Not a few of our readers were concerned by the lack of certitude in many of the episcopal statements regarding the recent SCOTUS decision. Few reached the level of defiance that characterized the earlier SCOBA encyclical which was released in 2003. And of course, we are still waiting for the opinions of some bishops who are strangely silent. It is an interesting question as to how their respective dioceses will be –or if they will be–properly disciplined.
I am happy to report however that the Holy Synod of ROCOR has no such reticence. Below you will find their unambiguous and robust encyclical which describes in no uncertain terms how they feel about the disastrous Obergefell decision.
In the meantime, every cause (even a Lost Cause) needs a flag. Leave it up to the Russians to provide the Normal Family Movement with such a banner.
Source: Holy Trinity Monastery
“When our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ instructed His Apostles to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s (Matthew 22:21), He foretold of the future what was already true in the days in the Roman Empire: that a Christian would never be one who sat dismissively apart from the world and its governance, but neither would a Christian be one for whom the ever-changing whims of social governance would be the chief voice ruling his life. We are, as His followers, children of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus (Philippians 3:14); we follow the Shepherd Whose voice we know (cf. John 10:4), trusting that His guidance will lead us out of all error into the haven of eternal life.
With the June 26th 2015 decision of the United States Supreme Court’s “Obergefell v. Hodges” case, every pious Christian has been given cause to consider anew these words of the Saviour. While our faithful living in the United States, and indeed all citizens of this country, are and shall remain thankful – both to God and to the founding ideals of the state – for the freedom in which they reside, which permits as one of its core values the free expression and practice of religion, neither we nor they can accept principles, created by juridical fiat from an organ of the state, which so blatantly go against the Teaching, Will, Law and Love of God. While the U.S. Supreme Court may have affirmed in law that a so-called “marriage” between two persons of the same sex is to be recognized, no pious Christian can see this as anything other than an attempt by the state to render unto itself what rightly belongs to God; for it is God, not the state, the courts or the electorate, Who fashioned male and female from the dust, Who blessed the clinging of man and woman together in marriage both in Eden and in Cana (cf. Genesis 2:18-25; John 2:1-11), and Who has sole claim over the fundamental nature of this bond. He Who is the only Lawgiver and Judge (James 4:12) is not bound by the determination of worldly judges, and He Whose word is truth (John 17:17), Who said to Thomas I am the Way, the Truth and the Life (John 14:6), is not subject to the redefinition of truth by any social or governmental body.
While we reaffirm today, as we have always done, the unchanging reality of repentance as a path open to all, without qualification, and abhor those who would react to any sin, or any sinner, other than in love and with the promise of new life that true repentance may bring, we nonetheless shall not succumb to the prevalent social trend of our day, which equates recognition and acceptance of sin with love. For the legalisation of sin is precisely what this judicial act accomplishes, whatever may otherwise be its aims or intentions. Marriage has been from creation, is now and will always be a union of a man and a woman, and the Church shall recognize and bless nothing else in the stead of this sacred union that has been established by God Himself.
We deeply regret that the United States Supreme Court has taken a decision which, in so definitively spurning the revealed will of God, opens the peoples of this land to an increase of suffering and sorrow, and a further decrease of moral stability. That which societies from time immemorial have honored – the strong place of the traditional family, the need for children to be reared in the embrace of a father and a mother – has been dismissed through an act of overstepped judicial authority, and we lament the profound trials this act will inevitably bring, since the departure from God’s Will always results in suffering. Yet we are children of a sovereign and unchanging God Whose power is not thwarted by the acts of men, and we encourage the faithful of the Church not to grow weary of doing good (Galatians 6:9) in the face of worldly trial. The Law of God is sure and steadfast, and against it nothing shall prevail. Our hearts remain calm and unshaken, and we fervently entreat the God of our Fathers to show His mercy upon this land, to guide its peoples and government aright. And to a world that has grown lukewarm to the truth, for which the choice between right and wrong is further greyed by political errors such as this, we exhort the same surety and confidence that has been borne by Christians through the ages, spoken firmly through the mouth of the prophet:
If it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15).”
GROW UP PEOPLE. IF TWO PEOPLE OF THE DIFFERENT SEX_CAN MARRY N LOVE EACH ITH3R. THAN TWO OF THE SAME SEX CAN. GOD LOVES US ALL. GET OFF YOUR SOAP BOXES AND LET IT GO. STOP FORCING YOUR BELIEFS ON ME. THE CHURCH IS TH3 BIGGEST HIPOCRATE OTHERE. THE PRIEST DO NOTHING. YOUR FORCING YOUR YOUNG PEOPLE OUT.
Your “you’re, or you are. Find another website to troll.
Next time you post, please don’t scream. You hurt my eyes.
Epic troll :^)
Dear Anonymous,
I think you misunderstand the basic issue. Who defines what constitutes marriage: God, in His creative plan and revealed will and Word, or the State, by judicial fiat? If the State wishes to allow domestic partnerships for same-sex couples, that is the State’s business. But to change a definition of marriage which arises out of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures is another matter altogether. And attempting, however covertly, to make it the law of the land and binding upon all citizens is yet another thing, and a serious erosion of constitutional protections.
It is not for me to determine whether any two people genuinely love each other; mindful of John 7:24, I at least try not to make definitive pronouncements about things of which I have no certainty—as, for example, who in the parish is or is not a hypocrite.
But if you think that this decision is not an attempt by the State to use its coercive power to force its beliefs upon its citizens, you are again mistaken and (I suggest in all charity) more than a bit naïvely adolescent. Here is Canada, and despite government assurances to the contrary, there is movement to force churches to perform same-sex marriages. And if y’all south of the 49th Parallel think it couldn’t happen to you, you’re woefully mistaken.
Just FYI, soap hasn’t been shipped or sold in wooden boxes for about a century; and if you think I’m going to try to balance on a cardboard box of Tide, guess again!
Having said that, I should get back to doing nothing—except, perhaps, look for some young people to drive from the church. On second thought, I won’t drive them; let ’em walk!
Fr. Philip
Who is “forcing” their beliefs on you? And how?
Burp.
We are not “forcing” our young people out of the church. They are being lured out by people like you who go against the truth and the word of God.
Well,boo hoo hoo and faldiroldirol.At least, learn English spelling before posting. Nobody is forcing you to accept the Church’s teachings at gunpoint.After all,we are not Moslems.
Ah. An anonymous caps-lock warrior. If you dont like the teaching of the The Church, maybe you should go to the Episcopalians. Their “Christ” might be more to your liking.
Anonymous is clearly afflicted with the disease of homosexuality and requires healing in Christ’s true church. He will not find what he needs from the Episcopalians.
Surpise! Non-Christians not acting like Christians, non-Orthodox acting like non-Orthodox, and judges of a diverse, secular state not ruling based on the beliefs of the religion we/most/some of us believe is true. Thanks for the freedom of religion and conscience, Constitution, just make sure those people over there don’t get the same.
Odd how the basic assumption underlying the idea that the SCOTUS ruling is anything other than a civil ruling allowing a minority to act according to their consciences because simply allowing it somehow offends my own religious values would be decried were the opponents arguing the same way but from the POV of Sharia law.
Now this is a statement worthy of Orthodox Catholic bishops.
