Busted

Social Science Research, the journal that published Mark Regnerus's study, is being challenged by 200 science professionals, most of whom hold PhDs or MDs.

A closer look at Mark Regnerus's "Children of Gay Parents" study

If you're a straight Christian, you may soon be hearing about an exciting new study conducted by the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), headed up by someone named Mark Regnerus. This study concludes that the children of gay parents turn out to have more problems in their adult life than children raised by heterosexual parents in stable, traditional households. These results supposedly fly in the face of many previous studies that have been done, which have concluded that children raised by gay couples turn out no differently than those raised by heterosexual parents. In a more accessible summary of the NFSS findings, Mark Regnerus reports the following:

On 25 of 40 different outcomes evaluated, the children of women who've had same-sex relationships fare quite differently than those in stable, biologically-intact mom-and-pop families . . . . Respondents were more apt to report being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law, report more male to female sex partners, more sexual victimization, and were more likely to reflect negatively on their childhood family life, among other things.

What makes this study seemingly more credible is that the NFSS conducted their research using a national probability sample population--which is the largest population sample that has ever been used for such a study--with the help of over three-quarters of a million dollars in funding, according to Box Turtle Bulletin.

Already Christian bloggers are tuning in. Finally, a credible study has been done using a large population sample to give us accurate results. Could this be the study that confirms our suspicions that the liberal world of psychology and sociology has been biased in their studies of children raised by gay or lesbian couples? That they've been cherry picking their samples to manipulate a favorable outcome for the gay and lesbian community?

The actual study is a daunting read, but if you're interested in getting to the bottom of this I strongly recommend Jim Burroway's excellent critique of this study on Box Turtle Bulletin. And yet I would say you don't even have to look as far as Burroway's critique to know there is something wrong with the NFSS study. You can pick up the trail just from reading Mark Regnerus's summary article about this study on Slate.

For instance, read this statement by Mark Regnerus on how he surveyed his population sample:

Instead of relying on small samples, or the challenges of discerning sexual orientation of household residents using census data, my colleagues and I randomly screened over 15,000 Americans aged 18-39 and asked them if their biological mother or father ever had a romantic relationship with a member of the same sex. I realize that one same-sex relationship does not a lesbian make, necessarily. But our research team was less concerned with the complicated politics of sexual identity than with same-sex behavior. (My italics.)

Wait. I thought this study was about comparing children who were raised in a same-sex-couple household with children who were raised by heterosexual parents. Because that's what all those other studies were about, right? And it is those studies that Regnerus claims to be challenging. But notice that the NFSS interviewed children whose parents "ever had a romantic relationship with a member of the same sex." That is quite different from interviewing children who were raised from a very young age by a same-sex couple in a stable family situation.

By asking this question, the NFSS sample is necessarily going to include many, many children of parents in mixed-orientation marriages. Let me explain what that is. A mixed-orientation marriage is when one of the parents is straight and the other is gay, but the gay partner chose to marry their opposite-sex partner in order to appear straight or fulfill social expectations. Quite often the straight partner didn't even know he or she was marrying someone who was gay. Mixed-orientation marriages are quite common today, but were even more common in a previous generation, that is, the generation who raised the now-grown children that the NFSS interviewed.

To explain further: according to the NFSS study, these grown children they interviewed whose parents "ever had a romantic relationship with a member of the same sex" were born between 1972 and 1993, a time when gay marriage wasn't available to their parents' generation, or was even on the radar screen of society. If you were a gay or lesbian adult in the 1970's, '80's or '90's, marrying an opposite-sex partner was the only option available to you aside from lifelong singleness. It probably never even occurred to any gay or lesbian person of that time that they might someday be able to legally marry a same-sex partner. So they entered into regular marriages, became unhappy, struggled with temptation, and quite often reached a breaking point when, out of desperation, they either had a gay affair or ended the marriage so they could be free to pursue a gay relationship.

