Authors of Disreputable Anti-Gay Studies Triggered Growing Numbers of Critics, Rapidly Widening Scandal
Mark Regnerus, a professor at University of Texas, Austin and Loren Marks, a professor at Louisiana State University, authors of disreputable studies about gays have attracted growing numbers of critics in an apparent growing scandal
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Reports on twinned studies now being used as anti-gay-rights weapons in the 2012 elections have to date focused mainly on 1) suspect work funded through NOM’s Robert George and 2) carried out by University of Texas, Austin’s Mark Regnerus.
Regnerus purported to compare young adult children of heterosexual parents with gay parents, yet for his study, did not even attempt to locate actual persons substantially raised by gay parents.
Previously, studies on children of gay parents showed good child outcomes.
The Regnerus and Marks papers appear to have been contrived as a one-two election year punch to demonize same-sex-headed families with children.
Regnerus claims the following in his study; previous conclusions that homosexual parents were not more dangerous — to children — than heterosexual parents — “must go” as a result of his study. Â The aim and contorted conclusion of Loren Mark’s companion anti-gay-rights political propaganda, meanwhile — titled “Same-sex parenting and children’s outcomes” — is the discrediting of a 2005 American Psychological Association brief on gay parenting.
One tell-tale sign that the two papers were coordinated for use as anti-gay-rights political propaganda is that although they were published simultaneously in “Social Science Research” — whose editor James Wright has written demeaningly of gay people and their relationships — the Marks paper cites the Regnerus paper. Â That is to say, before either of these two papers were published, Marks had information about the Regnerus study and used it as a reference work for his own anti-gay-rights paper. The appearance is strong that Regnerus and Marks were working in cahoots towards the simultaneous publication of their two articles, with an anti-gay-rights political aim in an election year.
In this context, it is of great note that Loren Marks, a Louisiana State University Associate Professor, earlier was disallowed from giving expert testimony in a Proposition 8-related case when, under questioning, he admitted he had cherry-picked information from studies he had not read, and that he knew nothing about same-sex couples.
Undeterred by that episode in which his scholarly fraudulence was exposed in a court of law, Marks made his current anti-gay-rights propaganda-research available to John Boehner-House Republicans’ DOMA-defending attorney Paul Clement, for use in a court brief filed on June 4, 2012Â in the Karen Golinski case. Marks’s paper was cited in the court document before the paper was published. Marks’s study is used in that court brief to argue that previous decisions in the Golinski case relied on insufficient research about gay parenting. Never mind that Golinski is not about gay parenting; it is about equal rights to federal benefits for same-sex spouses. Golinski and her wife do not have children, but the Boehner-Clement axis believes that demonizing gay parents in a case not involving gay parents should determine the outcome of the case.
One of the most galling aspects of that brief, is that it argues against courts deciding DOMA cases, because, so Clement alleges, gay rights should be decided by voters, not by questions of constitutionality. Meanwhile, though, NOM’s Robert George, who arranged for the funding of the Regnerus hit job, is an author of the anti-gay NOM pledge, signed by Romney, which calls for a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage throughout the country.
That is to say, Boehner is using LGBT-tax payers’ money to argue in court that gay Americans’ rights should not be decided on any constitutional basis, until the Constitution says that same-sex marriage is forbidden throughout the country.
Meanwhile, known Robert George political allies are using both the Marks and Regnerus studies to poison voters’ minds against gay people. The Witherspoon Institute, through which George arranged much of Regnerus’s funding, has published, among other anti-gay-attack articles The Kids Aren’t Alright  and Supreme Court Take Notice; Two Sociologists Shift the Ground of the Gay Marriage Debate. That latter article by Matthew J. Frank was cross-referenced by Frank in another post he made about the studies on The National Review site, Sociology, Same-Sex Marriage, and the Courts. The National Review is a long-time home to NOM’s lying anti-gay bigot Maggie Gallagher, who has been touting the studies with evident anti-gay-rights political aims in varied publications including TNR’s site. Here, Gallagher made a post, reporting on a panel of “sociologists” voicing support for the Regnerus study. What Gallagher the anti-gay propagandist did not make explicit in her post is that those supportive of Regnerus’s anti-gay aims are all affiliated with the Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion, and that Regnerus himself is affiliated with Baylor. Robert George’s and Maggie Gallagher’s long-time anti-gay-rights collaborator Ed Whelan published on TNR’s website a three-part installment of posts trumpeting the corrupt Regnerus and Marks studies and bashing same-sex-headed households.
This reporter’s request from Loren Marks’s Louisiana State University for information regarding the funding of Marks’s study has yet to receive a definitive response.
New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide†is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
