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Mark Regnerus

Mark Regnerus is Contributing Editor of Public Discourse, Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, and a senior fellow at the Austin Institute for the Study of Family and Culture. His research is in the areas of sexual behavior, family, marriage, and religion.

Mark is the author of more than forty published articles and book chapters, and three books. His most recent book is entitled Cheap Sex and the Transformation of Men, Marriage, and Monogamy (Oxford, 2017,) in which he describes the world that has come to be due to the influence of technology on sex and sexuality. He is also the author of Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate, and Think about Marrying (Oxford, 2011) and Forbidden Fruit: Sex and Religion in the Lives of American Teenagers (Oxford, 2007). His research and opinion pieces have been featured in numerous media outlets. He was also the author of a 2012 study appearing in Social Science Research on the comparatively optimal outcomes of young adults from stably-married families. He and his wife Deeann have three children.

modern couples

The Truth about Men, Women, and Sex

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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?
closeup of a man showing an intersex-inclusive progress pride flag peeping out from a bush

What the Surge in LGBTQ Self-Identity Means

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People of all faiths have heard enough talk about children’s “bodily autonomy,” or their supposed ability to express informed consent. As we are witnessing, mothers and fathers remain a powerful bastion of reason in our new post-gender turn, because they display with and in and through their bodies the reality that Roe sought to hide or ignore.
Woman sad on bed

Stigmarketing: How Empathetic Advocates Capitalize on Bad News about LGBTQ+

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“Stigmarketing,” which is appealing to claims of stigma to motivate social change, has become the backbone of legal efforts toward that end. Stigmarketing capitalizes on gay–straight differences, and the way these disparities can be measured by the absolute surge in research on “minority stress theory,” or MST.
Photo of Cardinal Pell in wine cellar

Seven Days with Cardinal Pell

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I consider myself lucky to have gotten to know George Cardinal Pell a bit—and that after his 80th year.
Catholics in Pew at Mass

Census Fidei? Methodological Missteps Are Undermining the Catholic Church’s Synod on Synodality

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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.
Protest with Ukraine flag and Rainbow flags

Will the Fog of War Smuggle Same-Sex Marriage into Ukraine?

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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.
Photo of Ukranian soldiers

War Highlights Sex Differences and Family Ties

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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.

Declining Homosexuality in the American Priesthood

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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.
Wedding Party

When Marriage Becomes a Private Matter

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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.
Child crying

Arkansas and the Politics of Experimenting on Children

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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.
Bride & Groom

Christianity’s Global Marriage Problem

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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.
woman

Weak Data, Small Samples, and Politicized Conclusions on LGBT Discrimination

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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.
Transgender

New Data Show “Gender-Affirming” Surgery Doesn’t Really Improve Mental Health. So Why Are the Study’s Authors Saying It Does?

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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.
Man

Does “Conversion Therapy” Hurt People Who Identify as Transgender? The New JAMA Psychiatry Study Cannot Tell Us

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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.
Grad

Graduate Students: Don’t Wait for Tenure to Enjoy Your Life

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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.

How the Rise in Unreligious Americans affects Sex and Marriage: Comparative Evidence from New Survey Data

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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.

The Future of American Sexuality and Family: Five Key Trends

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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.

Scientists Have Unwittingly Revealed that the Obergefell Decision Did Nothing to Diminish Sexual Minority Distress

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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?

Polyamory: Complicated New Identity or Primarily About Sex?

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A study of consensual, overlapping sex partners unwittingly reveals the strengths of monogamy.

Minority Stress Is Real, but Wedding Cakes Don’t Cause It

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New research points to “internalized homophobia” as the problem, not external discrimination.

No Long-Term Harm? The New Scientific Silence on Child-Adult Sex and the Age of Consent

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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.

Can Same-Sex Marriage Really Reduce Teen Suicide?

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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.

Hijacking Science: How the “No Differences” Consensus about Same-Sex Households and Children Works

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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.

The Data on Children in Same-Sex Households Get More Depressing

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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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