So . . . if you were to take a random sample from a large section of the population born between 1972 and 1993, and ask if any of them had parents who "ever had a romantic relationship with a member of the same sex," chances are the vast majority of those who were aware of having a gay parent during their growing up years became aware of that fact because Mom or Dad had a homosexual affair, or it came out after a divorce that Mom or Dad was gay. The odds are very much against stumbling upon children who were raised by a gay couple, who were able to live like a married couple at a time when gay marriage was unheard of, and who somehow got legal custody of the children so that they were able to raise them for many years in a stable household situation. In other words, the odds are very much against the study coming across children of that generation who were raised in the very situation that interests us most.

Instead we are going to end up with a sample of children who grew under much more stressful circumstances than normal. Because for the majority of them the gay or lesbian parent in question had started out in a mixed-orientation marriage (probably unbeknownst to their straight partner), had at some point acted upon their homosexuality, or divorced before they could act out, and disrupted their family life as a result. The gay relationship in question may have lasted two months, two years, or two decades--who knows? The study doesn't say. We don't know if some parents' marriages survived, but there is a good chance that many of them ended in divorce. Divorce is already traumatic enough, but if the split came because one person was found out to be gay or lesbian, the feelings of hurt, shame, betrayal and anger would be that much more intensified.

Is it any wonder that children who grew up under such circumstances are more prone to being characterized as "unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law, report more male to female sex partners, more sexual victimization, and were more likely to reflect negatively on their childhood family life"? Oddly, these children sound very similar to those who grew up in broken homes, or with step-parents, or with single parents. Oh wait . . . maybe it's because NFSS's "Has your biological mother or father ever had a romantic relationship with a member of the same-sex?" survey question naturally singles out children who grew up under those exact types of circumstances.

The study isn't so much about what happens when children are raised by gay parents as it is about children who grew up under traumatic circumstances. That is very different from a situation where children are raised from a very young age by two mothers or two fathers, who have always known the love and security that comes from a stable two-parent home--except that their parents both happen to be of the same sex.

Yet Mark Regnerus wants to pretend that his study is somehow relevant to the previous studies that centered around the stable-gay-couple parenting situation. In Regnerus's summary of his study published by Slate, he claims he can't figure out why his study came to such different conclusions.

Why such dramatic differences? I can only speculate, since the data are not poised to pinpoint causes. One notable theme among the adult children of same-sex parents, however, is household instability, and plenty of it.

"Household instability." I wonder how on earth that element came to factor so strongly into this equation? Could it be, perhaps, that Regnerus and the NFSS surveyed their population sample in a way that singled out children who were raised in unstable household situations?

And yet in the Slate article Regnerus goes on to suggest that it's really the previous studies that are guilty of bias:

So why did this study come up with such different results than previous work in the field? And why should one study alter so much previous sentiment? Basically, better methods. When it comes to assessing how children of gay parents are faring, the careful methods and random sampling approach found in demography has not often been employed by scholars studying this issue, due in part—to be sure—to the challenges in locating and surveying small minorities randomly. In its place, the scholarly community has often been treated to small, nonrandom “convenience” studies of mostly white, well-educated lesbian parents, including plenty of data-collection efforts in which participants knew that they were contributing to important studies with potentially substantial political consequences, elevating the probability of something akin to the “Hawthorne Effect.” This is hardly an optimal environment for collecting unbiased data (and to their credit, many of the researchers admitted these challenges). 

Hmm, yes, we need better methods, don't we? Better methods that produce "unbiased data." Especially if participants know they are "contributing to important studies with potentially substantial political consequences." Apparently, Mark Regnerus well understands these political consequences, as he writes in Slate:

This study arrives in the middle of a season that’s already exhibited plenty of high drama over same-sex marriage, whether it’s DOMA, the president’s evolving perspective, Prop 8 pinball, or finished and future state ballot initiatives. The political take-home message of the NFSS study is unclear, however. On the one hand, the instability detected in the NFSS could translate into a call for extending the relative security afforded by marriage to gay and lesbian couples. On the other hand, it may suggest that the household instability that the NFSS reveals is just too common among same-sex couples to take the social gamble of spending significant political and economic capital to esteem and support this new (but tiny) family form while Americans continue to flee the stable, two-parent biological married model, the far more common and accomplished workhorse of the American household, and still—according to the data, at least—the safest place for a kid.

