The title is a reference to a concept espoused decades ago by U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). The idea was not original to Moynihan, but the phrase meant that as bad behavior becomes more pervasive a limit is crossed and society simply begins to accept it.

The same year that Senator Moynihan gained notice for his comments, columnist Charles Krauthammer expanded Moynihan’s point by suggesting the opposite. Not only were we “normalizing what was once considered deviant,” but we were also “finding deviant what was once considered normal.” As morals decline, the rejection of morality also occurs. We see this more and more today.

It seems that the pervasive nature of pornography, which is available like never before in history, is impacting mindsets. According to Gallup Polling, the percent of Americans who now say that pornography is “morally acceptable” is at an all-time high with 43 percent now expressing this view, up from 36 percent in the previous year’s survey.

The Institute for Family Studies discusses some of the implications of this.  One of the problems they note is that the people who view pornography at younger ages are less likely to marry or more likely to delay marriage.

The theory that porn use is linked to a decline in marriage is one that University of Austin professor Mark Regnerus, the author of Cheap Sex, has noted with the Institute before. “At best, porn will augment—or compete with—sex, and stall marriage,” Regnerus warned. “At worst, sexual technology threatens to undermine coupled sex altogether.”

Beyond marriage, other experts worry about the long-term impact of widespread pornography on the mental, emotional, and spiritual health of young people who are growing up in a porn-saturated world.  A study by BYU professor and family therapist Mark Butler found a link between young people’s increasing use of pornography and their experience of loneliness and isolation. Butler suggested that pornography’s “potential to mislead and misshape young people’s views of women and men, relationships, intimacy, and sexuality during their formative years is very real—making a pornography-loneliness partnership a threat to their overall sexual and relational well-being.”

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Written by Faith Kuzma

It’s hard to overstate the importance of the recent correction by the American Journal of Psychiatry of a landmark study purporting to demonstrate mental health improvements of “transitioning.”

According to Dr. Mark Regnerus, who analyzed the data,

This is not, contrary to what Bränström [lead researcher] told ABC News, an evidence-informed treatment. That the authors corrupted otherwise excellent data and analyses with a skewed interpretation signals an abandonment of scientific rigor and reason in favor of complicity with activist groups seeking to normalize infertility-inducing and permanently disfiguring surgeries.

In its conclusions, the study claimed hormones had no effect on mental health. The researchers also claimed, however, that SRS (sex reassignment surgery) benefited the mental health of patients. Regnerus explains:

If this were a clinical trial seeking to establish the efficacy of a particularly invasive medical treatment in comparison with a non-invasive standard protocol, there is no way that these published results would favor the invasive treatment—in this case, “gender affirming” surgery—when the statistical difference in outcomes was so tiny and fragile.

Almost a dozen doctors in the U.S., U.K., and Sweden sent seven letters recently published in the journal. These doctors demonstrated the claim of positive mental health outcomes was not merited.

Because it drew from population-wide data collected by the Swedish national health service, the Yale study was initially heralded as a turning point definitively demonstrating medical transitioning yields positive health outcomes. The Yale School of Health specifically announced health outcomes “improve”:

Unfailingly, the popular press echoed this Yale branding of transitioning as beneficial. For instance, without qualification, Reuters announced: “Sex-change operations yield long-term mental health benefits for transgender people.”

Glancing through the headlines, the readership of Newsweek, NBC, and the New York Daily News would surely be satisfied that whatever risks are entailed via “transitioning” may well be justified.

Since most prior studies indicate poor mental health outcomes, the press fanfare reveals how little research  journalists did.

In recent months, the Yale imprimatur lent credence to an especially urgent demand for trans-affirmative healthcare during the pandemic.

As it turns out, however, there is anecdotal evidence many young people desisted while under less constant reinforcement of “transitioning” propaganda. One Reddit user reflected on her break from a social network that affirmed her “transition”:

I detransitioned over the lockdown period and think that the loss of constant positive affirmation of my transmale identity by friends/strangers definitely contributed to me realising that my transition was more tied to outside influences than I previously realised. When I was around others I was constantly praised and looked up to for being trans—being alone helped me uncover and look into that feeling of ‘wrongness’ that’d started to nag at me since permanent T [testosterone] changes had began.

The study design did not initially include assessment of health outcomes for those who, from necessity or choice, did not go through with medically and surgically “transitioning,” After the response led researchers to recalculate, their results showed no difference in outcomes.

Moreover, psychological treatments similar to what is known according to the misnomer “wait and see”  model (actually an active talk therapy model demonstrated as successful by Dr. Kenneth Zucker) did not figure into the study. Surely it is important to examine what treatment paths might have led specifically to desistance, especially given the increasing number of therapy bans that make it dangerous to use talk therapy in response to gender-confused youth and adults.

It’s worth wondering how many online readers will realize the study’s conclusion was retracted. A reader without a medical background likely is unaware of the errors in basic calculations that led to the study authors acknowledging their conclusion was unmerited. Why did the peer review process overlook vested interests, motivated research methods, and in at least one instance, misrepresentations of data?

Why is the American Journal of Psychiatry continuing to maintain on its publication site a discredited study sponsored by donors who back LGBT causes, thereby causing a conflict of interest? Lobbying in the form of endowments provides academic cover of objectivity. Yale, in particular, has huge financial incentives from the Pritzker family, the Arcus Foundation and LGBT-dedicated alumni donations.

