Mark Regnerus, the discredited and disgraced researcher and purveyor of an infamous anti-gay study, has been working with the Vatican to produce anti-gay propaganda films.
In 2012 a relatively unknown associate professor at the University of Texas/Austin released what he claimed was a study of adult children who had been raised by gay parents and/or same-sex couples. The study by Mark Regnerus was analyzed and dissected by many, including by The New Civil Rights Movement, which published a total of more than 75 articles (Google search) related to the study, its funding, and the scientific community’s response to the study.
Overall, the study was immediately discredited for many reasons, including the fact that it did not study adult children raised by gay parents or same-sex couples. In fact, only a handful (two or three) of the study’s thousands of participants had in fact been raised by gay parents.
What Regnerus did study was adult children who came from, forgive the expression, “broken homes.” These were not adults raised by gay parents, but adults raised by parents who divorced or who had troubled marriages. One question was enough for Regnerus to claim a participant’s parents were gay: Have either of your parents ever had sex or a relationship with a person of the same gender?
Today, thanks to LGBT blogger Jeremy Hooper, (who deserves the title of researcher I think more than Regnerus,)we’ve learned how Mark Regnerus has been spending his time lately. He’s been traveling the world creating an anti-gay video series for the Vatican.
This week, as many are aware, the Pope has been hosting about 30 top anti-gay activists, like Tony Perkins and Rick Warren, at the Vatican for a conference on “traditional” marriage, called Humanum. The main theme of the conference and Regnerus’ propaganda videos is “complementarity,” the Catholic Church’s latest dogma to claim that same-sex relationships are bad because, forgive this expression also, the penis should only be placed in a vagina.
“What a truly bizarre choice,” Hooper writes at Good As You of the revelation that the Vatican would work with Regnerus. “Like almost too bizarre to be believed, frankly. It seems that the Vatican isn’t only courting “culture war”—it’s begging for one.”
Here the trailer, should you care to learn about the cosmic nature of man being made for woman, etc.:
And the full series:
One last (perhaps obvious) note: Gay people are not against the family, nor are we against marriage. We’re merely opposed to the idea that gay people should be excluded from those institutions.Â
Â
Image via Mark Regnerus