Regnerus is surprisingly articulate about the "social gamble" of supporting same-sex marriage against the "safest" and "more common and accomplished" traditional parenting situation, considering that he claims his study is "unclear" about the political implications for same-sex marriage. Somehow, I don't believe that he is unaware of the political implications of his study at all.

On the other hand, Regnerus's offhand remark that the NFSS study "could translate into a call for extending the relative security afforded by marriage to gay and lesbian couples" is very much on the mark. Making same-sex marriage legally available gives gays and lesbians an option other than a mixed-orientation marriage which, years down the line, often results in the type of strained and broken family situation that traumatizes children in ways that the NFSS research has brought to light. Studying how children fared who grew up in such situations in the '70's, '80's and '90's only confirms that we need to get away from the old way of relegating gays and lesbians to the closet, and seek out new solutions such as legalizing same-sex marriage more widely in this country, for the health, security and safety of children.

Call for research participants

A reader was kind enough to alert me to this notice by the Marin Foundation. Their four year research study is coming to a conclusion on August 1. So far they have over 2,000 participants, but it is not too late to add more. If you are LGBT and you haven't already done so, please consider participating in the study. You can do so anonymously. In the Marin Foundation's words, "It takes about 5 minutes to complete, and all we are looking for is the dead honest truth."

I'm not a part of the Marin Foundation but I have read Andrew Marin's book, Love Is An Orientation and I highly recommend it. He is one of the few straight evangelical Christians out there who really gets gay and lesbian issues. He has become a powerful advocate for building bridges between the Christian and gay communities and he takes plenty of heat for it. I don't know the details about the research project but I do know I'm excited about it. The impact that pseudo-scientific "research" has had on the church through the likes of Paul Cameron and Family Research Council has been tragic. I am hopeful that new, credible research can help to educate Christians in facts, not myths.

How to write a conservative Christian article on homosexuality

I was disappointed to learn that a Reformed group I greatly respect, the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, which is normally insightful and gospel-centered in their thinking, has just published an article on homosexuality in their magazine called, "A Theological Overview of Nature and Natural Function Implications for Christian Sexuality in the 21st Century," by Dr. Samuel Hensley. Sadly, it contains all the usual slippery stuff. These sorts of articles pop up like mad in conservative Christian magazines, and now I have found it here too.

Since such pieces are apparently in high demand, I've written a guide for anyone out there who wants to get one of their own articles on homosexuality published in their favorite Christian magazine. I have used Dr. Hensley's article as a model:

How To Write a Conservative Christian Article on Homosexuality.

1. Portray all gays and lesbians as unanimously hostile, leftist and anti-Christian.

The gay community has taken a stand that refuses to even consider that the lifestyle may be immoral, contrary to Scripture and contrary to church teaching from multiple denominational prospectives throughout the history of the Christian faith. Any questioning of the gay assertions elicits a knee jerk reaction of hostility.

Fail to make more accurate statements such as: “Much of the gay community, which tends to be dominated by left-wing politics,” or “Many in the gay community, particularly the unbelieving population,” because such statements wouldn’t confirm our conservative Christian stereotypes and prejudices.

2. Pull the most extreme quotes from leftist gay activists to represent the moral values of all gay and lesbian people.

A more blatant and unabashed quote comes from gay activist Michael Swift. Swift claims, “The family unit-spawning ground of lies, betrays, mediocrity, hypocrisy and violence, will be abolished. The family unit, which only dampens imagination and curbs free will, must be eliminated.”

Ignore the positive views of marriage and family from other gay activists, such as conservative journalist Jonathan Rauch:

It seems to me that the two strongest candidates [for supporting the institution of marriage] are these: domesticating men and providing reliable caregivers. Both purposes are critical to the functioning of a humane and stable society, and both are much better served by marriage—that is, by one-to-one lifelong commitment—than by any other institution.

Or gay conservative Andrew Sullivan:

Society, after all, has good reasons to extend legal advantages to heterosexuals who choose the formal sanction of marriage over simply living together. They make a deeper commitment to one another and to society; in exchange society extends certain benefits to them. Marriage provides an anchor, if an arbitrary and weak one, in the maelstrom of sex and relationships to which we are all prone. It provides a mechanism for emotional stability and economic security.