A few decades back, A.J. Reynolds sponsored research finding health benefits from cigarette smoking. Unsuspecting onlookers now as then are likely to take the study claims at face value.

Such financial ties incentivize research conclusions favored by donors and require up-front disclosure on the American Journal of Psychiatry website. Regarding such studies, Julian Vigo observes:

What this means, when you sift through the bios of the principal investigators and many on the advisory board who hold seats on other granting institutions, editorial committees, and institutional seats of great power, is this: that an enormous amount of money has been thrown at academics who are using public funds for political activism within a dishonestly formulated project.

Not just the publishers of such research but professional organizations as well are to blame for mainstreaming bogus research on “transitioning.” In at least two instances, professional medical organizations amplified the false benefits claim and basically continue to carry water for the “trans” lobby by further nesting and codifying transitioning within established practice.

The Butterfly Effect of “Trans” Advocacy in Research

Within months of the Yale study being published, systematic embedding of “transitioning” as best practice in “trans” healthcare began. This butterfly effect is seen in the ways professional associations dovetailed guidelines to fit the 2019 study.

Just two months after the Yale research appeared, the AMA issued a statement in support of “transitioning”:

Receipt of gender-affirming care has been linked to dramatically reduced rates of suicide attempts, decreased rates of depression and anxiety, decreased substance use, improved HIV medication adherence and reduced rates of harmful self-prescribed hormone use.

At the very least, the AMA needs to issue a correction. Dr. Mary Davenport, OBGYN writes:

This is a very serious error. It caused the AMA to state that surgery was an important treatment for gender dysphoria, and that justice requires insurance and the military to pay. (comment on social media). 

It wasn’t just the AMA, however, that extended the butterfly effect of the Yale study.

Sorry, Not Sorry

With evangelical zeal, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) also loaned its considerable professional authority to effectively endorse the study’s discredited conclusion with a headline that even now serves to support “transitioning”: “Study Finds Long-Term Mental Health Benefits of Gender-Affirming Surgery for Transgender Individuals.”

Despite its being fully discredited, the erroneous claim is updated by links to the journal’s correction, but it is still essentially being propped up by the APA. Initially hidden behind a paywall, the correction was virtually unseen and unavailable to online readers who still are likely to assume the APA underwrites or even champions the biomedical approach. Put plainly, the corrected publication now finds that neither time on hormones nor SRS surgery improves mental health outcomes. Yet this information is not clearly stated on the APA’s “update” page.

Additionally, while the APA links to the journal’s statement, it is written in academic jargon for specialists who know their niche area, not a general readership, which can still gloss the headline as legitimizing transitioning. Even for medical generalists, the continued posting of the study is misleading and harmful. Dr. Quentin Van Meter, a pediatric endocrinologist, commented in a recent conference presentation that most doctors are too busy to research information about new developments in care and rely on guidelines often drafted within small work groups by activists.

Clearly, both the journal and the professional associations are minimizing the study’s shortcomings in a way that deliberately misleads.

Helena, who is a re-identified woman, sums up how reframing of data to show positive outcomes undermines the trust patients have in medical institutions:

[T]here are a multitude of reasons why the unquestioning acceptance of these interventions as “care” is both ethically and scientifically flawed. It is true, and will always be true, that people who identify as transgender should receive support as well as proper, evidence-based, mental and physical healthcare. The issue is that as it stands today, the trans healthcare industry, and increasingly the institutions of the broader medical establishment (including the World Health Organization, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the Endocrine Society, among others), have broken away from the traditional standards originally set by rigorously developed medical ethics and the scientific method.

Inescapably, academic standing is undermined by the simultaneous effort to avoid public scrutiny. Public confidence can only be restored by a full retraction, including removing mention of the study from online publications and websites.

As an inflection point in the activist normalization of medical “transitioning,” research not only informs but directs healthcare policies and standards. The butterfly effect extends to teaching materials provided to doctors as part of continuing education requirements. For instance, the study was quickly repurposed as CME, (Continuing Medical Education) and turned into a key class that U.S. physicians take to keep their license. The course teaches physicians that “The findings support the decision to offer surgery to transgender individuals seeking it, as well as policies that ensure coverage for surgery” (Posted on Twitter by SEGMtweets). This statement needs to be expunged since the Yale study shows no such thing. If that does not happen, organizations posting such claims need to be held liable for disseminating misinformation.

Because the study’s statistical analysis was invalidated and a correction issued, such statements need to be removed from teaching materials and websites. Hacsi Horvath, an epidemiologist who has reviewed this study and others like it, advises,

institutions should strongly consider removing [such] documents … to  prevent  potential  patient  harms  that  may  accrue  if individuals, clinicians and  policy-makers take  their  “findings” at face value.

Talk Therapy Beats Surgical Disfigurement

So many structural changes to the practice of medicine appear to hinge on this one Yale study. Rippling out to affect society-wide structures, the study’s over-reach has already led to enormous changes in the way doctors practice medicine. Researchers, banking on the elite schools they work for, sell off their brand to mega foundations and agenda-driven donors.

The increasing overlap between the fields of psychiatry and medicine is wasting away the skills and strategies of traditional psychiatrists. Dr. Deborah Soh, non-conservative author of the recently published book The End of Gender  recommends a return to letting therapists do their job:

[Medical professionals] can’t do their jobs right now. Anyone who is ethical has left or is choosing not to work with gender dysphoria.  They can’t do their jobs properly.  So what you have instead is the people who are currently operating are activists, and they will facilitate what the patient wants, whether or not that may be the best thing for them.

