Tag Archives: Family

News

Mark Regnerus’s research vindicated by University of Texas at Austin

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From Focus on the Family.

Excerpt:

The University of Texas at Austin announced Wednesday that a sociologist who has been excoriated by some in the media over a study showing that parents’ homosexual relationships can have negative effects on children is innocent of academic misconduct

Dr. Mark Regnerus made headlines in June, when his study was published in the widely respected journal Social Science Research. According to his findings, children raised by homosexual parents are more likely than those raised by married heterosexual parents to suffer from poor impulse control, depression and suicidal thoughts, require mental health therapy; identify themselves as homosexual; choose cohabitation; be unfaithful to partners; contract sexually transmitted diseases; be sexually molested; have lower income levels; drink to get drunk; and smoke tobacco and marijuana.

As a result, a gay-activist blogger accused Regnerus of academic fraud, demanding in July that the university release all his research material and emails with fellow sociologists.

Administrators conducted an exhaustive pre-investigation to determine whether a more comprehensive one would be necessary — including hiring a consultant who formerly ran the Office of Research Integrity at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to oversee the process.

After sequestering all of Regnerus’s correspondence and conducting both written and oral interviews with him and his accuser, Scott Rosensweig, Research Integrity Officer Robert Peterson wrote in an Aug. 24 memorandum to administrators, “None of the allegations of scientific misconduct put forth … were substantiated either by physical data, written materials, or by information provided during the interviews.

“Since no evidence was provided to indicate that the behavior at issue rose to a level of scientific misconduct, no formal investigation is warranted.”

There was not even enough evidence of misconduct for an investigation. Regnerus was very thorough and conscientious in the conduct of research – it was original, quality work. And this is in liberal Austin, no less! But will this be reported in the media as much as the accusations were? Not bloody likely.

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Commentary

U.S. government persecutes pastor for helping bio-mom escape with daughter

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Dr. Lydia McGrew writes about it on What’s Wrong With The World blog.

Excerpt:

Several years ago I blogged here about the case of Lisa Miller. Brief background summary: Lisa Miller entered into a lesbian civil union in Vermont with Janet Jenkins. During this civil union, Miller conceived and bore a child by using a sperm donor. The little girl, Isabella, was only eighteen months old when Miller left the relationship and formally broke it up legally. Miller converted to Christianity, left the homosexual lifestyle behind her, and fled to Virginia to keep her child away from Jenkins, who represented all that she had repented of and was now leaving behind. Jenkins, let us bear in mind, is not in any way related to Isabella and has not lived with her since she was eighteen months old.

Vermont courts, to whom the custody decision was ultimately given, treated the unrelated lesbian Jenkins as Isabella’s “other mother” and insisted on unsupervised visitation, even though Jenkins was, from Isabella’s perspective, a stranger. Isabella made some of these visits but was so upset by them (and alleged that Jenkins had bathed with her naked) that Miller refused to allow any more such visits with Jenkins, who had neither any natural claim on Isabella whatsoever nor any relationship with her. Eventually the custody judge decided to punish Miller for her intransigence concerning the unsupervised visits and ordered that Miller give Isabella over entirely, full custody, to live in Vermont with Jenkins. Late in 2009, Miller fled with her daughter, then age seven.

So, the courts gave full custody of the daughter to the partner of the biological mother. A woman who has no biological connection to the child, over the wishes of the child’s biological mother. This is the stuff that Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse is always warning us about. She wasn’t kidding.

And now, here’s the latest news about that story, from that same post:

Lisa Miller and Isabella got away successfully to Nicaragua, which does not have an extradition agreement with the United States for cases of kidnapping, or as in this case, “kidnapping.” Here, the “kidnapping” involves a mother trying to save her own child from being turned over to an entirely unrelated female sodomite to be raised.

As it turns out, though, the federal government joined in the fray. They have now caught and convicted Mennonite Pastor Kenneth Miller (no relation) of helping Lisa Miller in her escape. It sounds to my ears like there could be more trials and convictions on the horizon as well. Meanwhile, Jenkins has filed civil suit against the pastor and at least one other person who helped Lisa Miller to escape. Even if Jenkins never gets her trophy-child, her quest for revenge will not cease until she has destroyed the lives of all those who helped to thwart her pursuit of Lisa Miller and Isabella.

Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse has argued that far from getting the government out of marriage, government’s decision to equate same-sex unions with opposite sex unions would open all kinds of government intervention into families.

News

New study finds that Christians who regularly attend church divorce less

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Note: This post is to contrast with Richard Dawkins’ atheist view of marriage posted earlier today.

From Citizen Link. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

It’s a number that is trumpeted from the rooftops — and the pulpit: Half of marriages among Christians and non-Christians alike end in divorce.

But the reality is that Christians who attend church regularly get divorced at a much lower rate.

Professor Bradley Wright, a sociologist at the University of Connecticut, found that among people who identify as Christians but rarely attend church, 60 percent have been divorced. Of those who attend church regularly, 38 percent have been divorced.

W. Bradford Wilcox, a leading sociologist at the University of Virginia and director of the National Marriage Project, found a nearly identical spread between “active conservative Protestants” who regularly attend church and people with no religious affiliation.

Professor Scott Stanley from the University of Denver, who is working on the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, said couples with a vibrant religious faith have more and higher levels of the qualities that marriages need to avoid divorce.

“Whether young or old, male or female, low-income or not, those who said that they were more religious reported higher average levels of commitment to their partners, higher levels of marital satisfaction, less thinking and talking about divorce and lower levels of negative interaction,” he said. “These patterns held true when controlling for such important variables as income, education and age at first marriage.”

I think this is another good example of means-end reasoning in marriage. I often criticize women for choosing the wrong men to marry because they don’t define typical marriage scenarios and then select men who have prepared for those scenarios. Going to church is an antidote for the moral relativism that ails us, and it transports us outside of our hedonism to a place where we can think about bigger and better things. Women need to choose men who have a habit of attending church. Basically, young people need to study research to find out what works (chastity, pre-marital counseling, church attendance, etc.) and then demand that prospective mates demonstrate those skills – if they expect the marriage to last.

I say this as someone who struggles enormously with the feminized church, but you can’t argue with the data. I personally think that church attendance is less important than a good knowledge of philosophical theology and apologetics, and the habit of debating about those things. (Especially science apologetics) I’ve been to my friend Andrew’s church, and if I lived near him, I would attend regularly. They have excellent apologetics events, world-reknown apologetics speakers and classes on apologetics. They have shown William Lane Craig debates, taught Greg Koukl and Lee Strobel books, and they even did “The Truth Project”, which features Stephen C. Meyer. They actually believe what they claim to believe, and they have actually studied why they ought to believe it. I would attend a church like that regularly.

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