Granted, it's an "opinion" piece, but once upon a time even opinion pieces had to have some grounding in reality. This piece by Dennis Byrne for the Chicago Tribune is notable not only for its blatant one-sidedness, but for the inflammatory language Byrne uses.
First, a gross exaggeration of the study's substance:
This is a debate-changing study, especially because it challenges more recent court findings in which judges cite the "no difference evidence" as a reason for overturning laws that define marriage as between a man and a woman.
No, it's not that at all. One key factor that Byrne conveniently forgets to mention is that the internal audit by Social Science Research, the journal that published the study, found that the peer-review process was badly flawed, marked by numerous conflicts of interest, and that the study itself is so bereft of scientific integrity that it never should have been published.
[Daniel E.] Sherkat was given access to all the reviews and correspondence connected with the paper, and was told the identities of the reviewers. According to Sherkat, Regnerus’s paper should never have been published. His assessment of it, in an interview, was concise: “It’s bullshit,” he said.
I find it hard to believe that Byrne was unaware of this, since it's been widely publicized -- but judging from his post, he limits his reading to The Weekly Standard and NOM's blog.
As for the rest of his post, it's pretty bad -- playing the victim card on Regnerus' behalf, lambasting those who have quite legitimate concerns about the closed circle of funders, consultants, and advocates (one notable link is Prof. Robert E. George, a major opponent of marriage equality and a co-founder of NOM), not to mention Regnerus' own statements that his religious beliefs "inform" his research, and dismissing the challenges to Regenerus' methodology, which are quite germane.
Another reason why I seldom read the Trib.
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