Because many of the activist definitions have been enshrined in law, therapists and medical doctors no longer routinely complete an assessment. Few if any engage gender-confused patients in historically demonstrated successful modes of talk therapy now possibly subject to bans. As a result, many psychiatrists have left the field. At the UK’s Tavistock gender clinic, an alarming 35 clinicians recently resigned over concerns about gender affirmation, basically over-diagnosing kids who otherwise might well go on to desist.

Organizations with “trans”-affirmative protocols need to be held to account. The ways the Yale 2019 study positioned affirmative practices as the best approach show how powerful a weapon it became in convincing the public of the efficacy of “transitioning.” The social engineering goals of those with moneyed interests in this medical growth industry need to be identified and named by any organization promoting the affirmative response.

From risky off-label hormones in an unregulated sphere of medicine, “transitioning” became essential healthcare under the halo effect of the Yale 2019 study. Now that this claim is rejected, it’s time to fully retract the “trans” affirmative standard of care and allow medical practitioners to do their jobs and their organizations to advocate only what is legitimately evidence- based.

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Written by Dorothy Cummings McLean

A new study suggests that pornography use makes church-going men more tolerant of abortion. For moral conservatives, the news dovetails with another recent study showing porn use increases men’s support for homosexual ‘marriage’.

The study, titled “Does Religious Attendance Moderate a Connection Between Pornography Consumption and Attitudes Towards Women?”,  argues that church-attending men who use pornography begin to tolerate abortion because of their “cognitive dissonance” regarding their sexual behavior.

Kyler R. Rasmussen of Mount Royal University and Taylor Kohut of the University of Toronto said that they “found that those who reported consuming pornography had more egalitarian attitudes than those who did not, but this difference was stronger among those who attended religious services more regularly—those who would be likely to experience dissonance when consuming pornography.”

By “egalitarian attitudes” the researchers mean positive “attitudes toward women in power, women in the workplace, and abortion.” It should be noted that Rasmussen and Kohut assume that it is “progressive” and “egalitarian” to believe in so-called abortion rights.

They write that the “attitudinal shifts” resulting from use of pornography by religious men can be partly explained by “the Theory of Cognitive Dissonance.” This theory suggests that attitudes can be changed when people behave in ways that “are in conflict with those attitudes.” When people who think porn is bad use it anyway, their behavior causes “cognitive dissonance” and the resulting discomfort changes their opinions about porn and, “by extension,” other sexual matters.

The authors, who refer to a large-scale survey conducted in the United States to present their findings, state that religious conservatives become less conservative when they use pornography. In their study, they write:

“In the case of religious conservatives, pornography-related dissonance could not only serve to liberalize attitudes toward pornography and, by extension, sexuality, but also other conservative beliefs that support those attitudes, including beliefs about female subservience and dependence [sic]. Because of this, pornography might be more likely to alter egalitarian attitudes amongst those who should feel the most dissonance when consuming it—namely, those whose religious practices imply strong condemnation of pornographic material.”

The study, which was published on November 29 on the online “Journal of Sex Research,” cites a 2007 work by Mark Regnerus, Forbidden fruit: Sex & religion in the lives of American teenagers. Regnerus, who does not conflate abortion support with “egalitarianism”, observed in his recently released Cheap Sex: The Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy that the use of porn erodes religious belief and is a “very significant predictor of men’s support for same-sex marriage.”

“It may be, at least in part, a passive byproduct of regular exposure to the diversity of sex found in contemporary porn,” Regnerus wrote.

The Rasmussen-Kohut research into conservative Christians builds on other published findings regarding pornography’s power to change attitudes. A 2016 study co-authored by Taylor Kohut that also appeared in the Journal of Sex Research, “Is Pornography Really about ‘Making Hate to Women’? Pornography Users Hold More Gender Egalitarian Attitudes than Nonusers in a Representative American Sample,” illustrated that “porn users are more apt to identify as feminists” and support so-called  “egalitarian attitudes” towards women’s employment, leadership and abortion.

In Cheap Sex, Mark Regnerus cited Kohut’s 2016 study and said, “You think technology cannot change people’s minds? It may be time to reconsider.”

This article was originally posted at LifeSiteNews.com

Sociologist Mark Regnerus has a new in-depth study of how our culture’s lack of sexual morality is impacting relationships in ways not seen in previous generations.  There was a fascinating, if not disturbing, review of Regnerus’ new book (Cheap Sex) that contained the following section specifically looking at how the culture is impacting Christians. It also mentions how churches are impacted by these changes and the confusion it is causing.

The review states the following:

Long-standing Christian sexual ethics are making less and less sense to the un-churched — a key market for evangelicals. That’s giving church leadership fits over just how “orthodox” they can be or should be on matters of sex and sexuality. “Meeting people where they’re at” becomes challenging. Congregations are coming face to face with questions of just how central sexual ethics are to their religious life and message.

Levels of uncertainty — that is, neither agreeing nor disagreeing — about various sexual practices and attitudes are elevated among Christians. When we asked more than 15,000 Americans about sexual ethics, many who attended religious services at least once a week were on the fence. How many?

