Gay Parenting Junk Science on trial in MI in February

ThinkProgress.org, November 18, 2013 by Zack Ford The case challenging Michigan’s bans on same-sex marriage and adoption will go to trial in February, and state officials announced Friday that they are going to showcase four prominent “researchers” who claim that same-sex parenting harms children: Mark Regnerus, Douglas Allen, Loren Marks, and Joseph Price. Here’s a look at the “research” these four have produced that will likely inform their testimony:

Mark Regnerus

Mark Regnerus is a sociologist at the University of Texas and a social conservative who frequently writes from a perspective of Christian sexual morality. Regnerus’ infamous “New Family Structures Study” claimed that children with same-sex parents had less positive negative outcomes compared to different-sex parents, but the study did not actually address same-sex parenting. Most of the subjects in the study grew up in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, long before marriage equality was available or adoption rights were codified in many states. Only two of the individuals in the sample were actually raised from birth by same-sex parents, whereas almost all of the rest were the product of “failed heterosexual unions” who happened to have had a parent who at some point had a “romantic relationship with someone of the same sex.” An internal audit by the journal that published Regnerus’ study found his conclusions to be “bullshit,” and many academics, including the American Sociological Association, have condemned its results. Regnerus himself has admitted that the study doesn’t address same-sex parenting, but that hasn’t stopped him from using it to repeatedly speak out against marriage equality — as recently as this month in Hawaii — which he was coached to do by anti-gay groups.