It directly challenges the State’s attempted usurpation of God’s authority over Creation.
In this ROCOR statement we are light-years ahead of the we-won’t-go-along-with-this-but-please-don’t-take-away-our-tax-exemption sort of cop-out some Orthodox Christians would prefer .
When was the last time a synod of bishops in this country dared to take its stand on the Book of Joshua?
I agree, Father, this statement is light years ahead of everything else I have read. As I said in my initial response, the difference between previous statements and this one is the difference between a bureaucratic position statement and a truly prophetic voice spoken from within Holy Tradition. And if we need any proof that for Orthodoxy, Holy Tradition is a seamless whole that begins outside the gates of the Garden of Eden and continues unchanged up until today, the blend of Joshua with John in this statement is a good start. I initially remarked to my wife that this made me proud to be in ROCOR — I later revised that statement to say, more accurately, that I feel safe.
Edward,
You put it well — that one feels safe in ROCOR. This type of statement from RCOOR is what Orthodox Christians throughout America are starving for — we want our leaders to be steadfast in the faith, to be bishop-monastics, to be unafraid to speak the truth. We *hunger* for this. We *hunger* for it because we hardly ever get it.
Those who consistently mischaracterize ROCOR in America as a bunch of crazy throwbacks who long for the days of Tsarist Russia have their head in the sand. ROCOR is one of the fastest growing Orthodox jurisdictions in America. Yes, there are some predominantly ethnic parishes in the larger cities, as all jurisdictions have. But in my diocese, Chicago and mid-America, we are a huge mission field, and our many non-Russian-speaking clergy attest to this fact. My parish, a small mission parish where Sunday liturgy attendance averages between 20 and 30 souls, takes in about $4,500-$5,000 per month in stewardship/tithing. We hope to build a beautiful church building in the years to come, God-willing. Virtually all of our priests have “secular” jobs because our parishes often cannot support a priest and his family.
ROCOR is thriving because Americans who search for truth hunger for what she provides. We know that Metropolitan Hilarion and Patriarch Kyrill wouldn’t put up with silliness à la “Protodeacon” Eric Wheeler. In ROCOR, he would be suspended and then, if no change in his behavior, he’d be summarily deposed.
I have been Orthodox all my life, and I have no Russian blood in me. I have only been worshipping in a ROCOR parish for a fraction of that time. However, I have never felt as safe as I do now with the shepherds who guide us. I long for the day of Orthodox administrative unity in America, but until that happens, I feel safe under the spiritual guidance of our bishops and Vladika John of San Francisco. Any Orthodox Christian in America owes it to himself or herself, if he/she is able, to venerate the relics of Vladika John at the Holy Virgin Cathedral in SF at some point in his/her life.
Father,
All Orthodox bishops have basically said the same thing. I doubt any would disagree with this latest statement by ROCOR.
For me, visiting this web site is like sifting for diamonds amidst the dirt. The site was right about Fr. Arida and the machinations behind Metropolitan Jonah’s departure, but the paranoia of late regarding which bishops said what and when or anything at all and reading gremlins between the lines is counterproductive. (I count the latent racism as part of the “dirt” too.) Everything every bishop has said is an important piece of the Church’s overall message. We do need to maintain a strong witness against homosexuality, homosexual “marriage,” and the associated moral rot which pervades society. At the same time, we have to do more than criticize and actually provide a practical pastoral response to individuals afflicted with same-sex desire.
There will be a Pan-Orthodox Council next year, and there will be an opportunity for the Church to explicitly anathematize homosexuality. I think it will actually provide pastors more freedom to minister to homosexuals. They won’t have to worry about contributing to deviation from Church teaching because that will have been explicitly settled.
Mark, as I have said before, all of the bishops, in their statements have upheld Church teaching in the present tense. But one of the big concerns of the faithful is whether our bishops are resolute about not changing on this issue in the the way other Christian bodies have changed. Every recent statement that I have read can be read as leaving the door open to future change. I do not believe those bishops intended to give that impression. But the ROCOR statement was unequivocal in that regard. That is one of many reasons why this statement was so reassuring and effective.
Edward, I think you hit the nail on the head. A minor quibble: “all of the bishops” haven’t spoken as of yet. Unless I’m mistaken, some of the ethnic bishops in the OCA and many individual bishops in the GOA haven’t written anything. If I am incorrect, I will gladly apologize and set the record straight.
George, of course, that is why I was careful to stipulate “that I have read.” And when I said “all the bishops” I meant all who have written sratements. And I stand by my assertion that they have all upheld Orthodox teaching in the present tense. One of the bishops who has been heretofore silent may say something contradicting Orthodox teaching, but I find that unlikely.
I would also say that, as I have noted before, any statement that came out immediately shouldn’t be subjected to tea-leaf reading. The ROCOR bishops took a bit more time, and had the benefit of seeing reaction to earlier statements. I wouldn’t be surprised if beneficial consultation with Moscow also took place, since the MP has taken a firm stand, and since aggressive EU action on related issues towards its member states is right on Russia’s backdoor. This is a global issue.
I only intended to say that, of the immediate episcopal statements I have seen, this one stands head and shoulders above the others. LIke you, I would absolutely love to see an even better one if someone wants to give a link.
Dear to Christ Anonymous,
What then is your definition of marriage? i presume love looms large in it–almost to preempt the field.
Does it differ from a committed friendship?
And what has sex got to do with it?
I am not aware that anyone is forcing his beliefs on you. But here’s a question: May the One Who made you impose His design on you? Or do you make the rules? If so, how is this different from the ancestral sin–which we all seem universally ready to repeat in different ways?
Our parish is full of young people. Are you sure it’s accurate to say any are being “forced” out? Or are some leaving because they can’t have it their way? If so, how does that action differ from a tantrum?
lxc
Not directly related to the ROCOR statement, but an interesting article that I read today on the topic. Yes, it’s from a Catholic source (ok, I’m a Uniate, what do you expect?) but I think it’s well written and describes a real-life experience. Z Bohom.
http://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/bullied-out-of-the-closet-and-almost-bullied-back-in
While I have disagreed with those who have dissected and critiqued the statements of other bishops, all of which have upheld Orthodox teaching, that won’t keep me from praising some more highly than others. This one is by far the best yet, in so many ways. Probably the key phrase that has appeared in no other statement that I have seen:
Marriage has been from creation, is now and will always be a union of a man and a woman, and the Church shall recognize and bless nothing else in the stead of this sacred union that has been established by God Himself. (My emphasis)
All other statements that I have seen have used the present tense, and some have used past tense to talk about how long our historical position has been around. I don’t believe that any of them meant to imply that Orthodox teaching and discipline might change in the future, but in these perilous times where so many religious bodies have changed their positions 180 degrees, the omission cannot help but leave the faithful Orthodox reader a bit on edge.
But those simple four words, “and will always be,” carry the Orthodox teaching into the future — the infinite future, no less.
This is the difference between a bureaucratic position statement and a prophetic voice spoken with confidence from within a living Holy Tradition.
Sorry Anonymous butr it’s you who are trying to force your ideas on others. Down right hypocritical , don’t you think?
Anonymous needs to learn how to spell and use correct grammar.