3. Assert with boldness and authority that homosexuality is not genetically determined.

It can be demonstrated scientifically that homosexuality is not genetically determined and it is not determined by intrauterine hormone levels during gestation.

4. Then later concede in more subtle, off-handed statements that genes might in fact have something to do with it.

Genes may exert some indirect influence over the choices that individuals make later in life in response to difficult situations but they do not impose a homosexual orientation on anyone . . .

I would summarize by suggesting that homosexuality, while possibly indirectly affected by genes and certainly heavily impacted by environment, begins with reversible choices.

5. Cite the "twins studies" when claiming that genes don’t determine homosexuality.

Registry studies, that is studies where twins are recruited for other reasons and then later studied in regard to sexual orientation, show that the concordance rate is not 100%. In fact, in the largest available study from Australia that included over 14,000 twins showed a concordance rate of only 30% for homosexuality. Since both twins experience the same intrauterine environment, this indicates that neither genetics nor intrauterine hormones determine sexual orientation.

6. Yet ignore the twins studies when they fail to support your own theory about the origins of homosexuality.

Homosexuality develops most frequently in men in situations of sexual abuse or where the father is distant or ineffective at key points in childhood psychological development. It may simply be that he cannot relate to his son. Whatever the reason, the young boy has defensive detachment from his father in that he rejects his father as a role model for masculinity. The role of the mother is also important in that they are often domineering in family relationships. The lack of a satisfactory relationship with his father may result in a teenager or pre-teen developing strong attachments that, in the beginning, are not sexual with older boys. With puberty these attachments may lead to experiments with homosexual acts in an attempt to foster masculine intimacy. In some cases a homosexual identity is the result.

Fail to confront the question of how identical twins with the same parents, upbringing and family environment could show “a concordance rate of only 30% for homosexuality,” if the “distant father-dominant mother” theory is correct.

7. To back up your claims, always cite Dr. Jeffrey Satinover (twice in this article and in footnotes #14 and #20) and Dr. Joseph Nicolosi (footnotes #21, 24, 25). For bonus points, cite Dr. Paul Cameron too. (I don't see him here, but one might check to see if Satinover and/or Nicolosi cite Cameron in their work.)

8. Make claims that homosexuals can change based on the existence of reorientation therapy and the need for “hope.” Do not make these claims based upon the existence of real homosexual people who have actually changed into bonafide heterosexuals (since you will have an extremely difficult time finding any).

To accept the view that these behaviors are unchangeable is to trap many persons, who wish to be different, in bondage especially since reorientation therapy offers hope to motivated individuals . . .

If homosexuality is spoken against in scripture and if treatment options are available, then those individuals who teach that homosexuality is an acceptable alternate lifestyle before God and that it cannot be changed, are unloving. They close the door of hope to people caught in this maladaptive, unhealthy behavior and condemn them to a life without hope of change.

9. After you make bold and authoritative claims about how homosexuals can “change,” acknowledge in an off-handed statement at the very end of the article that reorientation therapy may not work and people may have to accept a lifetime of celibacy. In other words, homosexuals may not be able to change after all.

We must provide a new loving social circle to support people who are making difficult life changes of all types. Sexual reorientation is possible. Where this is unsuccessful, the attraction can be resisted and chaste lives are possible.

Gay marriage more deadly than smoking?

Be on the lookout for the latest Paul Cameron "statistic" that is making the rounds on conservative airwaves. Namely that homosexual partnerships are more dangerous than smoking. Sandy Rios of Culture Campaign even referred to it on Bill O'Reilly's show this past Wednesday night when he said, "Well,what people don’t understand is that the homosexual lifestyle, especially for men, is deadly. It takes their life ten to twenty years earlier than straight men."

It would be worth your while to go to Box Turtle Bulletin and click on all the pertinent links regarding this latest Cameron study, which allegedly shows that partnered gays and lesbians in Denmark and Norway die 24 years earlier than their straight counterparts.

To give the study the appearance of credibility, Cameron claims to have presented it at the Eastern Psychological Association this past March. But in truth, the presentation was merely a poster he displayed at the meeting for one hour among 70 other posters. It was not approved for presentation at the EPA meeting as a paper or address. EPA president Philip N. Hineline even issued a lengthy statement correcting the misinformation Cameron has spread about his "presentation" at the EPA meeting. In conclusion Hineline states:

There was nothing in the materials submitted by the author for review by EPA that indicated that the work could, or would, be informative with respect to the longevity of homosexuals.

