents were raised in a MIXED ORIENTATION MARRIAGE (MOM), or a MIXED ORIENTATION SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP. A MOM is where one spouse is gay and one spouse is straight. That is who responded to this survey people who had parents in a MOM. Regnerus confirms that he found only 2 Respondents who were raised in a straight up lesbian or straight up gay home. Here is part of his e-mailto me which he asked me to post.
[snip]”By the way, one of the key methodological criticisms circulating is that–basically–in a population-based sample, I haven’t really evaluated how the adult children of stably-intact coupled self-identified lesbians have fared. Right? Right. And I’m telling you that it cannot be feasibly accomplished. It is a methodological (practical) impossibility at present, for reasons I describe: they really didn’t exist in numbers that could be amply obtained *randomly*. It may well be a flaw–limitation, I think–but it is unavoidable. We maxxed Knowledge Networks’ ability, and no firm is positioned to do better. It would have cost untold millions of dollars, and still may not generate the number of cases needed for statistical analyses.[end snip] You can read the full e-mail exchange here-
https://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2012/06/11/45557
We know that only 1/3 of Mixed Orientation Marriages attempt to stay together after disclosure and of that 1/3, only half manage to stay together for 3 years or more (and it goes really down hill after 7 years).
FWIW I agree with Dr. Regnerus Mixed Orientation Marriages (or Mixed Orientation Sexual Relationships) that produce children are VERY BAD for the children. And that is what his study proves. It does not attempt and does NOT assess the outcomes of children raised by 2 loving moms or 2 loving dads. It.Does.Not.
This pic by Rob Tisnai depicts this research perfectly. I know he will let you re-post it.
https://wakingupnow.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/quit-damning5.png
Sorry that it’s not want you wanted to hear–truth can sometimes be ugly.
I seriously doubt that there are numerous LONG-TERM studies with a statistically SIGNIFICANT number of such children RANDOMLY chosen. Thirty years ago it was so rare that this case garnered national media attention.
(I should point out that this child’s lesbian mother made significant personal growth beginning in child’s late teen years & has tried to made amends for being so self-focused in earlier years. I consider her a close friend today.)
Unfortunately, few of us are outstanding parents; most folks carry some “baggage.” My limited experiences have shown that gays & lesbians have more than average.
I asked that now-grown child several years ago whether he supported gay marriage now.. His respose? “No.”
I happened to also meet a lesbian couple who each had been implanted with fertilized eggs, resulting in 2 sets of twins born only months apart. Their gay & lesbian friends were thrilled for them. Just your average, normal household with 4 babies simultaneously. Was any consideration given to how the children, growing up so closely together but with legally different biological parents, might be affected if–or, more likely, when–the couple split up? Of course not.
If it feels good, do it; and damn the consequences. Children are to meet OUR needs & not vice-versa..
FedUp – your arguments sound a lot like a personal vendetta. I completely agree that there are homosexually oriented people who SHOULD NOT be parents, but they exist the same way that hetero couples do. There are tons of hetero’s who are completely incapable of providing the proper home life for a family, does that mean the state attempts to prevent them from marrying? No. Does it even prevent the state from attempting to prevent them from becoming parents? Nope. Translation is simple – there are always going to be individual testimonies to both sides of the story, however those stories never fully take into account the big picture. I.E. – you’re a windbag with nothing useful to add to the conversation 🙂