I dig the flag. Where can I get one for my van?
George, there certainly may be Orthodox lay people who support same sex unions, but I hear absolutely zero talk from Orthodox bishops endorsing it. The mind of the church is not the mind of her lay people, but it is the mind of her bishops. In the mind of the Orthodox Church’s bishops this appears to be one of the least controversial issues, and the statement from ROCOR along with many others proves that point. There is no controversy.
So George, why do you make this out to be a controversial matter of the church?
Yes, we do not live in an Orthodox Christian nation, but that’s obvious isn’t it? It never was either. “One nation under God” never had anything to do with Orthodox Christianity, but rather it was a statement of Deism from our nation’s Freemason founding fathers. Our country was founded upon a liberal view of Deism from Freemasons like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. It was not founded as an Orthodox Christian nation. That grace was never given to the U.S., except for perhaps in the Russian mission to Alaska.
Perhaps we should approach our country the way St. Innocent did when he evangelized the pagan natives of Alaska. The natives in Alaska had non Orthodox marriage practices, and they also aborted their infant babies. What did St. Innocent do about it?
Good point. I think it’s time the Church’s overall evangelical inclination shift emphasis away from orthodox Protestants and towards outright heathens. The Lord has blessed us with this “low hanging fruit” for the last 70 years or so, but the basic culture is no longer orthodox Protestant.
Of course, there is a question whether some of our jurisdictions are interested in evangelism at all. I’m thinking of one in particular.
I like your thinking in general, Ages.
However, the vague and distasteful term “evangelism” needs to be ditched in favor of a return to “proclaiming” or “preaching” the Holy Gospel in public spaces that involves these three basic ingredients that the Acts of the Apostles characterize the Apostle Paul’s conversation with Felix and Drusilla, face to face, not just electronically.
1. The righteousness (divine justice) and existence of God.
2. The judgment to come and our mortality and the aspect of our being – our souls, demonstrating that our souls do exist – that we are not just material.
3. Self-control (the virtues and the passions) and repentence – a return from what is opposed to nature to what is in harmony with nature.
And no better place to start than in our own parishes!
And of course, presenting the actual teachings of Christ with the beautiful reasoning and poetry of the Fathers, dusting them off and filling our mouths with their cadences.
“Like an instrument of twelve strings, the divine choir of the disciples sang a song of salvation, confounding the music of evil!”
I think we would do well to study closely Aristotle’s Rhetoric on the means of persuasion, which we see being employed by Christ and the Apostles. Goldenmouth was trained by the great rhetorician of his time, Libanius, also a close friend of St. Basil.
We would do well to learn from and imitate those who have gone before us, rather that just knowing a little about them and merely celebrating their feast days as historical figures, and actually developing relationships with them through our prayers and actions.
Vox populi non est vox Dei.
Another Latin saying also holds true: “Extra Ecclesiam non salus est.”
Extra ecclesiam nulla salus. Reader Emanuel, are you aware that many “Latins” interpret that to mean that salvation is only through the CATHOLIC CHURCH? POPE FRANCIS salutes you!
Yes of course I am aware of that, and I apologize for misquoting the Latin, I should have known better. I suppose it all depends on your point of view as to where the “church” is, don’t you think? If I had said it in English it would have made no difference. The Latins also use the phrase “Kyrie eleison”. That phrase does not make them Orthodox any more than the “Extra ecclesiam…” phrase makes me or anybody else a Roman Catholic.
Ah… yes, OOM, and the good Lord forbid that we confess belief in one, holy CATHOLIC, and Apostolic Church lest we be saluted by Pope Francis.
Joseph: ‘What did St. Innocent do about it?’ I think foundationally, St. Innocent and others, i.e., St. Herman, loved the indigenous people as a father loves their children. As a general rule, people think with their “gut”; they know when they’re being sold a bill of goods or whether they are receiving the genuine article. I have yet to see where love is the operative principle in personal encounter and exchange a failure to bring forth God’s purpose. Reference the people of Alaska, generally speaking, we are dealing with tribal culture and to a degree the tribe responds to and follows the action of their leaders. This is so not US-American; the culture of ‘individualism.’ Even so, the foundation of love in our personal encounter with each other as Orthodox Christians and non-Orthodox who need Christ must be love expressed first in treating each other with dignity and respect. Love of course never compromises the truth; but love also never uses the truth to beat others down. Back in my student days at Moody Bible Institute, when “evangelizing” on the street my prayer was always – Lord, if anyone I encounter rejects Your gift of salvation, may it be because of the Cross itself and not because of my failure to reflect you in my exchange with that person; don’t let me (my bluntness, my arrogance, etc.) be the stumbling block. It’s been stated before on this site by others and myself Americans will resist any effort at “evangelization” from and by those who hold them in derision; the example of Jonah in Nineveh notwithstanding. One thing I will say about instruction I received at MBI regarding “evangelism” – it was taught, discussed as personal encounter before it was ever discussed in terms of reaching the masses.
Thanks for “TESTIFYIN’ ” Fr Peter. i personally cottoned more toward the Quaker witness than the sometimes ostentatious witness of the bible institutes and societies which often inculcate in their products that God NEEDS THEM PERSONALLY. This is a great personal enabler, of course, but God NEEDS no one to effect His Own Will. We need HIM.
Yep, Vladyka. So simple, and yet so overlooked.
No one else seems able or willing to say. Thank you for bringing to us this clear statement We will await more such clear and strong statements from Orthodox hierarchs, clergy and laity. With our great God on our side we not only take refuge but with His help will prevail in His ways.
Praying for your salvation, and mine.
The ROCOR Statement is arrestingly beautiful.
What a well-written statement, from loving and concerned shepherds!
First Caesar persecuted the Christians. (Nero)
Then Caesar protected the Christians (Constantine I)
Then Caesar interfered with the Church (Peter I)
Then the Church canonized Caesar (Nicholas II)
Go Figure.
Ah yes, love wins and will not hurt any one.
Big Fat Lie.
http://thefederalist.com/2015/07/24/the-big-gay-marriage-lie/
So then the Tsar Martyr is the equivalent of Nero? Read Solzhenitsyn, but I guess since he showed himself to be a monarchist,you wouldn’t believe him.,
The Tsar was demonized by the Soviets to justify their atrocities just as Hitler demonized the Jews. Anyways, the Tsar was God’s annointed and was martyred for being the Orthodox Tsar. That’s good enough for me.
No, Estonian, I am not saying the Tsar is the equivalent of Nero–I am simply showing how Caesar was rendered to throughout the Church’s history. As for Aleksandr Isayevich, I HAVE read everything he wrote, so please don’t send me to the library. To call Nicholas II a “saint” is to rewrite history. In private life, he was a very nice family man. As Tsar, however, his policies cost the lives of millions of people. It could have been avoided. To quote a line from the play, “Anastasia,” “The Tsar was like a man riding backwards on a train: he could never see anything until he was past it.” He was killed for political reasons, not because of the Orthodox Christian faith. Lenin wrote to the Ural Soviet and advised them not to leave the White Army a live banner to rally round. He also had personal reasons for bringing about the royal family’s death–the Tsar’s father ordered the hanging of his brother because he was involved in a terrorist group. I don’t care if the people call him a “martyr” or a “passion-bearer.” Either is inaccurate and an insult to the millions who perished in the Russian Revolution and under the Communists. Making him a saint just doesn’t wash. If you think he does merit sainthood, then I think you are riding backwards on the same train.
