Discredited researcher Mark Regnerus has rough cross-examination

Regnerus

Today, University of Texas professor Mark Regnerus was crossed examined by the lawyers seeking to overturn Michigan's law against marriage equality and second-parent adoption.

Regnerus is the author of the discredited study which claimed that same-sex parenting harms children.  Even though the study has been denounced by several sources, including Regnerus' own university, the state of Michigan called him as an expert witness.

Yesterday, he was questioned by the lawyers for the state of Michigan. If you ask me, I think he burned himself big time:

 The Human Rights Campaign linked to tweets by Tresa Baldas, a staff writer for the Detroit Free Press, who noted that Regnerus admitted that he is “not a fan” of same-sex marriage and that adoption and foster-parenting are “not the ideal” and that he is “not a fan” of in vitro fertilization because in his view, it “reduces kinship.” Baldas also tweeted that Regnerus denied creating the study to derail same-sex marriage but said that a group that funded it wanted to use it before the Supreme Court.

For now, there isn't a lot of information about how he did in today's cross examination from the media because much of the attention seems to be focused on the paradox of a professor's own university AND his own department in the university - sociology - denouncing his research.

 However, if the following tweets hold true, it can be assumed that Regnerus had a rough time at it.

'Fox News personality - lgbts are 'sore winners'' and other Tuesday midday news briefs

George Will, Fox News Contributor, Claims LGBT People Are 'Sore Winners' - I've read this article twice and I STILL don't know what this man is talking about.

Mark Regnerus, Disputed Gay Parenting Study Author, Testifies On Same-Sex Marriage - Eh. I'm not impressed with his testimony. BUT he gets cross-examined today. Sock it to HIM! 

 Mark Regnerus’ Own Sociology Department Calls His Anti-Gay Conclusions ‘Fundamentally Flawed’ - Meanwhile . . .

 Pastor leading Michigan's anti-equality fight: Homosexuality is 'bondage' that 'leads to destruction and death' - And why do our opposition rely on discredited studies? Because I don't think stuff like this would fly in court.  

Washington Times Columnist: Liberals Using Michael Sam To Distract From Benghazi - Aw hell! Who told him? I swear some of us simply can't keep our mouths shut.

Anti-gay groups and their supporters have a disturbing history of distorting scientific research

Mark Regnerus

This so-called culture war over lgbt equality is so immersed in the religious angle and the "personal story" angle that there is scarcely attention paid to how anti-gay groups make attempts at either distorting scientific research or relying on junk science in order to denigrate the lgbt community.

An incident - reported last week by Science Insider and brought to my attention via Truth Wins Out - should give us an idea of how dangerous it is for the lgbt to not bring attention to this aspect:

On 24 February, Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, signed a draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill into law, after 2 months of declining to do so. Science, he says, changed his mind—in particular, the findings of a special scientific committee his Health Ministry had appointed earlier in the month. “Their unanimous conclusion was that homosexuality, contrary to my earlier thinking, was behavioural and not genetic,” Museveni wrote to President Barack Obama on 18 February, in response to Obama’s pleas that he not sign the bill. “It was learnt and could be unlearnt.”
But some scientists on the committee are crying foul, saying that Museveni and his ruling party—Uganda’s National Resistance Movement (NRM)—misrepresented their findings. “They misquoted our report,” says Paul Bangirana, a clinical psychologist at Makerere University in Kampala. “The report does not state anywhere that homosexuality is not genetic, and we did not say that it could be unlearnt.” Two other committee members have now resigned to protest the use of their report to justify the harsh legislation . . .

What seems like a deliberate attempt by Museveni to distort science in order to justify that awful bill puts him in a wide company of folks guilty of the same offense, i.e. distorting science to justify anti-gay persecution or stances against lgbt equality. For over two years, bloggers and activists in the lgbt community and the scientific community in general have been waging a war against a bogus study created by University of Texas professor Mark Regnerus.