• 23 percent are unsure about the wisdom of cohabiting before marriage

• 14 percent are unsure about marriage being outdated

• 21 percent don’t know what they think about no-strings-attached sex

• 25 percent don’t know if viewing pornography is okay or not

• 10 percent are unsure about whether extramarital sex might ever be permissible

• 17 percent don’t know if consensual polyamorous unions are okay

One can interpret those on the fence as movable — open to being convinced. But if trends in sexual norms hold, most who once claimed neutrality eventually drift toward the more permissive position.

Cheap sex, it seems, has a way of deadening religious impulses. It’s able to poke holes in the “sacred canopy” over the erotic instinct, to borrow the late Peter Berger’s term. Perhaps the increasing lack of religious affiliation among young adults is partly a consequence of widening trends in non-marital sexual behavior among young Americans, in the wake of the expansion of pornography and other tech-enhanced sexual behaviors.

Cohabitation has prompted plenty of soul searching over the purpose, definition and hallmarks of marriage. But we haven’t reflected enough on how cohabitation erodes religious belief.

We overestimate how effectively scientific arguments secularize people. It’s not science that’s secularizing Americans — it’s sex.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Barely five days after The New York Times ran a major news article on the firing of Atlanta’s fire chief for his views on homosexuality, a major Times opinion writer declared that religious liberty is a fine thing, so long as it is restricted to “pews, homes, and hearts” — far from public consequence.

The firing of Kelvin Cochran as chief of Atlanta’s Fire Rescue Department came after the city’s mayor, Kasim Reed, determined that the chief could not effectively manage the department after he had written a book in which he cited Scripture in defining homosexuality as a sin.

The most crucial portion of the Times story includes the mayor’s rationale:

“At a news conference, Mr. Reed said that Mr. Cochran’s ‘personal religious beliefs are not the issue.’ But Atlanta’s nondiscrimination policy, the mayor added, is ‘nonnegotiable.’

‘Despite my respect for Chief Cochran’s service, I believe his actions and decision-making undermine his ability to effectively manage a large, diverse work force,’ Mr. Reed said. ‘Every single employee under the fire chief’s command deserves the certainty that he or she is a valued member of the team and that fairness and respect guide employment decisions.’”

But the mayor’s words do not form a coherent argument. Chief Cochran was fired precisely because his “personal religious beliefs” are, in the mayor’s mind, incompatible with assuring every member of the department “that he or she is a valued member of the team and that fairness and respect guide employment decisions.”

Chief Cochran had written a book entitled, Who Told You that You Were Naked?, in which, according to the Times, he had affirmed that homosexual acts are among what the Bible defines as “vile, vulgar, and inappropriate activities” that “dishonor God.”

The story has been widely reported in the national press, and no accusation that Chief Cochran had acted in a discriminatory fashion toward any department employee has yet been asserted. In November, announcing the Chief’s suspension without pay, Mayor Reed said that Chief Cochran’s views as expressed in the book were inconsistent with the city’s policies on discrimination. Note, as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution made clear, the mayor’s concern was the chief’s views on homosexuality. The paper cited a statement from the mayor’s office in its report on the suspension: “I want to be clear that the material in Chief Cochran’s book is not representative of my personal beliefs, and is inconsistent with the administration’s work to make Atlanta a more welcoming city for all of her citizens — regardless of their sexual orientation, gender, race and religious beliefs.”

But the mayor did not extend his concern about non-discrimination on religious beliefs to Chief Cochran, who clearly expressed his views as a matter of biblical belief.

Liberties do not exist in a vacuum. In any historical moment, certain liberties collide with other liberties. We are now witnessing a direct and unavoidable collision between religious liberty with what is rightly defined as erotic liberty — a liberty claimed on the basis of sexual identity and activity. Religious liberty is officially recognized in the Bill of Rights — even in the very first amendment — and the framers of the American order did not claim to have established this right to free religious expression, but to have recognized it as a pre-existent right basic to citizenship.

Erotic liberty is new on the scene, but it is central to the moral project of modernity — a project that asserts erotic liberty, which the framers never imagined, as an even more fundamental liberty than freedom of religion. The logic of erotic liberty has worked its way from law schools and academia into popular culture, entertainment, public policy, and Supreme Court decisions.

In one classic example, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy famously wrote  of human dignity in terms of one’s “concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life” — and he has explicitly tied that to erotic liberty in a series of decisions and opinions.

Chief Cochran wrote a book, as a Christian and for his fellow Christians. According to the Times article, he gave a copy of the book to three city employees who had not asked for it. In response, he was fired by Mayor Reed.

The opinion column published just days after Chief Cochran’s firing was written by Frank Bruni, an openly-gay columnist whose essays often appear in the “Sunday Review” section of the paper. In this case, he cites his own sexual orientation in making his argument in “Your God and My Dignity.”

His argument is that claims of endangered religious liberty for conservative Christians are “absurd.” He complains about “religious people getting a pass that isn’t warranted.” Religious liberty, he claims, is being used as “a fig leaf for intolerance.”

The legalization of same-sex marriage cannot and will not infringe upon religious liberty, he claims, because such laws “do not pertain to religious services or what happens in a church, temple or mosque; no clergy member will be compelled to preside over gay nuptials. Civil weddings are covered. That’s it.”

The really chilling part of his statement is the restriction of religious liberty to “religious services or what happens in a church, temple, or mosque.” This is becoming more and more common, as major political and legal figures speak more and more of “freedom of worship” as a replacement for religious liberty. Religious liberty certainly includes freedom of worship, but it by no means stops there.

