I never did like the smell of gay philosopher John Corvino collaborating with NOM’s Maggie Gallagher on a book, Debating Same-Sex Marriage, and book promotions during a presidential election year.

Because Corvino is beholden to the publisher to help with book promotions, he can go only so far in his criticisms of Gallagher and NOM.

Would the head of the NAACP co-author a book “debating” David Duke the white supremacist?

One does not debate such monsters, because accepting to debate them gives their monstrous bigotry an unwarranted imprimatur of respectability.

Certain attitudes, statements and actions just do cross over a line; Gallagher has said she is not “willing” to live in a country that gives anti-discrimination protections to gay people, she has knowingly sought to perpetuate conditions that increase youth suicide levels, her organization sponsors rallies where its speakers yell through megaphones that homosexuals are “worthy to death,” and one of its leaders, William Duncan, held a Liberty University symposium sessions titled “Homosexuals or Homo Sapiens; Who Deserves Protected Class Status?”

A recent hoax perpetrated thanks to NOM-connected funding by the University of Texas’s religious right-wing sociologist Mark Regnerus “found” that homosexual parents are dangerous to children.

NOM has been running with sadistic joy, spreading the “findings” of the Regnerus hoax its co-founder helped finance, exacerbating what the Southern Poverty Law Center long has noted as NOM’s propensity to tell known negative falsehoods about gay people.

Because Corvino and Gallagher were already in a business collaboration through their co-authored book with their publisher, and have long been seen engaging in inane banter with each other, as though knowingly perpetuating conditions that exacerbate youth suicide qualified somebody as a delightful tea party guest, when the Regnerus excrement hit the fan, Corvino and Gallagher brought their act to the pages of the right-wing National Review.

Corvino had stated that for the purposes of Regnerus’s study, Ted Haggard would have been classified as a gay father. Gallagher told him he was wrong about that. He responded by doubling down to insist that she was in error about his being wrong about the Haggard family vis-a-vis Regnerus’s study. It was all more fun than a barrel of anti-gay bigots.

The trouble is that Corvino is totally wrong. The Regnerus Survey Instrument first asked respondents their ages, to make sure that they were in the right age range, and then asked them if they lived together with their biological mother and father until they were 18. If they answered “Yes,” they got skipped ahead in the survey, and never asked whether one of their parents had ever had a “same sex romantic relationship.” A young adult child of the Haggard union would truthfully answer that their biological mother and father had them under a same roof until they were 18. That Haggard family survivor would then not be asked whether Ted, the gay-bashing, meth-abusing, gay hustler-hiring hypocrite, had ever had a “same-sex romantic relationship.” Their parent Ted Haggard would not get classified as “gay.”

Yet there is John Corvino, gay rights champion and NOM/Gallagher collaborator, insisting that a Ted Haggard would have been classified as a gay father in Regnerus’s study, even though that is verifiably false.

With Gallagher leading the promotions of the study, and Corvino playing dumb-guy sidekick to her,  he helps to cast her promotions of Regnerus is a “smart” light; Corvino is making Gallagher look good; pathetic for him as that might be.

Regnerus’s University of Texas is investing a lot of time and money into promoting the NOM-related-funded Regnerus hoax. NOM leaders evidently handpicked, and certainly approved of the religious right-wing Regnerus of the University of Texas carrying out their study on same-sex parenting, even though Regnerus has no credentials in that field.  And what an extraordinary coincidence it is, that John Corvino earned his Ph.D. from that very same University of Texas, Austin.

Is it really just coincidence, that 1) the University of Texas, Austin is using its economic resources to promote the NOM-Witherspoon-funded Regnerus-study; that 2) NOM’s Maggie Gallagher has a business collaboration with John Corvino, from which they both harvest advantages; that; 3) both Regnerus and Corvino have a connection with the University of Texas, Austin, and that; 4) all of those varied NOM-related connections to UT — from which UT is profiting — are occurring simultaneously in an election year?

Is the appearance that 1) NOM; 2) Maggie Gallagher; 3) the UT-and-NOM-connected John Corvino, and; 4) the UT-and-NOM-connected Mark Regnerus all got in on action centering on 5) the University of Texas, Austin in an election year only an appearance, or did some sort of planning go into this?

After all, Mark Regnerus had no prior experience in the field of same-sex parenting, and any number of appropriately-credentialed sociologists might have been called on to carry out a study on same-sex parenting instead. How very curious that a not-appropriately-credentialed, religious arch-social-regressive scholar at a university system overseen by religious right Regents appointed by the religious right Governor Rick Perry — who has endorsed Mitt Romney, who has signed the anti-gay-rights NOM pledge — should have been NOM-Witherspoon’s choice to carry out a study on same-sex parenting.

Let us not forget that the 2012 Texas Republican Party Platform says that homosexuality tears at the fabric of society. And let us not ignore that Corvino’s public remarks on Regnerus have mainly involved his National Review back-and-forth with Gallagher, consistent with a book promotions plan, and that Corvino did not sign the letter from over 200 Ph.D.s and M.D.s condemning the study.

As a “public intellectual” with a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, Austin, Corvino is in a position to demand that the school do the right thing and promptly denounce the NOM-Regnerus hoax as constituting sociological malpractice, because the “study” makes no valid sociological comparison between heterosexual and homosexual parents.

Corvino should be standing up and demanding that those Rick Perry-appointed Regents of the University of Texas respect academic integrity, distance themselves from the NOM-Regnerus hoax, and apologize to the nation’s gay community.

Corinvo’s reputation, after all, is tied at least somewhat to the university’s. If the school lowers its academic standards, the perceived worth of his doctorate declines.

Yet, as somebody tied to NOM’s Maggie Gallagher in the commercial enterprise that is their co-authored book, Corvino can be expected to remain more devoted to the NOM-linked commercial enterprise than to the well-being of the LGBT community nationwide.

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.