I consider myself lucky to have gotten to know George Cardinal Pell a bit—and that after his 80th year.
Author: Mark Regnerus (Mark Regnerus)
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Census Fidei? Methodological Missteps Are Undermining the Catholic Church’s Synod on Synodality
As a social scientist, I have grave concerns about the methodological mess that has characterized this synod’s massive, unwieldy data-collection-and-analysis venture.
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Will the Fog of War Smuggle Same-Sex Marriage into Ukraine?
In light of both Ukraine’s cultural stance on LGBTQ issues and the data showing drawbacks of same sex parenting, a presidential fiat legalizing same-sex marriage would be an affront to the nation. Furthermore, any capitalizing on Ukraine’s current dependence on the US and EU governments by encouraging its ideological colonization in the utter absence of popular support would be not virtuous but vicious.
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War Highlights Sex Differences and Family Ties
A nation could recover from the loss of scores of men, as the twentieth century’s postwar societies all did. But it has no future without women and children and the moral order of the family and society that these not only represent but constitute. Civilization hinges on women.
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Declining Homosexuality in the American Priesthood
While the average engaged Catholic continues to show signs of making peace with progressive trends in sexuality and relationship behavior, the same is not true among the clergy. The type of man who completes seminary intending ordination is more conservative about matters of sexuality—as well as other markers—than those who enrolled 20, 30, or 40+ years ago.
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When Marriage Becomes a Private Matter
My marriage is an entity with ramifications and consequences that echo outside our home. The same is true in reverse: what happens in other marriages can affect ours. A marriage needs friends, and it can likewise supply friendship to others’ unions.
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Arkansas and the Politics of Experimenting on Children
The Arkansas legislature knows something the governor apparently does not: hormonal treatment of adolescent gender dysphoria yields little across samples and studies. Transgender youth medicine involves numerous known and serious risks that are already identifiable, while the long-term effects and possible harms of off-label drug uses are completely unknown.
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Christianity’s Global Marriage Problem
In an era of new options, more choices, greater temptations, high expectations, consistent anxiety, and endemic uncertainty, nothing about the process of marrying can be taken for granted—even among those belonging to a faith that has long encouraged it. In an era of independence, intentionally becoming interdependent seems increasingly risky.
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Weak Data, Small Samples, and Politicized Conclusions on LGBT Discrimination
The measurement, analytic, and interpretive decision-making displayed in much (though certainly not all) of the LGBT discrimination and well-being literature is troubling, indicative of a lack of standards, poorly defined concepts, impressionistic conclusions derived from small numbers of interviews, the politicization of results, and the overall novelty of the field.
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New Data Show “Gender-Affirming” Surgery Doesn’t Really Improve Mental Health. So Why Are the Study’s Authors Saying It Does?
Data from a new study show that the beneficial effect of surgery for transgender people is so small that a clinic may have to perform as many as 49 gender-affirming surgeries before they could expect to prevent one additional person from seeking subsequent mental health treatment. Yet that’s not what the authors say. 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.
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Does “Conversion Therapy” Hurt People Who Identify as Transgender? The New JAMA Psychiatry Study Cannot Tell Us
A new study purports to prove the harms of “conversion therapy” for those who identify as transgender. But there are at least four good reasons for being leery of the results appearing therein.
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Graduate Students: Don’t Wait for Tenure to Enjoy Your Life
Don’t delay your life. Don’t wait until you get a job, then tenure, to do the normal things that make life sweet, like marrying and having children. Remember the time-worn observation: “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.” Professors who build their career around their own ego and cutthroat ambition tend to shrivel into something you don’t want to be.
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How the Rise in Unreligious Americans affects Sex and Marriage: Comparative Evidence from New Survey Data
Permissive sexual attitudes and practices have not stimulated the religious revival many Christians believe the extremes of Sexual Revolution will inspire. There is no evidence of it in the data. On the contrary: Christians seem to grow more complicit—or at least more quiet about their misgivings—by the year.
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The Future of American Sexuality and Family: Five Key Trends
We find ourselves in a liminal spot, one between long-taken-for-granted traditional relationships anchored in marriage and the future relationship system characterized more consistently by “confluent love.” There will not be two dominant systems.
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Scientists Have Unwittingly Revealed that the Obergefell Decision Did Nothing to Diminish Sexual Minority Distress
A new study is being used to make the claim that allowing conscientious objection to same-sex marriage leads to increased rates of mental health problems in sexual minorities. But is that really what the data show?
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Polyamory: Complicated New Identity or Primarily About Sex?
A study of consensual, overlapping sex partners unwittingly reveals the strengths of monogamy.
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The Truth about Men, Women, and Sex
Recent revelations about sexual harassment, assault, and abuse underscore certain blunt realities about men, women, and sex. How can we confront those realities in a way that leads to less sexual violence?
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Minority Stress Is Real, but Wedding Cakes Don’t Cause It
New research points to “internalized homophobia” as the problem, not external discrimination.
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No Long-Term Harm? The New Scientific Silence on Child-Adult Sex and the Age of Consent
Two new studies use a small amount of old data to try to undermine the idea that it is abusive or damaging for adults to have sex with minors. Disturbingly, no one seems to be challenging this conclusion.
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Can Same-Sex Marriage Really Reduce Teen Suicide?
The legalization of same-sex marriage may be associated with a short-term emotional bump for youth who identify as sexual minorities, but it is not a robust, long-term panacea for the emotional struggles of teenagers.
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Hijacking Science: How the “No Differences” Consensus about Same-Sex Households and Children Works
The claim that there are no differences in outcomes for children living in same-sex households arises from how scholars collect, analyze, and present data to support a politically expedient conclusion, not from what the data tend to reveal at face value.
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The Data on Children in Same-Sex Households Get More Depressing
A new study examines the risk of depression and other negative outcomes among adolescents and young adults raised by same-sex couples.
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Media Gush over New Study, Only to Find Same-Sex Parents More Irritated with Their Children
The social science on same-sex households with children isn’t settled. It’s just plain unsettling.
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Making Differences Disappear: The Evolution of Science on Same-Sex Households
Social science was never going to save marriage’s male-female infrastructure. What it can do—if the narrative the data reveals isn’t manipulated—is reveal what is really going on.
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New Research on Same-Sex Households Reveals Kids Do Best With Mom and Dad
Published research employing the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), the ECLS (Early Childhood Longitudinal Study), the US Census (ACS), the Canadian Census, and now the NHIS all reveal a comparable basic narrative, namely, that children who grow up with a married mother and father fare best.