You’re wrong about the “millions killed” if you ascribe it to intent. He was the monarch of a nation at war, one in which he lost. As for the justness of that war, I think all the heads of Europe and America –crowned or not–were at fault. The Great War was a useless one, destroying Christendom once and for all. Nicholas deserves only as much discredit for that fiasco as everybody else.
As for sainthood, we are all called to be saints. A passion-bearer is just as much a saint as a confessor. And yes, he was killed because he was a Christian as was his family. Think about it: why would Lenin fear him becoming a “rallying point” for the White majority? After all, he had already abdicated and the War had made him massively unpopular.
It’s because he (and the majority of the Russian folk) were Christian. Hence the systematic extermination of his family, the hierarchy, clergy, monastics, etc.
Ah yes, love wins and will not hurt anyone.
What a big fat lie
Just a few interesting read on the subject
http://www.frc.org/issuebrief/new-study-on-homosexual-parents-tops-all-previous-research
and this story a friend sent me from a friend who saw it on facebook . . . .
I have been asked to tell my story.
July 23, 2015 at 8:55am
I was born into a family of famous gay pagan authors in the late Sixties. My mother was Marion Zimmer Bradley, and my father was Walter Breen. Between them, they wrote over 100 books: my mother wrote science fiction and fantasy, and my father wrote books on numismatics: he was a coin expert.
What they did to me is a matter of unfortunate public record: suffice to say that both parents wanted me to be gay and were horrifed at my being female. My mother molested me from ages 3-12. The first time I remember my father doing anything especially violent to me I was five. Yes he raped me. I don’t like to think about it. If you want to know about his shenanigans with little girls, and you have a very strong stomach, you can google the Breendoggle, which was the scandal which ALMOST drummed him out of science fiction fandom.
More profoundly, though was his disgust with my gender, despite his many relationships with women and female victims. He told me unequivocally that no man would ever want me, because all men are secretly gay and have simply not come to terms with their natural homosexuality. So I learned to act mannish and walk with very still hips. You can still see the traces of my conditioning to reject my femininity in my absolute refusal to give in and my outspokenness, and my choice to be a theatrical director for much of my life. But a good part of my outspokenness is my refusal to accept the notion that “deep down I must be a boy born in a girl’s body.” I am not. I am a girl reviled for being a girl, who tried very hard to be the “boy” they wanted.
Suffice to say I was not their only victim of either gender. I grew up watching my father have “romances” (in his imagination) with boys who were a source of frustration because they always wanted food and money as a result of the sex they were subjected to, and didn’t want HIM. (OF COURSE!) I started trying hard to leave home when I was ten, after the failure of my first suicide attempt, and to intervene when I was 13 by telling my mother and her female companion that my father was sleeping with this boy. Instead of calling the cops, like any sensible human being, they simply moved him into their apartment, which I called “The Love Nest” and they moved back into our family home. Certainly being in an apartment by himself gave my father ever so much more privacy in which to do what he wanted to do.
Naturally that made things much worse. I had already been couch-surfing at the home of my directors from the Renaissance Faire for some time, but nobody could take me all the time. As might be imagined, where my father was, there were teenaged boys, drugs, and not a whole lot of food, though I wasn’t really starved in my teens once my mother’s books began to sell really well. I lived all kinds of places as a teen, though I moved back in with my father when I started college.
One day he brought an eleven year old boy to stay with us for a week, with his mother’s permission, which horrified me. I made sure he had a room and bedding. When I saw my father holding him upside down kissing him all over, and saw the porn books out, I called my counselor who had already agreed to call the cops if I ever saw anything happen, and my father was arrested. For that offense, he was given three years of probation. However, word got around, and a man who had given him a place to stay in Los Angeles realized his son was of the age to be a target, and asked questions, which resulted in my father’s conviction on 13 counts of PC 288 A, B, C, and D. (Suffice to say that these are varyng kinds of forcible sexual offenses that should never be committed on anyone, let alone a child!)
He died in prison in 1993, after my initial report in 1989. It should be noted that far from being a first offender, his first arrest had been in 1948, when he was 18. (I am accepting the birthdate he believed was correct, not the one in the public record, since he insisted his mother had falsified his birthdate to get him into the Army sooner.)
As might be imagined, although my mother was perfectly well aware of my father’s crimes, and so was my “stepmother,” I was disbelieved almost up to the moment of his conviction, and discounted as “hysterical.” Again, much of that is in the public record: my mother’s cold indifference and my stepmother’s pretense of complete lack of responsibility is sickening in and of itself. Her words ought to suffice. She knew what he wanted to do.
At no time did I try to get justice for myself, because in my moral structure I was the protector of others and I loved my father very much. So although I thought I could forgive my father for what he did to me, in no way did I think it was my place to forgive him for what he did to someone else, and his latest victim was not a hooker, but an innocent child who was very badly hurt.
In any case, where my family had closed ranks around my father to protect him, more recently they’ve closed ranks around my nameless male relative, who stands accused of molesting his ex-boy-lover’s kids, whom he thinks of as his “grandchildren” as he “adopted” his boy-lover as his “son.” Yes I know, that is so sickening it is hard to read, and I am very sorry. Once more I am marginalized, called “crazy” and “hysterical” because after all, why would someone with a long history of molesting teenaged boys keep doing it? So as I did when I turned my father in, I’ve moved away. I made a police report, as did my students, who were horrified by what he said about his “grandkids.”
Now it should be noted that boy lovers do not think of what they are doing as “molestation.” To them it is sex, they imagine it is consensual, and any objections will certainly be overridden by the orgasms they are certain they can produce, and it is the shame of these orgasms that silences the boy-victims, and persuades them they “must” be gay. (Regardless of subsequent heterosexual marriages and children.)
Apparently, 33 reports against my nameless male relative for pedophilia were not enough, and he’ll skate on all this. Not my circus: not my monkeys. I did what I could, and I am easy to find, if ever I am needed to testify. Pardon my fatalism, but serial sexual offenders don’t stop, and there is likely to be another victim. Either someone will come forward, or he’ll offend again, or perhaps, being that he is older, he’ll pass on before he ever has any consequences.
Between the time of my reports of father’s offense and my nameless male relative’s, I went and got a Bachelor of Music Performance, and had a career as a wedding harpist and singer, then I married and had children, then I got a Master of Music Performance, and since 2007 I have mainly taught voice and harp and directed operas with two opera companies I founded: one in Southern CA and one in Northern CA. I also made an album of Celtic music. Yet I’ve always been dissatisfied with my career: artists need to tell their story, and mine was rather too ugly to be told.
Yes, I stupidly returned to Northern CA. My beloved cousin’s wife was dying of cancer and I wanted to be part of a family, hoping that since my father was dead his evil might have died with him. I was wrong.
Last June, (2014) a blogger named Deirdre Saoirse Moen asked me if there was any truth to the rumors about my parents, and I told her yes, that both of them had molested me and my brother as well as a HOST of other children, and I sent her two poems that I had written about that, never having breathed a word about what they had done to me in public before.
