Scientific and political heresy

To hear the Left tell it, conservatives- and especially Christian conservatives- are Luddites who reject science in the name of mindless dogma.

If so, we are not alone. It is no secret that that on the Left, scientific data is unwelcome if it leads to politically incorrect conclusions. Take, for example, Mark Regnerus's paper on same-sex parenting.

Despite questions about sample size and other flaws, no suspicion regarding the biases of previous researchers who have found no difference between parenting outcomes for same-sex and male/female couples (with lesbian couples allegedly outperforming male/female couples in some areas) have been prominently raised, and for good reason. Anyone with the slightest sense of our society today would realize that they would either go unreported in the media or be shouted down.

Regnerus's paper, which suggested that being raised by same-sex parents can have negative consequences, has received the latter reception. Its heterodox conclusions were reportedin Slate, a magazine that can hardly be considered an organ of the social Right. Slate was not wholly uncritical. But neither did it reject Regnerus's conclusions out of hand.

The result: a barage of ad hominem abuse which villifies Regnerus without addressing his findings. A coallition of gay advocacy groups and others whose biases are the opposite of Regnerus's have released a joint statement not only criticizing the flaws in Regnerus's methodology, but far more prominently demonizing him as a bigot, a liar and a generally naughty person.

Methodologically lawed though Regerus's paper doubtless is (so, he argues, were the earlier papers reaching opposite conclusions), if one uses the same standards to judge those papers which his critics have used to support their argument, it is by no means clear that they would fare better. The differences: their biases are the proper ones, the orthodox ones.

The fondness of the Left (and especially the homosexualist movement) for using the ad hominem as its leading argument is well-established. But wouldn't it be more seemly to discuss the problems with Regnerus's methodology- as well as his criticisms of previous studies- in a somewhat more scientific and less polemical tone?

Alas, that isn't likely. Regnerus's sin, you see, isn't really faulty methodology.

Regnerus is a heretic, and extremists on the Left are just as keen to burn heretics as those on the Right, if not more so.

HT: Real Clear Science