I recommend that you read Jim Burroway's analysis of Cameron's study, to give you a better idea of why this paper could not have met the EPA's standards of sound research methodology.

(Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan)

The quack science of Paul Cameron

As a college student in 1989, I remember sitting in a pew one evening hanging onto every word Dr. John MacArthur delivered in a sermon on Romans 1 on the topic of homosexuality. Always impressive in setting up the introduction, Dr. MacArthur began by inundating his audience with a battery of statistics supporting the utter depravity of homosexuals and their lifestyle. I remember feeling shocked, horrified and nauseated as he laid out for us the sinful depths to which these people, who surely had less moral sense than animals, had sunk.

At the time it never occurred to me to question where Dr. MacArthur was getting his information. He was such a highly regarded preacher and Bible scholar, all of us who attended his church revered the ground he walked on. So I was left feeling deeply shaken by what I had learned. And the loathing it bred in me toward homosexuals over the next decade inevitably outweighed any sense of having a Christian duty to love them.

Even though I was beset with so much prejudice, which I thought had been justified by scientific fact, I'm thankful I have not only come to my senses about gay and lesbian people, but I have learned that many of those "statistics" that circulate in conservative Christian circles originate from one Dr. Paul Cameron. Cameron is responsible for many beliefs that float around in conservative Christian circles such as:

*Homosexuals are 8 to 12 times more likely to molest children than heterosexuals.

*Homosexuals are responsible for one-third to one-half of all child molestations.

*Forty-three percent of all sex murders are committed by homosexuals or bisexuals.

*The average life span for homosexual males is 43, for lesbians 45.

It turns out Cameron has generated these kinds of statistics using shoddy scientific research based on skewed samples, pre-selected samples, under-represented populations, unprofessional surveying techniques, invalid interpretations of data, and possibly false or joke responses to survey questions.

Mark Pietrzyk's article serves as a decent layman's introduction to the depth of the problem with Cameron's research.

I highly recommend Dr. Gregory Herek's article which presents a more in-depth analysis of Cameron's research and surveying methods.

Dr. Herek also critiques Cameron's gay obituary study that was used to generate his statistics for the average life span of gays and lesbians. In 1998 William Bennett retracted his citation of the statistic in an article for The Weekly Standard, when flaws with Cameron's study were exposed.

It is not surprising, then, to learn that in 1983 Cameron was dropped from membership with the American Psychological Association (APA) for "lack of cooperation with the Committee on Scientific and Professional Ethics and Conduct."

In 1986 the American Sociological Association (ASA) passed the following resolution: "The American Sociological Association officially and publicly states Paul Cameron is not a sociologist, and condemns his consistent misrepresentation of sociological research."

And in case you're tempted to dismiss the positions of the APA and the ASA as evidence of a vast left-wing conspiracy, note that recently conservative Christian psychologist Dr. Warren Throckmorton of Grove City College has also taken issue with Cameron's research.

There are good scientists and there are bad scientists, and there are scientists whose work sinks beyond mere quackery into the realm of lies and deliberate deception. That is simply the way things are. But to persistently tout the work of someone who belongs in the third category because it justifies our own loathing and bigotry, even though such work has been repeatedly debunked as a miserable falsehood, is damning, truly damning to the conservative Christian church.

Update: Take a look at Dr. Throckmorton's recent blog commentary on Paul Cameron's disturbing 1999 article "Gays in Nazi Germany." I'll leave you to read the shocking excerpts for yourself. Then you'll understand why Throckmorton concluded his comments with this:

Suffice to say that Dr. Cameron is not simply ideologically opposed to homosexuality, he is fixated on “solutions” that I find abhorrent. I call on fellow social conservatives who still refer to the Camerons’ work to take a hard look at these posts and reflect on whether someone with such extreme animosity could possibly approach social science data with sufficient objectivity to be trusted.

For a list of organizations that continue to cite Cameron's work, click here.