She printed my emails and poems on her blog, which promptly went to 92 countries around the world, to my utter shock. I was flooded with letters from survivors of sexual abuse, all of which I tried to answer promptly with sympathy and warmth, (which knocked me out, emotionally, in a way I can barely describe!) Everyone who wanted to send money, I asked them to send it to RAINN (Rape Abuse Incest National Network) and there were even anthology authors associated with my mother who turned over every cent of their royalties from her to charity. Other people burned their copies of her books, because they couldn’t stand to sell them and make any money off her evil. Still other people deleted her works from their Kindles and iPads.
The reason I have given, and stand by for not talking is this: I know many people found value in my mother’s books, and I did not want to harm them or disturb their lives. Thus my shock and embarrassment at how far this story went. Ironically, the survivors who benefited from her books have found more strength in standing against abuse than with her, and my admiration for them is ongoing!
Naturally, there was a lot of debate about her and my father. Every time someone tried to doubt my story, a hundred people would shout them down. The age-of-consent creeps came out and were also shouted down. I was, to my shock, believed. After watching what had happened to Woody Allen’s daughter, I had no expectation of anything other than a virtual public execution were I so stupid as to speak out, but in a way, my mother “protected” me with her OWN WORDS. She had testified, blandly, when accused of molesting me, that “children don’t have erogenous zones” and didn’t bother denying tying me to a chair and attacking me with a pair of pliers, claiming she was going to pull out my teeth. With her cold admissions, nobody could put much of ANYTHING past her.
In any event, since the truth came out, the pedophilic themes in her books became very obvious to people who had previously chalked them up to history or the license granted to an author of fiction. My father had written, with her editorial assistance, a book of apologetics for sex between adults and children called “Greek Love” under the pseudonym “J.Z. Eglinton.” All of a sudden, nobody could have any question about what had been so obvious to me all along.
So what has changed since last June? Since my (and others) report of my nameless male relative back in November and my decision to go No Contact with my family due to their response, it began to dawn on me that maybe the gayness WAS an issue. Naturally, I had been brought up to be completely tolerant. Years ago I read Satinover, who believed that gays were largely “pansexual” that is, preferring sex with EVERYONE of EVERY age and EVERY gender rather than wanting to be limited to one person, and he regarded it, credibly, as a moral and ethical problem, rather than a sexual “orientation.” I can’t tell you how many lesbians I know who simply hate men, or who have been raped and can’t face sex with men because of that. For me, my research about homosexuality was almost a guilty secret: me thinking the unthinkable. After all, gayness had always been presented to me as the natural state: I was “hung up” and a “prude” because despite my mother’s pleading with me to “try it the other way” and “how could I possibly know I was straight?” I just couldn’t hack being gay myself.
My observation of my father and mother’s actual belief is this: since everyone is naturally gay, it is the straight establishment that makes everyone hung up and therefore limited. Sex early will make people willing to have sex with everyone, which will bring about the utopia while eliminating homophobia and helping people become “who they really are.” It will also destroy the hated nuclear family with its paternalism, sexism, ageism (yes, for pedophiles, that is a thing) and all other “isms.” If enough children are sexualized young enough, gayness will suddenly be “normal” and accepted by everyone, and the old fashioned notions about fidelity will vanish. As sex is integrated as a natural part of every single relationship, the barriers between people will vanish, and the utopia will appear, as “straight culture” goes the way of the dinosaur. As my mother used to say: “Children are brainwashed into believing they don’t want sex.”
I know, I know. The stupidity of that particular thesis is boundless, and the actual consequence is forty-year-olds in therapy for sexual abuse, many, many suicides, and ruined lives for just about EVERYONE. But someone needed to say it. Will anyone hear it? There were six Johnny Does at my father’s trial, who would not testify, and two victims, who did. One of the victims I am in touch with. He was silenced so fiercely by fans of my mother years ago that he is not able to talk about it to this day. I don’t know the fate of all the Johnny Does, but I do know one of them is dead in his forties from an eating disorder, never having been able to talk about what happened, and I know at least one of the people on the list of 22 names I gave the cops as a potential abuse victim died from suicide last year. I also know a number of victims of my father who would not testify because they love him. As a personal note, I can understand why: of my parents, he was by far the kinder one. After all, he was only a serial rapist. My mother was an icy, violent monster whose voice twisted up my stomach.
A very brief note on my “stepmother:” she now denies ever having been gay, after 22 years with my mother, and she has married a man. So what was was she “born” Was she born gay, and is now living in “denial” of her “true nature” as the gays would have it, or was she besotted in a childish way with my mother, who did what celebrities do, and took advantage of her innocence and emotional infantility? She was 26 when she got involved with my mother, and told me later she felt she had been “molested” by my mother. I can’t use that word for her: she was 26. But she DID call my mother “mommy” and most of the emotional content of their relationship was an attempt to prove that she was a “better daughter” than I was: a competition that for me, was over before it began. I am my mother’s daughter. It is a biological reality. Giving my mother orgasms does not make my stepmother a better daughter, simply a fool. And as it can be noted now, she MUST be the “better daughter” because I blew the whistle. I don’t speak to her.
This March I met Katy Faust online: one of the six children of gays who filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court opposing gay marriage. We corresponded, and I left CA. I am still reeling from the death of my last bits of denial. It IS the homosexuality that is the problem. It IS the belief that all sex all the time will somehow cure problems instead of creating them that is the problem.
So I have begun to speak out against gay marriage, and in doing so, I have alienated most of even my strongest supporters. After all, they need to see my parents as wacky sex criminals, not as homosexuals following their deeply held ethical positions and trying to create a utopia according to a rather silly fantasy. They do not have the willingness to accept the possibility that homosexuality might actually have the result of destroying children and even destroying the adults who insist on remaining in its thrall.
From my experience in the gay community, the values in that community are very different: the assumption is that EVERYONE is gay and closeted, and early sexual experience will prevent gay children from being closeted, and that will make everyone happy.
If you doubt me, research “age of consent” “Twinks,” “ageism” and the writings of the NUMEROUS authors on the Left who believe that early sexuality is somehow “beneficial” for children.
Due to my long experience with the BSDM community (bondage/discipline, Sado-Masochism) it is my belief that homosexuality is a matter of IMPRINTING, in the same way that BDSM fantasies are. To the BDSM’er, continued practice of the fantasy is sexually exciting. To the gay person, naturally, the same. However, from what I have seen, neither one creates healing. My mother became a lesbian because she was raped by her father. My father was molested by a priest–and regarded it as being the only love he had ever experienced. There are a vanishingly few people who are exclusively gay, but far more who have relationships with people of BOTH genders, as my parents and other relatives did.
What sets gay culture apart from straight culture is the belief that early sex is good and beneficial, and the sure knowledge (don’t think for a second that they DON’T know) that the only way to produce another homosexual is to provide a boy with sexual experiences BEFORE he can be “ruined” by attraction to a girl.
