The author of a new study showing some negative outcomes for young adults whose parents had same-sex relationships is under attack because his findings conflict with what, in some corners, has become conventional wisdom.
Apparently, the idea that there is “no difference” between children of same-sex parents and their peers raised in traditional married mother-and-father households has become so entrenched among some advocates that new research presenting a contrasting picture is unwelcome—to put it mildly.
University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus’s New Family Structures Study (NFSS) is a large, nationally representative random sample of 3,000 young adults ages 18–39. It found better outcomes for those raised in intact biological families when compared to peers in seven other family structures.
The article is so badly thought out that the author, Jennifer Marshall, apparently doesn't even realize that this last paragraph contradicts the one before. Or she hopes her readers don't notice.
Zinnia Jones does a good take-down.
The homophobic right-wing seems genuinely taken aback at how poorly received theirprecious Regnerus study has been. Clearly, being widely and loudly called out on shoddy science with a hateful agenda isn’t something they’re used to. And in another decade, these results might have been accepted at face value despite the study’s many flaws, simply because it aligned with the conventional wisdom of the time that gay people must be bad for children, society, and everything. This is no longer the case – these traditional assumptions aren’t assumed anymore, and the anti-gay movement have found themselves out of their element.
It's also instructive that the majority of the comments take the author to task for not addressing the real objections to the study.
Apparently Marshall's readers are smarter than she had hoped.
2 comments:
When did The New Republic become a beacon of liberal ideas? If even TNR can see the faults in a poorly designed or dishonestly presented study, they must be glaringly obvious.
Not only are they glaringly obvious, but Regnerus himself has admitted them. He stated at one point that the study didn't say anything about children raised by two gay parents -- and now is out there beating the "biological mother and father" drum again, using his study as the authority.
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