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Elsevier’s James Wright Publishes Walter Schumm’s Anti-Gay Junk Science To Defend Regnerus

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The June, 2012 issue of the Elsevier journal Social Science Research contained a scientifically invalid “study” on gay parents’ child outcomes, carried out by Mark Regnerus.

Funded by the NOM-linked Witherspoon Institute, the commissioned hit job has become a staple of anti-gay hate groups’ propaganda.

Regnerus falsely claimed to have proven correlations between gay parents and bad child outcomes. The “scientist” has since confessed that he “does not know about” the sexual orientation of his study respondents’ parents.

 Social Science Research editor James Wright published the Regnerus study without benefit of valid peer review, for which reason many scholars are calling for the Regnerus study to be retracted and for James Wright to be removed from his position. (To read some of the calls for retraction of the Regnerus study, see here, here and here).

In response to the criticism for having published Regnerus without valid peer review, editor James Wright published — in his November issue — a non-peer-reviewed defense of Regnerus by Walter Schumm, a Kansas State University sociologist who was a paid consultant on the Regnerus study. A link to the Schumm article was rapidly crosss-posted to the stand-alone site that Regnerus’s anti-gay funders created for promoting the Regnerus study.

Schumm purports to show that all aspects of Regnerus’s heavily-criticized study methodology have been used in other studies, a documented falsehood.

Schumm does not address the most devastating of the criticisms made of Regnerus. Furthermore, Schumm states as fact things that he does not actually know to be fact.

Schumm has a history of distorting the scientific record in order to demonize homosexuals, all the more reason that Elsevier’s James Wright should not have published a non-peer-reviewed contribution from him.

Social Science Research previously had a reputation as a peer-reviewed journal, which Wright, Schumm, Regnerus and his funders are illicitly exploiting to promote non-peer-reviewed work as being scientifically legitimate.

Typically, when anti-gay-hate groups publish their promotions of these Regnerus-study-related materials, they state that the materials were published in “a peer reviewed journal.” In his November issue, Wright published Regnerus’s own non-peer-reviewed article of “Additional Analyses.” Wright presents these articles in publication, as though they had been peer reviewed. It can no longer truthfully be said that “Social Science Research” is a peer reviewed journal.

Schumm provided “expert” testimony for “In Re: Gill,” the landmark case that ended the ban on gay parent adoption in Florida.

In her decision, Judge Cindy S. Lederman noted that Schumm “integrates his religious and ideological beliefs into his research. In an article he published in the Journal of Psychology and Theology he wrote, “With respect to the integration of faith and research, I have been trying to use statistics to highlight the truth of the Scripture.”

In his “expert” testimony, Schumm claimed to show — through reanalyses of others’ work — that gay parents correlate to bad child outcomes, precisely Regnerus’s false “finding.”

Addressing Schumm’s tactics in his reanalyses, Judge Lederman wrote that Schumm “suggests that his reanalyses, mostly unpublished, should be accepted over the analyses of well respected researchers in peer reviewed journals. Dr. Schumm admitted that he applies statistical standards that depart from conventions in the field. In fact, Dr. Cochran and Dr. Lamb testified that Dr. Schumm’s statistical re-analyses contained a number of fundamental errors.”

Judge Lederman further noted Schumm’s “objection to allowing homosexuals in the military due to the ease with which they can have oral sex and his belief that, since homosexuals violate one social norm, they are likely to also violate military rules.”

In October, 2010, Schumm addressed the Manhattan, Kansas Human Rights Board, arguing against a proposed expansion of the anti-discrimination ordinance, to include sexual orientation and gender expression. Schumm claimed to have reanalyzed a prior study and to have found that while gay teens do suffer discrimination, the anti-gay discrimination — (so Schumm actually alleged at a government meeting) — had no connection to gay teens’ elevated suicide risk. Commission Meeting minutes note that Schumm “stated if this ordinance is approved, do we really want to establish a social approval of this in our society.”

During the 1990s, Schumm served as a “Family Impact Panel Member and Statistical Analyst” as part of the family impact policy initiative for then-Congressman Sam Brownback, one of the most malicious political gay-bashers in the United States.

Schumm has a long association with the discredited anti-gay pseudoscientist Paul Cameron. He is on the editorial board of Cameron’s fatuously-named Empirical Journal of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior. A typical article from that publication alleges that the Nazi Party was a homosexual movement. The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch noted that as a journal editor, Schumm published a Cameron article claiming to prove that homosexuality is a mental illness, and likening homosexuality to alcoholism and drug addiction.