If you’re OK with that, and you might not be, it is worth your consideration. If you think I am wrong, that is your privilege, but watch out for the VAST number of stories of sexual abuse AND transgenderism that will come about from these gay “marriages.” Already the statistics for sexual abuse of children of gays are astronomically higher compared to that suffered by the children of straights.
http://www.frc.org/issuebrief/new-study-on-homosexual-parents-tops-all-previous-research
Naturally my perspective is very uncomfortable to the liberal people I was raised with: I am “allowed” to be a victim of molestation by both parents, and “allowed” to be a victim of rather hideous violence. I am, incredibly, NOT ALLOWED to blame their homosexuality for their absolute willingness to accept all sex at all times between all people.
But that is not going to slow me down one bit. I am going to keep right on speaking out. I have been silent for entirely too long. Gay “marriage” is nothing but a way to make children over in the image of their “parents” and in ten to thirty years, the survivors will speak out.
In the meantime, I will. –Moira Greyland.
For anyone curious, you can see the “blog that went round the world” here: http://deirdre.net/marion-zimmer-bradley-its-worse-than-i-knew/
And this is the story of Katy Faust, whose story helped me break through the last of my denial. Yes, it really is the gayness that is the problem.
http://askthebigot.com/
Click here to Reply or Forward
Wow! Simply wow! Well what did any of us thing would happen if we went against nature? I hope Fr. Arida is reading this and taking note. It’s not too late to repent and start preaching the Gospel.
Peter
Thanks for posting the exact same Mark Regnerus/Loren Marks/Family Research Council shameful fabrication that is the antithesis of scientific research and the hallmark of Google scholarship. I could match you 10-to1 with authentic, replicated research from respected researchers in legitimate scientific journals that submit their data to be refereed for integrity and accuracy that conclude exactly the opposite of these creeps. But I won’t. And why? Because no one cares. The legal battle has been lost and same-sex marriage and the right to parent as one chooses is the law of this land. Mark Regnerus is a humiliated footnote in a Michigan appeals court case no one will ever remember given the SCOTUS decision. And why you are re-directing us to lost-causes and anecdotes that provide the Church no helpful insight into what to do from here forward is beyond me. If the best we can figure out is alignment with the heterodox, the heretics, and the charlatans, we are lost.
Go ahead and post them. I’d like to see their methods anyway, if they are like some of the others I’ve read, then they are SELECTING their subjects or they are from such a small pool of people, or they send out an add for “Healthy Gay Couples apply” . . . . These sorts of premises are not scientific or unbiased and I don’t care how many you show me they will not be credible to me.
colette,
Temps et contretemps… The “method” you describe is characteristic of the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and the creeps and charlatans who fund Regnerus, Marks, NARTH, Exodus, and the rest. And anyone who is investigating homosexuals, and homosexual parents in particular, and same-sex married parents more particularly is necessarily drawing from an especially small cohort of individuals. How do you imagine they could avoid it? No legitimate scientist, however, would risk tainting this “cohort” by recruiting “Healthy Gay Couples.” You’re dreaming.
Secondly, you seem to presume that when a study concludes that children can and are raised in homosexual households without any undo negative developmental or long-term psychological consequences, the study is concluding that homosexuality is “normal” or “good.” No study or studies can determine that homosexuality is “normal” or “good.” That is, for us, a moral determination; for others a “legal/civil rights determination”; and for yet others, a societal determination. The studies are simply comparing children raised in traditional households and homosexuals households to determine if there is an increase of alcoholism/chemical dependency; mood disorders (e.g. depression, anxiety), major mental illness (e.g. psychotic/delusional disorders), learning disabilities, ADHD, etc. comparatively. The research question is not is homosexuality normal? To date, there do not seem to be any appreciable differences that cannot be accounted for by variables other than the sexuality of the parents (e.g. poverty & other environmental/sociological variables, mental illness of the parent, physical illness of the parent, etc.). They simply are not measuring whether homosexuality is a “good,” healthy,” or “moral” environment for children, despite the LGBT community commentary that may accompany the studies.
You are making a lot of assumptions on my part. . . . Regenerus’ research is not using small samples of people like these other BIASED studies. He was rushed through his research but did what he set out to do and he did not get adequate peer reviews of his work because of that, but that is happening now-which is expected, but it is being over scrutinised by folks who don’t like his own personal views and popular reading of this scrutiny is simply wrong. His research is properly being used by other respected in his field with some different conclusions, but they are still using what he found because his research was one of the more thorough to date on the subject. You lump everyone carelessly together and name call, I just don’t have any patience for that. Instead of seeing what he did accomplish and reading reasonable critiques of his work you swing way out there with the crazies. Be reasonable. There is much much work to be done with what he accomplished, there is no way he could have done all that people are critising him for. Those are all different studies in which he is slowly addressing, so it seems.
No, colette, what I was doing was making pleasant conversation because you are wasting my time. You wouldn’t know complex research methodology from Method Man of the Wu Tang. Did you even read Regnerus’s study, colette? Regenrus originally advertized this study as “nationally representative” and providing the “statistical power necessary to detect differences between groups within the sample.” This is because it was promoted to the Court of Appeals as consisting of 15,058 respondents who answered a self-administered internet survey as to their family structure, including lesbian mother or gay father. You are aware the final number qualifying research subjects consisted of 248, or 1.7% of the original 15, 058 respondents?
His colleague, Marc Musick, who challenged his research in his own department at the University of Texas-Austin, accused Regnerus of four serious methodological errors (all of which Regnerus now acknowledges) concluded that “the New Family Structures Study is fundamentally flawed with regard to the findings on children of parents who had same-sex romantic relationships. As such, the article contributes nothing of value to the literature on family instability and should largely be disregarded [emphasis mine].” This is what Regnerus stipulated in writing to the Academic Dean, and it was submitted to the University President. His findings were necessarily flawed because his methodology was flawed, colette.
So I ask you specifically: where is his flawed research “properly being used by other respected in his field with some different conclusions?” This would assume it is possible to reach a “good” conlusion from bad data. You claim that legitimate researchers are BIASED and have refuted Regnerus by advertizing for research subjects that are “happy gay couples,” thereby jeopardizing their credibility and the integrity of the field. Name ONE researcher and where such a solicitation for subjects and the journal the article is published. In the BIASED studies to which your refer, what were the research questions and what were the number of subjects enrolled? The only thing I lump together are charlatans, and the only ones offended by my “naming-calling” are the ones who deserve it. In that you have no patience for carelessness and name calling, I’m sure you will draw no offense at my requests.
Baloney. Regnerus has acknowledged no “serious methodological errors” because his study doesn’t contain any. Musick’s complaint did not even allege any, and that’s why it was dismissed. The Dean only differed in how he would have diced the data to ignore the greater marital instability of gay parents and its impact on their children.
Regnerus most certainly did not “stipulate” to the Dean that Musick was right on all points. No action was taken against Regnerus, and no word of censure was directed to him. He remains a professor in good standing at UT and continues to publish works based on his study.
“Baloney,” you say? No “serious methodological errors,” you say? May I also lead you to the edge of the cliff to deny that Regnerus stipulated that the “NFSS contributes nothing of value to the literature on family instability and should be disregarded?” Or would you like to like to hold your head high and walk to the edge, accompanied by colette & her “many scholars”? Madonna Mia! Don’t tell me you didn’t really read Regnerus either?
