NOM, Regnerus And Robert Oscar Lopez

We have been reporting on an invalid sociological study –allegedly, but not actually, about gay parents’ child outcomes — carried out by researcher Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas, Austin.

Regnerus’s known total of $785,000 for the study was arranged by The Witherspoon Institute and The Bradley Foundation, where Robert P. George – head of the anti-gay-rights, scientifically disreputable National Organization for Marriage (NOM) — holds positions of authority. Witherspoon president Luis Tellez is a NOM board member.

A preponderance of evidence appears to suggest that Regnerus is politically in collusion with his lying, anti-gay-rights funders. This report adds to the weight of evidence.

Many of Regnerus’s past public statements are arrogantly oblivious to the very existence of gay human beings. For example, in April, 2012, the New York Times published a group of essays from different writers on the theme: Are ‘Family Values’ Outdated? 

Regnerus’s contribution was a NOM-like slogan: One Man, One Woman, One Marriage.

Not only has Regnerus never once voiced support for gay rights; he has been haughtily dismissive of some of his gay victims’ calls for him to clarify his positions in the toxic wake of his Witherspoon/NOM-funded “study.”

Take, for example, Dr. Eric Anderson, a sociologist at the University of Winchester, England.

Along with over 200 other Ph.D.s and M.D.s, Dr. Anderson signed a letter expressing concern over the Regnerus study’s lack of intellectual integrity, as well as over the very suspicious circumstances through which the study got published.

This reporter copied the 200+ signers of that letter on an e-mail to Regnerus, asking Regnerus questions pertaining to the baseline methodological failings of his study.

Regnerus ignored the e-mail. Yet, Dr. Anderson copied everybody on an e-mail which he  in turn sent to Regnerus, asking him to respond to my questions about his study methodology, as well as to some additional questions. Regnerus apparently ignored Dr. Anderson’s e-mail, which read as follows:

“Mark:
I’ve also asked you whether or not you maintain personal animus toward sexual minorities. Do you believe in equal marriage? Do you believe sexual minorities should be able to adopt? Because many of us on this list have been working hard to undo the damage you have caused. It would therefore be appreciated if you could answer these questions. My right (or not) to marriage and family (as a gay man) is more important than your academic dignity. So please do answer our questions.”

Whereas Regnerus utterly ignores his gay victims, and refuses even to acknowledge that they have posed questions to him, it seems there are few if any forms of collusion with his anti-gay-rights funders that Regnerus would refuse.

For example, on August 6, 2012, The Witherspoon Institute published a gay-bashing essay by Robert Oscar Lopez. In his gay-bashing essay, Lopez reports that Regnerus contacted him, on July 17, 2012, to thank him for sharing “his perspective on LGBT issues.” Lopez states that he and Regnerus conducted “an e-mail correspondence.”

There are several red flags on fire in Regnerus having contacted and conducted e-mail correspondence with the gay-bashing Lopez about his “study,” and with Lopez’s gay-bashing essay about Regnerus’s “study” then getting published on Regnerus’s study funders’ website.

Shortly after the Regnerus study was published on June 10, 2012, Lopez began appearing in umpteen online forums, cheerleading the Regnerus study, alleging he was raised by a lesbian mother, and venting mind-boggling contempt for “liberals” and for LGBTers. Lopez’s accounts of his biography are so full of contradictions and inconsistencies that it would be impossible to compile them into a coherent narrative. In commenting about the Regnerus study online, Lopez very frequently misrepresented what the study — invalid as it is — actually says. Indeed, in his Regnerus-funders’-site essay, Lopez alleges that the Regnerus study is about bi-sexual parents, a verifiable falsehood.

Lopez’s additional blather along those lines is of little importance, in comparison to how unethical Regnerus’s correspondence with Lopez was and remains. Regnerus in and throughout his study refers to his respondents’ parents as “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers.” Regnerus in his study did not at all attempt to distinguish between gay and bi-sexual parents. Yet, Lopez accuses Regnerus’s critics of ignoring bi-sexual people — (Lopez alleges that he is one, while congratulating himself for marrying a woman) — while extravagantly thanking Regnerus for his study, because of the “voice” it gives to children of bi-sexual parents.

