Brody's Notes... University Of Texas Professor Defends Critical Gay Parenting Study

By Brody Levesque | AUSTIN, TX -- A University of Texas associate professor of sociology defended a study he led,  that has come under intense fire from LGBTQ advocacy groups who have labeled it flawed and biased. (The study is due to be published in the July issue of Social Science Research magazine.)

In an interview Monday with the University's campus newspaper, The Daily Texan, professor Mark Regnerus said his study hoped to answer the question, “Is there no difference between growing up with a gay parent as opposed to other forms of family structures?”

“I stand by everything I did, said and wrote,” Regnerus told the paper. “I don’t have a political axe to grind. I know the funders are conservative. I don’t know what they make of this. I will always follow where the data leads.”

Critics have charged that Regnerus’ study is flawed because the study never bothered to answer the question of how children with LGBT parents fare in healthy, stable homes. Critics also noted what it showed is that kids with at least one parent in a same-sex relationship didn’t fare so well in broken homes.

Wayne Besen the Executive Director of Truth Wins Out wrote:

"Regnerus’ ignoble effort falls into this category with a $695,000 grant from the Witherspoon Institute and a $90,000 grant from the arch conservative Bradley Foundation. 

Most ominously, Princeton professor Robert P. George is a key member of Witherspoon. George has been affiliated with The Family Research Council and is a founder of the notorious National Organization for Marriage. 

The chances of a “think tank” tied to George producing a study that shines a positive light on gay parents are about the same as palm trees sprouting in January outside my bedroom window in Burlington, Vt."

Regnerus compared adult children raised in family structures such as “intact bio families,” which include married heterosexual couples, with children raised by gay or lesbian parents. Regnerus began the study in the fall of 2010 and used a nationally representative population-based sampling method, the same method used in the U.S. census, which differs from other studies that seek out individual people to survey.

The study compared children using 40 different categories, observing aspects of their adult life: income, voting status, current sexual orientation, depression level and current self-reported level of happiness.

“We found that there are differences between kids who grew up with a mom in a lesbian relationship and kids who grew up with mom and dad who were married and who are still married today,” Regnerus said. “It’s challenging because family structure is not a static thing, so deciding who is going to be analyzed and what the categories are calls for a lot of subjective decisions.”

Researcher Jim Burroway, who wrote an exhaustive critique of the study, puts it this way:

“Identifying a parent who has had a same-sex relationship is not the same as identifying a parent who is gay, lesbian or bisexual in a functional relationship.”

The Daily Texan also interviewed a Latin American studies senior was adopted when he was six years-old by a single gay man after spending much of his childhood in foster care. Travis Knoll told the paper that the sacrifices made by his adoptive father were an invaluable parts of his upbringing.

“My father’s orientation did indeed influence how I was raised,” he said. “It influenced my character positively. I felt I was being raised in a community. I wouldn’t trade my life for anything.” He added that he hoped that the study's “numbers won’t be used to justify issues” against homosexuals.

Knoll points out that a larger issue concerns the best options for children in foster care or wards of social service agencies that are currently in need of stable homes.

“There are thousands of children waiting for adoption by competent gay couples, and they can’t be adopted through certain agencies because it’s against their principles, or because the state still prefers to keep them in the foster systems, which are very temporary and don’t provide stability for the child,” Knoll said. 

“So regardless of the study, the real question is how can we assure society that gay couples will raise children in a similar fashion to straight couples?”

Burroway states, [...] "but the true value of a study rests on the methodology of the study itself. If the methodology is sound, then the study’s conclusions are sound regardless of where the money comes from or who’s doing it. But where the methodology fails, the broken link affects the entire chain. While there are many grounds in which to attack this study, the only legitimate way to critique it is to examine the methodology."