Methodological Critiques:
1) Overly Broad Definition of Gay Parents
As stated in the article, the goal of Prof. Regnerus’ research is to study adult children who were “raised in different types of family arrangements.” Critics argue, however, that the measurements used would yield many different types of same-sex relationships [SSR], some of which might have no bearing on the upbringing [as I have have personally mentioned many times, prison inmates who engage in same-sex activity only while incarcerated]. Thus, the measurement used for parents in SSR could not be used to accurately identify blah, blah, blah. Prof. Regnerus acknowledges this limitation of the measurement in his rejoinder article blah, blah, blah… based on critics’ assessment & Regnerus’ own admissions, one fact is clear: the indicator of same-sex relationships in the NFSS contains some, perhaps substantial, measurement error.
2) Conflating Family Structure with Family Stability
The respondents in the SSR categories also experienced sokme form of family instability, such as parental divorce. Prof. Regnerus chose to group all respondents who had any SSR into these categories regardless of any of any other type of family structure respondents might have experienced as children. This grouping was done to increase the statistical power of the tests to find differences between the groups, and was not based on theory or accepted practice practice in the field. This choice also meant that he was unable to accurately tell whether the worse outcomes for respondents in the SSR categories were due to having a SSR parent, or whether they were the result of family instability. [Emphasis mine]. A Regnerus co-investigator wrote in a footnote in the report:
Prof. Regnerus addresses [this] in his rejoinder by noting the likely high levels of variability and the resulting difficulty in making accurate comparisons. Here, Regnerus & his critics agree [emphasis mine] that there is likely a large error in his study design. Saying something is difficult to do does not absolve one of any error that might occur based on the research design.
3) Misuse of Lesbian and Gay Labels
Measurement of SSR was insufficient to make the claim that the parents in the study were gay or lesbian. Thus, by using those terms to classify respondents into different family structures, Regnerus was misrepresenting the data. Most of the article uses the term “lesbian mother” or “gay father” as if they were intending to describe persons who lived their lives predominantly as self-identified lesbian or gay male. It is not evident to the reader that the vast majority of time, Regnerus is referring to a coding convention, and misleading. In his own rejoinder, Regnerus admits, “This is arguably the most reasonable criticism.” [emphasis mine]Yet he never explains his reasoning for avoiding all mentioning of sexual identity and simply used labels for what he measured: same-sex relationships.
4) Failure to Identify Family Structure in Which Respondents Were Raised
The most significant criticism is that the article failed in its effort to reach its fundamental goal: understanding the outcomes of young adults based on the family arrangements in which they were raised. These commentators argue, correctly, that many respondents in the SSR categories were not actually raised by same-sex parents. Indeed, for many respondents, no time [emphasis mine] seems to have been spent living with a parent who was actually cohabitating with a same-sex partner… blah, blah, blah
One noteworthy example comes from the Attorney General of the State of Utah to US Court of Appeal for the Tenth Circuit: “Thus, the Regnerus study cannot be viewed as conclusively establishing establishing that raising children in a same sex household produces outcomes that are inferior to those produced by man-woman parenting arrangements.”
[And the MI Court of Appeals] “The NFSS is flawed on its face, as it purported to study “a large, random sample of American young adults (age 18-39) who were raised in different types of family arrangements” but in fact it did not study this at all, as Regnerus equated being raised with a same-sex couple with having ever lived with a parent who had a “romantic relationship with someone of the same sex” for any length time.
Google scholars, get out of my house. Seriously.
Here’s an interesting article on how the Regenerus study got politicized.
The Campaign to Discredit Regnerus and the Assault on Peer Review.
This is a very good article and sums things up well.
Below in one of the articles I posted it ends with signatures of fellow scientists supporting Regnerus that has grown since it’s initial posting.
Three points, Michael Stankovich:
1. None of these complaints is a “serious methodological error.” None stopped the study from being published in a reputable, peer-reviewed academic journal or caused the article to be retracted.
2. Prof. Regnerus answers his critics in the same journal here.
3. Your word on the matter is worthless. You can’t even admit to repeatedly misusing the words “mutually exclusive” to deny the connection between same-sex attraction and sodomy.
In 2012, Regnerus began this whole business because he was suspicious that such dramatic social change could occur in as little as a single decade. A prophet he was not. First need to resolve the matter of 240 scholars (e.g. representing, among others, Columbia University School of Medicine; University of North Carolina Medical School, Chapel Hill; Yeshiva University School of Medicine; Oregon Health & Science School of Medicine; UC San Francisco School of Medicine; NY Medical College; UCLA Medical School; UC Davis Medical School; Case Western Reserve Medical
School; Emory University Medical School; University of Rochester Medical School; and the
Graduate Schools of Sociology of Virginia Polytechnic; Cal State Long Beach; University of
Amsterdam; Barnard College, Columbia; University of Connecticut; San Jose State University; Wesleyan University; U Mass Amherst; University of New Orleans; and so on) who signed a petition directed at the Journal of Social Science (Regnerus’publisher) who opposed
the facts:
1) that the commentators to the NFSS were principle co-investigators of the study and could not be impartial.
2) the peer review process and substantive revisions occurred within a period of just five
weeks… As they noted, there were substantial concerns about the merits of this paper, and
these concerns should have been identified through a thorough and rigorous peer review
process.
3) they had substantial concerns about the merits of this paper and question whether it
actually uses methods and instruments that answer the research questions posed in the paper… But, as the authors note, for those respondents who indicated that a parent had a “same-sex relationship,” these categories were collapsed to boost sample size: By doing this, the author was unable to distinguish between the impact of having a parent who had a continuous same-sex relationship from the impact of having same-sex parents who broke-up, from the impact of living in a same-sex stepfamily, from the impact of living with a single parent who may have dated a same-sex partner. That seems absurd to family structure researchers, yet that type of grouping is exactly what he did with his “lesbian mother” and “gay father” groups.
4) it should be noted that the analyses also failed to distinguish family structure from
family stability for single mothers; this group included both continuously single mothers and
those single mothers who had previously experienced a divorce. The paper employs an unusual method to measure the sexual orientation of the respondents’ parents. Even if the analyses had distinguished family stability from family structure, this paper and its accompanying study could not actually directly examine the impact of having a gay or lesbian parent on child outcomes because the interpretation of the measurement of parental sexual orientation is unclear.
5) they were very concerned about the academic integrity of the peer review process for this paper as well as its intellectual merit. They questioned the decision of Social Science Research to publish the paper, and particularly, to publish it without an extensive, rigorous peer review process and commentary from scholars with explicit expertise on LGBT family research.
Cheng, S & Powell, B. “Measurement, methods, and divergent patterns: reassessing the
effects of same-sex parents”.Social Science Research, (2015), Accepted Date: 8 April 2015.
Abstract: Scholars have noted that survey analysis of small subsamples — for example, same-sex parent families — is sensitive to researchers’ analytical decisions, and even small differences in coding can profoundly shape empirical patterns. As an illustration, we reassess the findings of a recent article by Mark Regnerus regarding the implications of being raised by gay and lesbian parents. Taking a close look at the New Family Structures Study (NFSS), we demonstrate the potential for misclassifying a non-negligible number of respondents as having been raised by parents who had a same-sex romantic relationship. We assess the implications of these possible misclassifications, along with other methodological considerations, by reanalyzing the NFSS in seven steps. The reanalysis offers evidence that the empirical patterns showcased in the original Regnerus article are fragile—so fragile that they appear largely a function of these possible misclassifications and other methodological choices. Our replication and reanalysis of Regnerus’s study offer a cautionary illustration of the importance of double checking and critically assessing the implications of measurement and other methodological decisions in our and others’ research.