Furthermore, when the proponents of same-sex marriage and the new sexual revolution promise even to respect what goes on in a church, temple, or mosque, they evidently cannot keep their arguments straight. In the very same column, Bruni complains that religious congregations are given too much liberty to define their own ministry. He laments that “churches have been allowed to adopt broad, questionable interpretations of a ‘ministerial exception’ to anti-discrimination laws that allow them to hire and fire clergy as they wish.”

The front lines of the battle for religious liberty will be at the door of your congregation very soon, if this column is any indication — and it is. While promising to respect “freedom of worship,” Bruni openly implies that congregations should not have the right to hire and fire ministers or clergy on the basis of their sexual orientation or beliefs. What kind of liberty is that?

It is no liberty at all. This argument spells the end of religious liberty in any meaningful sense. What about the right of religious schools to hire, admit, and house on the basis of Christian moral judgment? If Bruni complains about congregations having the right to “hire and fire clergy as they wish,” we can only imagine what he would want to see mandated in terms of religious schools and institutions.

The headline over the print edition of Frank Bruni’s column is “Your God and My Dignity.” The use of the term “dignity” in this way is explained by University of Texas professor Mark Regnerus as “the mission creep of dignity.” In an important article released today, Regnerus contrasts the traditional view of human dignity, rooted in the belief that every human being is made in God’s image and affirmed by natural law theorists as “Dignity 1.0.” As Regnerus explains, this view of human dignity is defined as a person’s “inherent worth of immeasurable value that is deserving of certain morally appropriate responses.” As he further explains, “Understood in this way, dignity is an inalienable value. It’s a reality. Human dignity does not become real when you start to believe in it. It remains real even when neglected or violated. It may be discerned differently across eras, but it’s not arbitrary, to be socially constructed in unique ways by collective will or vote.”

“Dignity 2.0,” on the other hand, is on the ascent. As Regnerus asserts, “To be sure, Dignity 2.0 exhibits some similarities with its predecessor. Each has to do with inherent worth. Each implies the reality of the good. Each understands that rights flow from dignity. But Dignity 2.0 entrusts individuals to determine their own standards.”

In terms of the moral revolution and marriage, he writes:

“Witness, as an example, what is happening to marriage in the West, where the power elite has aligned behind Dignity 2.0 and its novel conclusions about the nature and structure of a timeless institution. The basis for Dignity 2.0 in the West does not rest on external standards, on traditional restraints such as kinship, neighborhood, religion, or nation, which are all stable sources of the self. Rather, it is based upon the dis-integrated, shifting “me,” subject to renegotiation, reinvention, and reconstruction, reinforced by expansive conditions and regulations. It’s exhausting—though profitable to attorneys. And Facebook. But it also explains my confusion: there are rival forms of dignity, and the version you employ matters a great deal.”

Indeed, it matters a very great deal. And the central thrust of Dignity 2.0 is what I describe as erotic liberty — the newly asserted liberty that is now trampling  or endangering religious liberty.

Don’t miss the final words of Frank Bruni’s column:

“And I support the right of people to believe what they do and say what they wish — in their pews, homes and hearts. But outside of those places? You must put up with me, just as I put up with you.”

In the event we missed the point earlier in his column, he makes the point crystal clear in the end. Religious liberty is to be respected, so long as it is confined to “pews, homes, and hearts.”

Chief Kelvin Cochran knows exactly what Frank Bruni means. Do you?

This article was originally posted at the AlberMohler.com website.

Of these two, which headline about the same “study” do you guess was seen by more people?:

1. Children with same-sex parents happier and healthier than those from traditional families, study shows

2. Is Same-Sex Parenting Better for Kids? The New Australian Study Can’t Tell Us

BarbWire, the conservative news website, is posting an excerpt from #2, which is an article by Mark Regnerus published at the Public Discourse website. But the liberal press went gaga over this junk science news item and headlines like #1 were a lot easier to find. BarbWire contributor Bill Muehlenberg, who lives in Australia, also addresses this controversy on BarbWire today.

If too many Americans remain low information voters it’s not for a lack of good information — the problem is one or reach. Those of us who know how the political left and the liberal media lie must continue to reach more of our fellow citizens with the truth. We must fight harder in the information war.

On this topic of same-sex parenting, by the way, on the web page where the #2 article is posted are found these important articles — they’re all well worth your time and need wide dissemination:

The Kids Aren’t All Right: New Family Structures and the “No Differences” Claim
By Ana Samuel

Mark Regnerus and the Storm over the New Family Structures Study
By Matthew J. Franck

The Vindication of Mark Regnerus
By Matthew J. Franck

A Married Mom and Dad Really Do Matter: New Evidence from Canada
By Mark Regnerus

Here are two more articles at the Public Discourse website written by BarbWire contributor Robert Oscar Lopez:

Same-Sex Parenting: Child Abuse?
Single-parenting and divorce have always been understood as a breakdown of the married mom and dad ideal, but the demand to view same-sex parenting as “normal” imposes a silence on children about the wound caused by the loss of one parent or the other.

Growing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children’s View
The children of same-sex couples have a tough road ahead of them—I know, because I have been there. The last thing we should do is make them feel guilty if the strain gets to them and they feel strange.

It’s the same on every single issue — conservatives have plenty of ammo — they need only use it more effectively.