If Regnerus’s “study” is actually about children of bi-sexual parents, then Regnerus should immediately revise his written study so it does not have parents pinned as “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers.” Read the Lopez essay through, and you will see, he is extremely insistent that Regnerus’s study is mainly about children of bi-sexual parents, not about children of “lesbian mothers” or “gay fathers.” If Lopez is wrong, and Regnerus continues to maintain that his study surveyed children of “lesbian mothers” and “gay fathers,” then he should immediately correct Lopez — being as Regnerus was in correspondence with Lopez about his study, and Lopez’s essay about Regnerus’s study then got published on Regnerus’s funder’s website.

A clear and unaltering pattern has developed, of Regnerus on the one hand whining in response to any criticism of his study methodology and funding, while on the other hand, Regnerus allows gay bashers to use his “study” as justification for all manner of gay bashing, without ever complaining that they are using his study to gay bash, and without Regnerus ever correcting the falsehoods about his “study” that the gay bashers are communicating to the public.

There is some appearance that Lopez could be a NOM plant. The same NOM strategy documents released through court order in March 2012 — (describing NOM’s evil plots to “drive a wedge” and to “fan hostility” between African-Americans and gays) — also described an evil plot to lure children of gay parents into denouncing their parents to the public. Lopez coincidentally fits that role.

The following facts; 1) that top Witherspoon authorities also are top authorities at NOM; 2) that Regnerus apparently cultivated Lopez, along with Lopez’s misunderstandings of what the Regnerus study says; and 3) that Regnerus’s NOM-linked funders then published Lopez’s gay-bashing essay, inclusive of misrepresentations of what Regnerus’s study says, certainly 4) justify skepticism apropos of Regnerus’s and his NOM-linked study funders’ motivations vis-a-vis Lopez, particularly in light of the NOM strategy documents.

Regnerus’s relationship with Lopez appears to violate the American Sociological Association’s Code of Ethics. For example, the preamble to Section 10 of the Code of Ethics says this: “Sociologists adhere to the highest professional standards in public communications about their professional services, credentials and expertise, work products, or publications, whether these communications are from themselves or from others.” (Bolding added).

Regnerus certainly has good enough ongoing relationships with his NOM-linked funders at Witherspoon and with Lopez that he could insist on an accurate representation being made of his “study” in Lopez’s essay, which is rife with inaccuracies about the Regnerus “study.”

Do not hold your breath, waiting for Regnerus to behave honorably and/or within the American Sociological Association’s Code of Ethics.

Lopez in his gay-bashing confusion can not even keep details of his life straight within this one essay, still less from 1) one of his gay-bashing online comments about the Regnerus “study” to 2) the next.  For example, in his essay, Lopez alleges that among his siblings, he was the only one not to have the presence of a father through to maturity. Yet, Lopez says that he was born when his mother was 34 — and that she died when he was 19 — meaning that all of his brothers and sisters — in order to have grown up with their father around — would have had to be fully grown by the time the mother was 34.  Lopez also reports that, in his opinion, because he did not have a father present, he exhibited cartoonish stereotypes of gay males, including “girlish mannerisms” and a lisp.  He tries to pin his alleged gay male lisp on his mother and his mother’s female lover, as though a male child would learn a cartoonish, stereotypical “gay” lisp from a lesbian mother. Moreover, although for about one dozen years, Lopez’s mother and her girlfriend lived in separate houses and only got together on weekends, Lopez alleges that he experienced “‘gay parenting’ as that term is understood today.”

Well, no, genius. Today’s gay parents overwhelmingly live together in a single dwelling with the children they are raising. Meanwhile, Regnerus in his published study — scientifically invalid though it is — says that his study “may best capture what might be called an ‘earlier generation’ of children of same-sex parents.”