Schumm has an extensive additional record of presenting anti-gay hate speech under the false guise of “scientific” research.

The non-peer-reviewed Schumm article that Elsevier’s James Wright published in defense of Regnerus repeats the documented falsehood that Regnerus designed and carried out his study independently of his funders’ anti-gay-rights political goals for it. Brad Wilcox, Director of the Witherspoon Institute program that organized the Regnerus study in 2010, collaborated with Regnerus on study design, and later on data collection, data analysis and interpretation.

Among the invalidating aspects of Regnerus’s study is that he correlated bad child outcomes to gay parents even for those of his study subjects who had not lived with a parent while the parent was having a same-sex relationship.

To clarify; some of Regnerus’s study respondents did say that they lived with the parent who had a same-sex relationship. The specific complaint at issue now is that even for those of his study subjects who had not ever lived with a parent while the parent was having a same-sex relationship, Regnerus’s correlated the “bad” child outcomes to gay parents.

Schumm’s defense of Regnerus ignores that particular demonizing defect in Regnerus’s methodology.

Both Wright and Schumm were sent e-mails, asking how many studies they can name — other than Regnerus’s — in which bad child outcomes for children who did not live with gay parents are correlated to gay parents.

Neither Schumm nor Wright responded.

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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News

Torture? Shoot Protesters? Greenland? Question After Question, Hegseth Refused to Answer

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January 14, 2025

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Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s controversial and, many say, unqualified nominee to lead the millions of people serving in the U.S. Armed Forces and oversee the Pentagon’s $842 billion budget, refused to give straight answers to numerous questions posed by U.S. Senators during his short, four-hour-and-fifteen-minute confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Democrats on the committee had requested multiple rounds of questions so they could follow up with the nominee, a former Fox News weekend host who has been accused of sexual assault, “aggressive drunkenness,” sexism, mismanaging two veterans’ non-profits, and an apparent embrace of Christian nationalism. Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) refused, despite precedent with multiple nominees before the committee over many years. Wicker also refused to allow the FBI’s report on Hegseth to be made available to all members of the committee.

Hegseth, at times combative, frequently battled Democratic Senators, talking over them and refusing to answer numerous questions, while often praising Donald Trump — and invoking his name as a shield. Questions he did answer often came from Republicans on the committee. They included questions like, How many genders are there? How many pushups can you do? What do you love about your wife?

But Hegseth refused to give straight answers to a large number of basic questions, such as: Would you submit to an expanded FBI background check? Agree to use the military to seize Greenland or the Panama Canal? In each of your weddings you’ve pledged to be faithful to your wife? Should allegations of spousal abuse be disqualifying?

One question Hegseth initially refused to answer was what his use of the apparent slur, “jag off” means.

“I don’t think I need to, sir,” he told the Ranking Member, Jack Reed, when politely asked.

“Why not?” Reed, surprised, asked.

“Because the men and women watching understand,” Hegseth replied.

He only explained it when Reed reminded him that “perhaps some of my colleagues don’t understand.”

READ MORE: ‘Loyalty to a Tyrant’: Cheney Invokes Jack Smith’s Report to Warn Senate on Trump Nominees

“It would be a JAG officer who puts his or her own priorities in front of the war fighters,” Hegseth finally said. (JAG is Judge Advocate General, a military attorney.)

Hegseth’s history of comments against women and LGBTQ service members is well-documented. U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) repeatedly pressed him on his beliefs on women in the military.

“Will you commit to preserving the Women, Peace, and Security Law at DOD and including in your budget the requisite funding to continue to restore and resource these programs throughout the DOD?” Senator Shaheen asked, referring to this law.

“I, Senator, I will commit to reviewing that program and ensuring it aligns with America First, national security priorities, meritocracy, lethality and readiness. And if it advances American interests, it’s something we would advance,” Hegseth smugly replied. “If it doesn’t, it’s something we would look at.”

“Well since former President Trump signed it into the law, I hope that he agrees with you,” Shaheen responded.

At one point, when Hegseth grew combative, he talked over U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono (D-HI), forcing her to repeatedly say, “I’m not hearing the answer to my question.” He then refused to answer if he would “resign if you drink on the job, which is a 24/7 position?”

Senator Hirono also asked Hegseth if he would comply with an order from the Commander-in-Chief, who will be Donald Trump, to shoot protestors. He refused to give a straight answer.

“In 2020, then President Trump directed former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to shoot protesters in the legs in downtown D.C., an order Secretary Esper refused to comply with. Would you carry out such an order from President Trump?” she asked.