My random thoughts following the vote on marriage:

1.)  Tuesday, cowardly and/or ignorant Illinois lawmakers in defiance of truth, history, logic, compassion, and in some cases, their own religious traditions voted to legally recognize non-marital unions as marriages. In so doing, they have expanded the role of government in the lives of Americans, diminished religious liberty, rendered inevitable the legalization of plural unions, and harmed children in incalculable ways. They have given their stamp of approval on the practice of denying children’s inherent right to have both a mother and father. And they have assured that public schools will teach about sexual perversion in positive ways to children from kindergarten on up.

2.)  The voices of tolerance, truth, compassion, and love did not win. The voices of ignorance and the father of lies won. Here are emails I received from ardent supporters of genderless faux-marriage:

Robert Fracassa sent these three emails to me:

“You Lose. Loser!!!!!!!!” 

“How does it feel? Really bad? Imagine a lifetime of people as evil as you against birth of a child living in misery. No more!  Retire, all your work did nothing and means nothing!!! Marriage equality wins!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yayyyyyy, slam dunk in your face, freak!!!! 

“Reminder, Score: equality 1…Illinois Family Institute and NOM – ZERO!!!!! F U !!!!”

Homosexual activist Scott Rose  (aka Scott Rosenweig or Rosensweig) who writes for the New Civil Rights Movement and filed the challenge to University of Texas Professor Mark Regnerus’ important study of homosexual families, sent this email:

Ha ha!  Ha ha, Laurie.  You do still have the blood of gay-bashing victims dripping off of your bigot fingers, yet you live in a state where the gay people are going to have federal level equality. 

Your life is a waste. 

I think it would be a good idea for you now to kill yourself. 

Go ahead and tell the public…that  I said that. 

I could care less if the public knows that I said it would be a good idea for an anti-LGBT bigot to kill themselves. 

Yes, I am gloating over your defeat. 

Your life is a waste. 

3.) Of course, this transmogrification of marriage has nothing whatsoever to do with equality, which demands that we treat like things alike. Homosexual unions and heterosexual marriage are not alike. They’re as different as night is from day and men are from women.

4.) The Left makes the non-sequitur claim that because heterosexual marriages are failing, homosexual unions should be recognized as marriages. By that “logic,” one could argue that because marriages composed of two people are failing, we should legally recognize plural unions as marriages. Or because marriages composed of biologically unrelated people are failing, we should legalize incestuous marriages. Or because marriages between people of major age are failing, we should legalize marriage between adults and children.

5.) Far too many Christians and their religious leaders were missing in action on this battle and have been for a very, very long time. Churches are not educating either their adult members or their youth on the issue of homosexuality in general and marriage in particular, and this dereliction of duty leaves Christians either confused or, worse, persuaded by the lies of the world.

Our children are growing up in a culture suffused with the poison of sexual perversity, the advocacy of which is propelled by the manipulation of their feelings and thoughts. Who will teach are children the flaws in the arguments proffered by progressives to normalize homosexuality and pervert marriage, if not the church? Most of their parents can’t critique and refute the specious secular arguments used by the Left. And teens aren’t spending their time reading First Things and Touchstone magazines or visiting the website Public Discourse.

So, where, pray tell, will kids be taught how to think through the plethora of fallacious messages with which the culture is slowly being poisoned? One of God’s many gifts in creating us in His image is that we enjoy the gift of reason. Rationality is not a sphere separate from the sacred.

6.)  Far too many religious leaders claim the church should not be involved in “political issues.” But what if political issues are first biblical issues? During the slave era, should churches have remained silent as Scripture was twisted to justify slave-holding (just as it is twisted today to justify same-sex pseudo-marriage)? Was it right that so many Christians refused to stand for truth during Hitler’s reign of terror? Should Christians have refrained from participating in the Civil Rights marches in the 1960’s?

7.)  Listening to the floor “debates” in Springfield, I was reminded of Neil Postman’s prophetic words in Amusing Ourselves to Death, in which he warns about our television-based culture losing its capacity to reason. Instead, appeals to emotion will rule.

The manipulative non-arguments in Springfield included reading a letter from a ten-year-old girl who, prior to being adopted by two homosexual men, had been in foster care. Two thoughts: First, adoption by a similarly compassionate mother and father would have been a better option. Second, the compassionate nurturance of these two men does not mean that their union constitutes a marriage. Although this is a perfect example of a manipulative appeal to emotion, it makes no sense as an argument. If five people of assorted sexes were to take this young girl in and fulfill all the responsibilities of a father and mother, their union would still not constitute a marriage.

8.)  It’s easy for the Left to vilify as hateful bigots people like me as long as there are only a handful of us around the country. If Christendom would come alive with the desire to protect children, preserve religious liberty, expose the deeds of darkness, and suffer for Christ, the Left would be unable to marginalize them all. The Left’s deliberate strategy of vilification and marginalization of those who serve as the tip of the spear works because the church slumbers—or hides. It’s easy to mock and demonize 100 people. It’s not so easy to malign 100,000.

9.)  What does the vote count really tell us in this heavily blue state in which the corrupt Democratic Party controls Springfield and in which House Speaker Mike Madigan for 10 years refused to allow a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman even to have a hearing?  The speaker had to arm-twist members of his own party to get their votes on Tuesday. This close vote in this corrupt blue state may tell us that there are fewer Americans in love with this queer form of marriage than the press would have us believe.

Finally, thank you from the bottom of our weary but at peace hearts! Thank you to all who helped through emails and calls to and meetings with their state representatives, by attending marriage lobby days and pastors breakfasts, for financial support, for prayers, and for emails of support to us.

