The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Non-Standard Families A Sign Of Progress: Blaspheme Not Holy Progress!

Posted on | June 16, 2012 | 3 Comments

by Smitty

Heritage (neither a dog nor a whistle, yet likely to be accused of being a dog whistle in 3…2…) points to the intense blowback over the New Family Structures Study:

The author of a new study showing some negative outcomes for young adults whose parents had same-sex relationships is under attack because his findings conflict with what, in some corners, has become conventional wisdom.
Apparently, the idea that there is “no difference” between children of same-sex parents and their peers raised in traditional married mother-and-father households has become so entrenched among some advocates that new research presenting a contrasting picture is unwelcome—to put it mildly.
University of Texas sociologist Mark Regnerus’s New Family Structures Study (NFSS) is a large, nationally representative random sample of 3,000 young adults ages 18–39. It found better outcomes for those raised in intact biological families when compared to peers in seven other family structures.
Despite the quality of the sample and the wide range of findings, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (GLAAD) called it a “flawed, misleading, and scientifically unsound paper that seeks to disparage lesbian and gay parents.” A writer at The American Prospect said it was “appalling and irresponsible.” An assistant editor at The New Republic called Regnerus a “retrograde researcher” and suggested that this study should “mark the beginning of the end of Mark Regnerus’s credibility with respectable news outlets.”

You figure that HRC and GLAAD should welcome bad research. Such should serve up easy meat for them in their relentless quest to prove that up is the new down.

That, instead, you get a bunch of finger pointing and rhetoric could be an indicator that the study is well founded. It’s as if HRC and GLADD folks were dysfunctional products of New Family Structures.

I’m all for creativity (as this blog may in fact bear out, for regular readers). Invariants like the building blocks of society, e.g. families, may not be the best place to get all wildly experimental.

Category: Culture, Family

Comments

3 Responses to “Non-Standard Families A Sign Of Progress: Blaspheme Not Holy Progress!”

  1. Mike G.
    June 16th, 2012 @ 9:50 am

    You never know how this stuff is going to work out. What helps it along is the glorifying of these “other than normal” lifestyles on TV and in movies.

    We might just be seeing the inevitable blowback that has to occur when folks see what this newfangled  way of raising families has wrought.

  2. DaMav
    June 16th, 2012 @ 1:50 pm

    Heather has 2 Mommies and an Inferior Outcome
    Now can we stop treating children as objects in a social experiment and placing them like door prizes with homosexuals?

  3. Tennwriter
    June 16th, 2012 @ 4:12 pm

    It is good to finally see some serious pushback.  Now let’s add to that getting rid of no-fault divorce.