Rev. Albert Mohler's article

I can't tell whether the uproar over Rev. Albert Mohler's blog post has more to do with how he upset fundamentalist Christians or how he upset the gay community. I guess it is a little of both.

Here's what upset the Christians:

We sin against homosexuals by insisting that sexual temptation and attraction are predominately chosen. We do not always (or even generally) choose our temptations. Nevertheless, we are absolutely responsible for what we do with sinful temptations, whatever our so-called sexual orientation.

Christians must be very careful not to claim that science can never prove a biological basis for sexual orientation. We can and must insist that no scientific finding can change the basic sinfulness of all homosexual behavior. The general trend of the research points to at least some biological factors behind sexual attraction, gender identity, and sexual orientation. This does not alter God's moral verdict on homosexual sin (or heterosexual sin, for that matter), but it does hold some promise that a deeper knowledge of homosexuality and its cause will allow for more effective ministries to those who struggle with this particular pattern of temptation. If such knowledge should ever be discovered, we should embrace it and use it for the greater good of humanity and for the greater glory of God.

Here's what upset gays:

If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

If you read the entire article, I think Mohler's overall position represents a notable triumph of reason over past fundamentalist irrationality, and I wish the gay community would pause for a moment and realize that. For a prominent Southern Baptist leader to exhort evangelicals to open up their minds to the possibility of a gay gene, and draw direct implications to 1) the ways Christians have sinned against gays and 2) how Christians can better minister to gays in the future, is huge. Huge. The social implications. The political implications. The ministry implications. All these would be profoundly affected if Christians would just realize that the possiblity that homosexuality isn't chosen does not undermine the teachings of the Bible.

Do I know for sure whether there is a genetic origin? No, I don't. But I have found, interestingly, that when I view and treat people "as if" their homosexuality were genetic, it ends up making the most sense out of their feelings and actions and choices. It is just an interesting observation I have noted as I await further developments from the scientific community.

Now what about Mohler's other, rather off-handed comment that if sexual orientation could be reversed in utero, Christians should "unapologetically" support such treatment. I would say that two things come to mind. First, his comment was brief and somewhat out of the blue, so he would need to explain what he means by "support." But given that not everyone in society agrees that homosexuality is a sinful/fallen condition, Christians should definitely not be out there rallying in favor of such treatment in our usual loud-mouthed way, because we would come off as if we were advocating the eradication of gay and lesbian people from society. This message is not merely offensive. It is personally threatening to gay people in a way that the rest of us can't imagine or appreciate.

Plenty of gay and lesbian people think their gayness is a perfectly natural part of who they are. Plenty of gay and lesbian people who are Christian think that God created them to be gay. I disagree with them. But there is a chance I may be wrong. And because I may be wrong I am not going to go around advocating a means to achieve their non-existence. Even if I was completely convinced I was "right" I wouldn't do it, because it is not my place to try and implement an orientation make-over on the human race.

That said, my second reaction to Mohler's comment yanks me back in the opposite direction when I consider this question privately as a parent. What if the decision about my own child's sexual orientation rested upon me alone, and this decision had to be made while the child was in utero? What would I do?

I should say first off that as a parent I am prepared to handle a situation where any one of my children might turn out gay. I am not upset, distressed or panicky over the thought. I have given it quite a lot of consideration. So my concern in this hypothetical scenario would not be for myself, but for my child.

Now suppose I were to decide that I can fully accept a gay child and I let things take their natural course. But suppose that child grows up and is not able to love and accept him- or herself as I do. My love and acceptance is simply not enough to counteract the hostility and rejection they feel from the church and society around them. Then they find out that I could have had them turn out straight, but I chose not to, and they tell me, "Why did you let this happen? You've screwed up my life." I'm telling you, if my kid were to say that to me, I think the sadness and guilt would kill me.

I am not interested in exterminating gay and lesbian people from the human population. They have enriched my life. Yet if a decision regarding my own child were placed solely in my hands as a parent, then I would be forced to guess about what my child would want me to do, and I would feel safer guessing that they would want to be straight rather than gay.

I know a lot of the readers of this blog are gay. What would you have wanted your parents to do for you in that situation? Would you resent them if they could have changed your orientation but didn't? What if you had to make a decision regarding your own child? As a parent I'd be interested to know.