If Lopez now is Regnerus’s mouthpiece for telling the world that Regnerus’s own understanding of his “study” has changed — such that Regnerus no longer thinks that the “study” captures an “earlier generation” — but rather, that Regnerus now thinks that his “study” represents “‘gay parenting’ as that term is understood today” — then maybe Regnerus should make that statement on his own, instead of implicitly approving its appearance in Lopez’s gay-bashing essay, as a representation of what his “study” is about.

The mess is, after all, right there on Regnerus’s NOM-linked study funders’ website. Regnerus conducted correspondence about his study and “LGBT issues” with Lopez, the author of that essay on Regnerus’s study funder’s website. And, the American Sociological Association says that sociologists “adhere to the highest professional standards in public communications about their professional . . . .  work products, or publications . . .  whether these communications are from themselves or from others.”

So which is it, Mr. Regnerus?  Does your study measure an “‘earlier generation’ of same-sex parents,” or — as your correspondent Robert Lopez says in an essay published on your study funder’s website — or does your study measure “gay parenting as that term is understood today”?

It is obvious why Regnerus’s NOM-linked funders want the public to believe that the Regnerus study is about “gay parenting as the term is understood today.” They want the negativity of the “study” to stick to today’s gay parents, and for voters then to vote against today’s gay parents’ — and their children’s — rights.

Regnerus is despicable for enabling this, and for not making any corrective public comment about it.

Remember; 1) Regnerus contacted Lopez first, having seen his gay-bashing online commentary, and then Regnerus conducted a correspondence with Lopez, about his study in relation to LGBT “issues;” 2) Lopez’s essay contains numerous and substantial misrepresentations of what the Regnerus study says; and 3)  Section 10 of the American Sociological Association’s Code of Ethics says this: “Sociologists adhere to the highest professional standards in public communications about their professional services, credentials and expertise, work products, or publications, whether these communications are from themselves or from others.” (Bolding added).

The University of Texas at Austin — (which is conducting a scientific misconduct Inquiry to determine if a full Investigation of Regnerus is warranted) — should take special note of Regnerus’s relationship with Lopez.

NOM’s shameless lying anti-gay bigot Maggie Gallagher very promptly cross-posted Lopez’s essay to the National Review, to which she regularly contributes, adding to the post her just absolutely preposterous and outlandish allegation that children of gay parents have not been permitted to tell their stories in the media. There are hardly words to do justice to the cesspool depths of Gallagher’s gay-bashing bigot depravity. Just when you thought Gallagher could not possibly stoop any lower, she stoops, to allege a non-existent media blackout of stories told by children raised by gay parents.  Of course, Gallagher would only be interested in negative stories about gay parents from children they raised.  Gallagher would sneer at and not acknowledge the validity of the professional baseball player Joe Valentine’s statements about his parents: “It’s no different than having a mother and father,” Valentine has said: “These are the two women who raised me, and they are wonderful people. It’s just not a big deal to me. Why should it be?”

Notice how Gallagher’s cunning, sleazebag bigot falsehood — that the media blocks children of gay parents from talking about their stories — fits in to the documented evil NOM plot to get children of gay parents to denounce their parents to the public. Lopez’s gay-bashing essay of course also was immediately cross-posted to the NOM blog, with heaps of gay-bashing bigotry voiced in the comments. The American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer has used the Regnerus “study” as grounds for stating that gay parents should not have custody of their own children. AFA and NOM are known to have partnered in the past for political gay-bashing projects.

Not only does Mark Regnerus not have the decency to answer questions posed him by this reporter about  his “study” methodology — and/or by his victims — victims such as Dr. Eric Anderson — Regnerus is so iniquitous that he seeks out pathetic, disturbed gay-bashers on the internet and cultivates relationships with them, at least in part towards getting gay-bashing misrepresentations of his “study” published on his NOM-linked funders’ websites, with his correspondent Lopez’s gay-bashing essay — misrepresenting his “study” —  then getting gleefully reposted hither and yon by Regnerus’s NOM-linked accomplices in political gay bashing, as Regnerus remains silent about their misrepresentations of his “study.”

 

New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.