Wednesday, June 13, 2012

NOM hiding ties to anti-gay parenting study

NOM's Robert George
While the National Organization for Marriage has been trumpeting a recent study which claims that gay households are inferior to heterosexual households when it comes to the raising of children, recent information has revealed that NOM has not been forthcoming as to how deep the ties the study has to one of the organization's founders.

 According to Wayne Besen of the group Truth Wins Out, the head of the study - University of Texas researcher Mark Regnerus, received a $695,000 grant from the Witherspoon Institute and a $90,000 grant from the Bradley Foundation.

Both of the Bradley Foundation and the Witherspoon Foundation are affiliated with Princeton professor Robert George. At the Witherspoon Foundation, he is a Herbert W. Vaughan Senior Fellow and at the Bradley Foundation, he is on the Board of Directors.

Robert George is also a founder and chairman emeritus of the National Organization for Marriage. 

It gets even more interesting.

Probably the first publication to trumpet the results of the study was Utah's Deseret News. Robert George just happens to be a member of that publication's board. He joined in 2010.

Interestingly enough, while the National Organization for Marriage ran several posts praising the study, no one from the organization even bothered to mention its ties to George. One would think that for the sake of disclosure, NOM could have mention that its founder and chairman emeritus had a huge hand in not only the study's funding, but possibly also its publicity.

Regnerus's study has received much criticism for its faulty methodology, but it appears that questions also need to be asked as to its ties with NOM because this collusion is not without precedent.

Last year, during its unsuccessful fight to keep marriage equality from New York, NOM members held a press conference claiming that "objective legal scholars"  said that marriage equality will negatively impact the rights of people who disagree with it.

Come to find out, however, that all of those "objective legal scholars" had ties with NOM, including . . . Robert George.

NOM, George, and even Regnerus have a lot to answer for. The only thing is will they be asked the right questions?

Related post:

NOM proves duplicity of anti-gay parenting study


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7 comments:

Erica Cook said...

Actually, the more I think about it there could be an explanation for some of the findings. If the statement was that LGBT parents are on public assistance more it could quite simply be a matter of how the foster care system works. People who do foster care get payed for the cake of foster children. If its about the children of LGBT parents being on public assistance there's also the fact that it costs more for LGBT parents to raise children. We pay more in taxes and have fewer right offs therefore we have less for the care of our children. If some adult children of LGBT parents seek public help because of that inequity that's not the fault of the parents, but the fault of society. I would say its far more fare to say LGBT parents tend to be more prepared for being parents simply because it takes a lot more work for us to have them.

Scott Amundsen said...

Calling Robert George a legal scholar is a little like calling a kid who can ride a tricycle the next Lance Armstrong. Free speech aside, Princeton University should be ashamed to have him on their faculty.

Daniel Wachenheim said...

One thing this proves to me: The only way to show that LGBT people are not as good, or even better, parents compared to opposite sex couples, is to do a highly biased study, designed around foregone conclusions, with a small, biased sample size, and then to massage the data such that you don't include "broken families" in the heterosexual side. The bigots have proven the opposite of their point: LGBT people make good parents, equal to all others.

MileHighJoe said...

Here's a good summary of whats wrong with this study: http://mediamatters.org/blog/201206120005

Scott L. said...

A small correction. It's the Deseret News, not Times.

BlackTsunami said...

Dutely noted and changed. Thanks Scott ;p

Scott L. said...

You're welcome (snicker).