Hegseth launched into what appeared to be a defense of Trump’s order, but would not answer, leading Hirono to say, “Sounds to me that you would comply with such an order, you will shoot protesters in the leg.”

Asked, again by Hirono, if he would “carry out an order from President Trump to seize Greenland, a territory of our NATO ally Denmark, and, “comply with an order to take over the Panama Canal,” Hegseth again refused to give a straight answer.

“Senator, I will emphasize that President Trump received 77 million votes to be the lawful Commander-in-Chief —” Hegseth replied.

“We’re not talking about the election,” Hirono reminded him.

“Senator, one of the things that President Trump is so good at is never strategically tipping his hand,” Hegseth, again lavishing praise on Trump, replied, again not giving a straight answer.

In a similar vein, Hegseth refused to give a straight answer to U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who asked if there are any orders a Commander-in-Chief could give that would be unlawful and violate the Constitution.

“I reject the premise that President Trump is going to be giving illegal orders,” he exclaimed.

He also refused to give a straight answer when asked if he has been in conversations about using active duty military within the U.S., and using active duty military in U.S.-based detention camps.

RELATED: FBI Report on Hegseth ‘Insufficient’ Says Top Dem: ‘I Do Not Believe You Are Qualified’

Hegseth’s back-and-forth with U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) however were among the most damaging, as veterans’ advocate Paul Rieckhoff noted.

At one point, Hegseth refused to answer if spousal abuse would be disqualifying for someone to be Secretary of Defense, after refusing to say he would release his former wives from NDAs if there were any.

“Did you ever engage in any acts of physical violence against any of your wives?” Kaine asked.

“Senator, absolutely not,” Hegseth replied.

“But you would agree with me that if someone had committed physical violence against the spouse, that would be disqualifying to serve as Secretary of Defense, correct?” Kaine continued.

“Senator, absolutely not have I ever done that,” Hegseth stressed.

“You would agree that would be a disqualifying offense, would you not?” Kaine pressed.

“Senator, you’re talking about a hypothetical,” Hegseth responded, again refusing to answer.

“I don’t think it’s a hypothetical. Violence against spouses occurs every day,” Kaine insisted. And if you as a leader are not capable of saying that physical violence against a spouse should be a disqualifying fact, for being Secretary [of Defense] of the most powerful nation in the world, you demonstrating an astonishing lack of judgment.”

The liberal Super PAC American Bridge put out this clip, saying, “Pete Hegseth refuses to say he doesn’t support waterboarding, torture, or abandoning the Geneva Conventions. This guy has dangerous ideas that have no place at the Department of Defense.”

In that exchange with Senator Angus King (I-VT), Hegseth also declared, “what an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand decisions over to international bodies.”

And when asked to give just true or false answers to questions about numerous alleged instances of intoxication, Hegseth repeatedly replied, “anonymous smears.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

RELATED: ‘Marxist’ Agenda: Hegseth Says Gay Troops ‘Erode Standards’ in ‘Social Engineering’ Push

 

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FBI Report on Hegseth ‘Insufficient’ Says Top Dem: ‘I Do Not Believe You Are Qualified’

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18 hours ago

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January 14, 2025

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s vetting of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s highly controversial nominee to head the U.S. Department of Defense, an $842 billion entity that employs more than 2.8 million people, was “insufficient,” Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee warned at the start of his confirmation hearing Tuesday.

The FBI’s report on Hegseth was made available only to the Chairman and the Ranking Member of the Armed Services Committee, not the rank-and-file Senators on the Committee. Ranking Member Reed asked that the report be made available to the entire committee, but the Republican Chairman, Roger Wicker, refused.

Critics have noted that, similarly to how the FBI conducted its investigation into sexual harassment allegations against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the Bureau reportedly did not interview the person who allegedly was sexually abused. In October 2018, as ABC News reported, the FBI did not interview Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.

READ MORE: ‘Loyalty to a Tyrant’: Cheney Invokes Jack Smith’s Report to Warn Senate on Trump Nominees

ABC News also, on Tuesday, reported the FBI did not interview the woman, whose name has not been made public, who “told investigators in October 2017 that she had encountered Hegseth at an event afterparty at a California hotel where both had been drinking and claimed that he sexually assaulted her.”

The New York Times on Tuesday published a report detailing concerns Democrats have voiced about Hegseth and the FBI’s report.

“Quite a few of the women with significant allegations against him have not been interviewed by the F.B.I. investigators,” Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) said on MSNBC on Monday evening, The Times reported, “adding that some of those women feared for their safety and that of their children.”

