How dogma plays with "facts" by Ken Burrows: June 2016

When religious operatives attempt to bend law and public policies to coincide with their dogmas, they at times put forth nonreligious “facts” to support their desired goal. This makes their maneuvering look less like religious imposition or outright animus. Problem is, these facts are often fictions.

The religious battle against gay marriage offers one example. When a contingent of supporters of traditional marriage realized their best chance of prevailing would be to establish a “rational basis” for disallowing same-sex nuptials, they opted to present the argument that children were harmed by being in families with gay and lesbian parents, as compared to being raised by a traditional mother and father.

But there were stumbling blocks, such as the American Sociological Association (ASA) asserting that decades of sound research confirmed that whether a child is raised by same-sex or opposite-sex parents has no bearing on a child’s wellbeing.

Enter the Witherspoon Institute, a conservative think tank, to commission a study on the subject. One of its founders is Robert George, a former chairman of the National Organization for Marriage. George has authored academic papers against same-sex marriage, abortion, embryonic stem cell research, birth control, divorce, and even masturbation. Among his fans are right-wing media star Glenn Beck and the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative Catholic. George also cowrote the Manhattan Declaration, a 2009 religious right manifesto that insisted it was the “duty of the law” to support traditional husband/wife marriage.

The Witherspoon Institute awarded a grant to sociologist Mark Regnerus to study how children fared when raised by LGBT individuals. This study concluded that such children had several negative economic, social and psychological consequences as a result of their nontraditional upbringing. Critics understandably alleged the study was biased from the start, given its sponsorship, and was done to reach pre-determined results. Other experienced researchers pointed to methodological flaws in the study. But Regnerus insisted his study was objective and valid.

Despite the controversy surrounding it, Congressional representatives opposed to same-sex marriage cited the study often to back up their position. Scalia made indirect reference to it when the Court was deliberating California’s Proposition 8 that barred same-sex marriage. Some state representatives and judicial officials also cited it to justify laws discriminating against LGBT persons. By contrast, a federal district court judge in Michigan called Regnerus’ work “entirely unbelievable and not worthy of serious consideration.” “The funder clearly wanted a certain result,” the judge said, “and Regnerus obliged.”

Regnerus’ own department at the University of Texas distanced itself from his work by stating “[his] opinions are his own.” They pointed to the ASA’s calling the study’s conclusions “fundamentally flawed on conceptual and methodological grounds” and said his research “improperly diminished” the civil rights and legitimacy of LBGTQ partners and their families.

The tide steadily turned against Regnerus’ work. Media Matters, a nonprofit dedicated to “correcting conservative misinformation,” said this growing skepticism was most evident in the fact that when the Supreme Court upheld same-sex marriage in its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, not a single dissenting justice cited Regnerus’ research as part of his dissent. As Media Matters saw it, this attempt to coat religious bias with a veneer of fabricated facts ultimately did not work because the allegation that LGBT individuals are fundamentally flawed did not withstand objective scrutiny.

By Ken Burrows

Published June 22, 2016 with quotation below:

"A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets."
                               --- Arthur C. Clarke