Thanks you to every state representative who through their votes defended true marriage, an act which is becoming a counter-cultural act of courage.

Thank you too for the emails we received Tuesday night thanking us and offering encouragement and eager support for the next step in our work to preserve liberty and protect children. Those were balms to our souls.

God’s work in this period of redemptive history is far from over. Teaching our youth; making it possible for parents to exit public schools; booting out foolish and cowardly lawmakers; awakening Christians, particularly clergy, who with the exception of a relatively small group, were largely and unconscionably absent; and alerting other states that will soon see their marriage laws attacked to the critical importance of every Christian speaking out boldly for truth are our next tasks.

In all things, we give thanks.

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Some pro-family organizations are rankled at the latest attempt by a liberal media outlet to co-opt two of America’s most beloved children’s pop culture icons on behalf of the pro-homosexual movement.

The Muppets Bert and Ernie, perhaps the most recognized characters of the popular U.S. children’s television program Sesame Street, have been used to commemorate last week’s landmark Supreme Court rulings on same-sex “marriage.” The latest issue of The New Yorker magazine shows the duo cuddling on their sofa as they watch a television featuring members of the United States Supreme Court.

The illustration, titled “Moment of Joy,” suggests the two characters were joyfully celebrating the recent rulings overturning the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage.

Dan Gainor, vice president of business and culture for the Media Research Center, believes children are the ultimate losers.

“What happened to the idea that we could have the innocence of youth?” asks Gainor. “Where children are not abused this way? Where the characters they grow up with and learn from are made gay?”

Gainor cites the move to reverse the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, a “Was Jesus Gay” article in the Huffington Post, and now the cover of The New Yorker magazine as examples of a major propaganda initiative to convince the world that a large number of the world’s population is “gay.”

“Literally, from pre-K all the way up to senior citizens, they use TV, they use radio, they use movies, they use news and entertainment and magazines,” says Gainor. “The whole goal is [to proclaim] that all male or all female friendships … must be gay. Their opinion is basically everybody must be gay. No, that’s actually not the case.”

Gainor is not alone in his criticism.

“It’s beneath contempt for a magazine of The New Yorker‘s stature to use Bert and Ernie to celebrate behavior which is immoral, unnatural and unhealthy,” says Tim Wildmon, president of the American Family Association (AFA). “The artist is just dead wrong. This is a tragic day for kids who will wind up in same-sex households.”

Wildmon notes a study by University of Texas researcher Mark Regnerus that concluded children raised in same-sex environments fared worse in 77 out of 80 outcomes when compared to children raised in intact homes by a mother and a father.

“The Bible has had it right from the beginning: marriage is between a man and a woman, and it’s the optimal nurturing environment for children. The New Yorker ought to be ashamed of itself,” concludes Wildmon.

On Friday, columnist Bryan Fischer accused the magazine of promoting “child endangerment” and “child abuse” by using the images of Bert and Ernie. Fischer also cited the findings of Mark Regnerus.

‘Great for our kids’?

The Ernie and Bert characters have lived together for several years in an apartment in the basement of 123 Sesame Street. Although they sleep in separate beds, they share a bedroom, which has led some to speculate the characters portray a homosexual relationship.

In 2011, after an online petition asking for Sesame Street to have Bert and Ernie “wed” went viral, the shows producers’ refuted that claim. That same petition also asked producers to add a transgender character.

“Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves,” Sesame Workshop said in a statement at the time. “Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”

Jack Hunter, the artist who designed the cover and first posted his image on a Tumblr account, said: “It’s amazing to witness how attitudes on gay rights have evolved in my lifetime. This is great for our kids, a moment we can all celebrate.”

Originally posted at OneNewsNow.com.

While there seems to be some surprise in the reaction to this finding, most theologians would understand that when a person’s moral foundations crumble, it has a pervasive impact upon many areas of his life and mindset.

A new study from an Indiana University professor finds that the more men watch pornography, the more it breaks down their moral views and the more accepting they become of homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

“Pornography adopts an individualistic, non-judgmental stance on all kinds of non-traditional sexual behaviors and same-sex marriage attitudes are strongly linked to attitudes about same-sex sex.  If people think individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether to have same-sex sex, they will also think that individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether to get married to a partner of the same-sex,” Professor Paul Wright told The Washington Examiner.

A review of 500 men over six years found that “pornography consumption did prospectively predict support for same-sex marriage,” according to an abstract of the article, which is soon to be published in the journal Communication Research.  Heavy viewers of pornography were also far more likely to believe “marriage is an outdated institution” and that homosexuals parent as well as heterosexuals.
 
This is at least the second study to find such a connection. University of Texas sociology professor Mark Regnerus first mentioned the link between porn and gay “marriage” last December in The Public Discourse.  He found that 54 percent of men aged 23-39 who watched porn “every day or almost every day” strongly agreed that homosexual marriage should be legal.

Incidentally, today, four out of five 16 year-old boys regularly view pornography.   This may add credence to Regnerus’ next observation.   “Contrary to what we might wish to think, young adult men’s support for redefining marriage may not be entirely the product of ideals about expansive freedoms, rights, liberties, and a noble commitment to fairness. It may be, at least in part, a byproduct of regular exposure to diverse and graphic sex acts,” Regnerus wrote.
  
