At World Congress Of Families, Regnerus Says Cut Welfare To Single Parents To ‘Stimulate Marriage’

Discredited anti-gay researcher Mark Regnerus is still respected in some circles, like at this week’s virulently anti-gay World Congress of Families.

The World Congress of Families is this week. For four days over 100 professional anti-gay activists will speak to thousands of people converging in Salt Lake City from all over the globe. Why? They’re meeting to undermine LGBT civil rights and to advance a virulently anti-gay agenda steeped in religious extremism.

Mark Regnerus, the University of Texas researcher whose anti-gay “study” was thoroughly discredited by many sources, including in well over 75 articles by The New Civil Rights Movement, spoke this afternoon to WCF attendees.

Regnerus was asked if he would support a policy of cutting welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, or Medicare from single parents, including unwed mothers, in an effort to force them to marry.

His answer? Yes.

Acknowledging that he is not a policy analyst, Regnerus weighed some of the pros and cons – never once mentioning that the actual effect would be to literally take food out of hungry children’s mouths, and to increase the rate of disease and poverty among the most needy in society.

In a video captured by journalist Eric Ethington, Regnerus notes how difficult it is to “stimulate marriage” among “people who are on social welfare and not married to the father of their children.”

“It’s plausible,” Regnerus responded, adding that there would be challenges like identifying who is in the household.

“Your policy is not a bad one, moving people toward marriage, we want to do that,” he said supportively, adding he was unsure if it would work.

In short, Regnerus had no issue with putting the most vulnerable among society into even more drastic circumstances, merely to advance his (and the questioner’s) idea of an ideal social structure. 

There’s an underlying assumption among those who advocate for (one man, one woman only) marriage that unmarried people, especially those raising children, somehow don’t want to marry but should, for the good of society, as opposed to accepting that some people don’t want to marry, or have married and have lost a spouse to death or divorce, but somehow should be penalized for that.

These policies also target LGBT people and spouses of members of the military at much higher rates.

Here is the video with Regnerus’ remarks:

 

Image: Screenshot via Eric Ethington/YouTube