“My understanding is that some of them would like to be contacted by the F.B.I. investigative team, or the vetters, and they have not been talked to,” Duckworth also told MSNBC.

“One missed opportunity,” The Times reported, “came when the bureau did not interview one of Mr. Hegseth’s ex-wives before its findings were presented to senators last week, according to people familiar with the bureau’s investigation.”

Another Democratic Senator on the Armed Services Committee, Richard Blumenthal, told The Times: “There are significant gaps and inadequacies in the report, including the failure to interview some of the key potential witnesses with personal knowledge of improprieties or abuse.”

READ MORE: LA Mayor a ‘Communist’ Alleges Fox News Host With Ties to Trump Nominee

Tuesday morning, Ranking Member Reed told Republican Chairman Wicker: “You and I have both seen the FBI background investigation, as they have said, and I want to say, to the record, I believe the investigation was insufficient.”

“Frankly, there are still FBI obligations to talk to people, they have not had access to the forensic audit, which I referenced, and the person who had access to was quite critical of Mr. Hegseth, and I think people on both sides have suggested that they get the report.”

“I know your colleagues have asked for it, [Senate Republican Majority Leader] Thune assured me personally that he thought it was the appropriate idea.”

Reed noted that another of Trump’s nominees, “had similar, very complicated personal issues,” and the “report was made available for all the members.”

Chairman Wicker refused Ranking Member Reed’s request.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Reed went on to tell Hegseth, “I do not believe that you are qualified to meet the overwhelming demands of this job.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

RELATED: ‘Marxist’ Agenda: Hegseth Says Gay Troops ‘Erode Standards’ in ‘Social Engineering’ Push

 

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‘Loyalty to a Tyrant’: Cheney Invokes Jack Smith’s Report to Warn Senate on Trump Nominees

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20 hours ago

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January 14, 2025

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Republican former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, who served as vice chair of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, on Tuesday cited the Special Counsel’s just-released, 174-page report on Donald Trump’s involvement with the January 6 insurrection, and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, to deliver a prescient warning to members of the Senate. Starting today, the Senate begins confirmation hearings on the President-elect’s highly-controversial cabinet nominees. Focusing on Justice Department nominees, she warned Senators that those “compromised by personal loyalty to a tyrant” should not be confirmed.

Jack Smith, who resigned as Special Counsel on Friday ahead of the President-elect’s inauguration next week, emphasized in his report that there was sufficient evidence to warrant prosecuting Donald Trump. He also noted that if those cases had proceeded to a jury trial, the evidence was strong enough to secure convictions.

Smith wrote, “after conducting thorough investigations, I found that, with respect to both Mr. Trump’s unprecedented efforts to unlawfully retain power after losing the 2020 election and his unlawful retention of classified documents after leaving office, the [Principles of Federal Prosecution] compelled prosecution.”

READ MORE: LA Mayor a ‘Communist’ Alleges Fox News Host With Ties to Trump Nominee

His final words in his report state that the Special Counsel’s office “assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”

Cheney says that Smith’s report makes clear that Trump’s nominees, specifically, Justice Department nominees, had anything to do with his efforts to overturn the election, they must not be confirmed by the Senate: “if those nominees cooperated with Trump’s deceit to overturn the 2020 election, they cannot now be entrusted with the responsibility to preserve the rule of law and protect our Republic.”

“The Special Counsel’s 1/6 Report,” her statement begins, “made public last night, confirms the unavoidable facts of 1/6 yet again. DOJ’s exhaustive and independent investigation reached the same essential conclusions as the Select Committee. All this DOJ evidence must be preserved.”

READ MORE: Senator Suggests Unusual Interpretation of ‘Advice and Consent’ Responsibility

“But most important now, as the Senate considers confirming Trump’s Justice Department nominees: if those nominees cooperated with Trump’s deceit to overturn the 2020 election, they cannot now be entrusted with the responsibility to preserve the rule of law and protect our Republic. As our framers knew, our institutions only hold when those in office are not compromised by personal loyalty to a tyrant.”

“So this question is now paramount for Republicans: Will you faithfully perform the duties the framers assigned to you and do what the Constitution requires? Or do you lack the courage?”

Sarah Longwell, a Republican and the publisher of The Bulwark, responded, writing: “This. Donald Trump has revealed how shallow the vast majority of the current GOP’s commitment is to the constitution and the American experiment. These confirmation hearings will be another inflection point for the few who claim they value their oath. I hope some rise to the occasion.”

READ MORE: Trump Trying to Buy Back His DC Hotel Seen as ‘Magnet’ for Conflicts of Interest: Reports

 

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