Same-sex marriage is not a result of greater liberty and a new intellectual enlightenment, but a symptom of widespread moral decline and spiritual decay.

**Caution: Reader discretion advised.**

A study conducted by Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas compared the “social, emotional, and relational” outcomes for children raised in different family structures, including children raised by heterosexual parents and those raised in homes in which the parents had been in homosexual relationships. It found that the children raised in homes in which parents had had homosexual relationships were disadvantaged in numerous ways.

Regnerus’ research has come under heavy fire for flawed test construction which, critics charge, is due to bias. The central criticisms include the following:

1. Regnerus’ conclusions are biased because he follows a faith tradition that teaches that volitional homosexual acts are not moral.
2. Regnerus’ study was funded by two conservative organizations.
3. Regnerus compared apples to oranges. That is, he compared the social, emotional, and relational outcomes for children raised within intact heterosexual family structures to those for children raised by parents who had had a homosexual relationship. As William Saletan for Slate Magazine explained, “[Regnerus] compared children of intact mom-and-dad families not to the tiny subset of kids raised by same-sex couples (which was statistically nonviable) but to the much bigger sample of kids with a parent who had at some point engaged in a gay relationship.”

The scorched earth assault on Regnerus’ study was precipitated by two events: a petition signed by 200 academicians, surely motivated only by their professional concern for the ethical integrity of academic research (nudge, nudge, wink, wink).

The other precipitating event was a formal letter of complaint sent to the Director of Research Integrity at the University of Texas by a notorious homosexual activist from New York City, Scott Rose (aka Scott Rosenweig or Rosensweig), who is known for his anti-Christian hatred, obscenity-laced screeds, and misogyny.

Rose likes to think of himself as an “investigative journalist,” and the “neutral” press is only too happy to play along. Rose’s role in the Regnerus saga needs to be more fully known and his dubious character more fully exposed.

Scott Rose: toxic shock

I first learned about Rose last year while working with a parent group in the Anoka-Hennepin school district in Minneapolis who were trying valiantly to establish school policy that would prevent teachers from using curricula and their classrooms to advance their personal moral and political views of homosexuality. Rose sent a letter to the Anoka-Hennepin superintendent in which he called the parents group as well as Minnesota Family Council, “loud-mouthed anti-gay bigot adults.”

Then last month, Rose contacted me incensed that I had posted an article critical of Harvey Milk. At one point in our email exchange I said, “My hope and prayer is that someday you will come to know Christ, who can free you from bondage to sin and give you peace,” to which Rose responded, “You come at me with your condescending Jesus bull****. You cannot possibly have any close friends who are Jewish, because if you did, you would know not to come at a Jewish person with your Jesus bull****.”

Even more disturbing — bordering on pathological — is the blog Rose had which was titled “Anti-Gay Bigotry Scares Me.” He took it down within a week after our email exchange during which I quoted his own shocking words from his blog to him. I suspect Rose took down his blog because he didn’t want his true nature to be revealed to the public and the credulous press.

Rose now writes for The New Civil Rights Movement, whose name parasitically exploits the African American fight for civil rights and depends on the offensive and nonsensical comparison of homosexuality to race. You can, however, read two of his posts, (HERE and HERE), that were available online as recently as June 10, 2012.  (Caution: disturbing images and language) These posts are ironic coming from a card-carrying member of the “no-name-calling” crowd.

The first one is an execrable piece of calumny written about the brilliant Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage who endures the most pernicious ad hominem attacks in the thankless job of defending marriage.

The second of Rose’s blog posts is a repellent attack on Laurie Thompson, one of the parents in the Minneapolis parents group that works tirelessly for the good of children and the integrity of public education.

I apologize to Maggie Gallagher, Laurie Thompson, and IFI readers for the obscene, hateful, misogynistic content of these posts, but the public needs to know the true character of the man who is now trying not just to challenge Regnerus’ research but to assassinate the character of anyone who dares to dissent from Rose’s beliefs about homosexuality.

A few concluding ruminations on social science research

The viciousness, speed, and intensity of the attacks from academicians on Regnerus’ research seem unusual, particularly as compared to the lack of criticism leveled at research whose findings the homosexual community likes. I wonder why 200 academicians didn’t criticize the deeply flawed lesbian study that came out in 2010. As Andrew Ferguson wrote in the Weekly Standard:

The limitations of Regnerus’s study compare favorably with the shortcomings found routinely in the same-sex literature. It does no credit to the guild that researchers have choked on Regnerus’s paper while happily swallowing dozens of faulty studies over the last 20 years—because, you can’t help but think, those studies were taken as confirming the “no difference” dogma. “If the Regnerus study is to be thrown out,” wrote the Canadian family economist Douglas Allen in a statement supporting Regnerus, “then practically everything else [in the literature] has to go with it.” 

Social science research can be helpful, but most of us who are non-social scientists and non-statisticians won’t be able to evaluate the quality of research studies. And in this highly politicized, pro-homosexual climate, it’s difficult to determine the reliability of even assessments of the quality of the research. 

I wonder if academicians are as suspect of homosexuality-related research conducted by those who believe volitional homosexual acts are inherently moral as they are of those who believe it’s inherently immoral.

Finally, social science research has limited utility and certainly can’t be used as any ultimate arbiter of morality. If, for example, social science research were to show that children raised by parents who were biological siblings fared just as well as children raised by non-siblings, I don’t think society would conclude that sibling incest is morally defensible—at least not yet.

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