Introduction
Research communities in the social sciences have long been aware that methodological decisions can potentially affect the inferences of survey research (Firebaugh 2008). This threat to the validity of research inferences is particularly challenging for studies that focus on a very small group of interest, such as some racial minority groups, atypical families, and same-sex couples (Cheng and Powell 2005, 2011). In such research, even a tiny percentage of measurement errors for the small subsamples could powerfully distort patterns from the surveys, and other methodological choices can similarly affect empirical results. When research findings from these analyses are used as policy guidelines, the threat goes even beyond scientific communities. It therefore is incumbent for scholars to critically assess the implications of these decisions in their own work as well as that of others.
In this paper, we use a recent article by Regnerus (2012a) in Social Science Research as an example to illustrate these points. In “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the “New Family Structures Study,” Regnerus (2012a)introduces the New Family Structures Study (NFSS) and, with these data, compares the outcome profiles of 236 adult children whose parents reportedly had a same-sex romantic relationship with the profiles of those who grew up in other family types, including “intact biological families,” stepfamilies, and single-parent families. Examining 40 social, emotional, and relational outcomes, Regnerus concludes that adult children of same-sex parents generally fare less well than those from intact two-biological-parent families.
[This paper – while praising the ambitious approach of Regnerus – attempts to re-code his data with seven separate statistical methods to compare outcomes].
We do not claim that the coding we followed or other methodological choices we made are the only reasonable ones, but we do contend that for a pattern to be believable — especially
those that are antithetical with the patterns found in nearly every other study on the same
topic — it should hold up to empirical scrutiny and should withstand the use of different
coding and alternative specifications. Regnerus’s analysis does not meet this core
requirement. In turn, it does not provide sufficiently credible counterevidence to the
longstanding body of scholarship that confirms minimal differences in the consequences of
living with same-sex or opposite-sex parents.
Now, I must have 90 separate studies that pre-date, post-date, and all challenge the findings of Regnerus, none of which you are competent to critique as to the appropriateness of methodology, efficacy of methodology, or sufficiency. My words are worthless? I challenge you to post your qualifications and credentials to question me, you Google-enabled poseur. Not in a million years. You don’t have the courage or the integrity. Slither back to your mediocrity.
If Professor Regnerus “continues to publish works based on his study,” you might contact him to update his own CV, downloadable at his personal website, which lists exactly one publication since 2012:
and one I found in the National Library of Medicine:
neither of which has any relationship to the NFSS. I though someone referred to you as a “newsman?”
If I am wasting your time, don’t waste mine by replying. . . .
colette,
I take this to mean you cannot appreciate that there is greater issue at stake here, and that is the truth. You have already stated, “I don’t care how many you show me they will not be credible to me,” which speaks for itself. My point was to say that you are unqualified to distinguish between what is valid and what is not. Dn. Mitchell believed he had struck “gold” in Mark Regnerus and would finally prove me a “fraud.” But because he knows absolutely nothing about evaluating complex research design and statistical analysis – like you – and chose his unlikely battle based on what “sounded good” – like you – and you are both backed into a corner defending a charlatan. I also take this to mean you have found an excuse not to answer my questions.
I actually posted an answer to your question, but it is not here. . . . ??
Your post is dishonest-
That’s enough, colette. You trash talk me without the slightest bit of evidence or understanding. We are not “debating” by any stretch of the imagination. You are in my field of expertise, playing like you are my colleague, making assertions that are ridiculously impossible. And now you have awakened the sleeping proto-poseur, who apparently feels just invigorated enough to be smacked down again! Is it the water in DC that affects you people? And for what? The legal battle has been lost.
Homosexuals may artificially inseminate, adopt, and parent as they wish. Do you get it? Even though the Regnerus study was proven to be methodologically defective, and he were to turn around tomorrow and correct it and draw the sustainable conclusion that homosexual parenting is detrimental to children – and it will never happen – who cares? Do you believe that the SCOTUS will overturn Obergefell v. Hodges because of Regnerus? What a grandiose distraction you propose in place of the real action(s) the Church needs to prepare for its future. You would waste our time with charlatans and creeps and their special interests. Enough.
ok here are some of what was in my original post . . more will come later . .
http://chronicle.com/article/An-Academic-Auto-da-F-/133107
http://www.baylorisr.org/2012/06/20/a-social-scientific-response-to-the-regnerus-controversy/
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X1200169X
http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/10/6784/
“At UT, the policy in such matters is that the merest squeak from any party alleging misconduct is enough to trigger a preliminary inquiry, which in 60 days must determine whether a full-blown investigation is warranted. The university swung into action, doing everything by the book, at no little inconvenience to Regnerus, but at the end of August the UT “research integrity officer” concluded that no plausible charge of misconduct could be substantiated. The university’s provost accepted that conclusion, and closed the matter without prejudice to Regnerus’s standing as a scholar and teacher.”
I believe it was Hitler who said, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”
Which is exactly the tactic of the folks pushing the homosexual agenda.
No Michael. Hitler murdered gay people and blamed them for Germany’s troubles just as he would go on to blame other minorities and “undesirables.” At first he didn’t, until they told him how to run Germany. He then conveniently recalled that there were anti-gay laws on the books. In other words, he didn’t send them to the camps for any moral reasons; rather they were political. Your casting of gay people as sexual fascists is not only inaccurate, but a revision of history. Sorry if that rattles YOUR little heterosexual agenda.
Now, Nicholas.
You offered a cogent post and destroyed it with the last sentence.
Why? The rub at the end was of no value.
Choose words wisely.
Goebbels, rather, Minister of Propaganda.
Three out of five Monomakhos participants are for the truth,while two out of five DISLIKE it.
I stand corrected, Vladyka. But no matter who said it, it worked (as it is working now among the haters of minorities).
“Mark Regnerus is a humiliated footnote in a Michigan appeals court case no one will ever remember given the SCOTUS decision. ”
Like Dred Scott?
No, pal, it was more like the Three Stooges. Are you aware of the normal length of time it takes for a legitimate research article to move through the process from submission to publication? Generally a year from beginning to end. This article was “expedited” in five weeks! Was it such a stellar piece of research that it deserved “rapid release?” Hardly. Musick accuses four major design errors – and while the proto-poseur claims, “None of these complaints is a “serious methodological error,” they are all fatal errors, as corroborated by Cheng & Powell (cited above) as late as April 2015, who gave Regnerus seven benefits of the doubt by attempting to re-calculate his data seven different ways. Nope. They wanted to salvage the NFSS, but could not.
The fact is, Regnerus was under pressure from his sponsors to get this study before two Courts of Appeal – Utah & Michigan – who were deciding the constitutionality of same-sex marriage at the state level. The Attorney General of the State of Utah was honest enough to inform the Court that the NFSS failed to demonstrate what it promoted itself as proving, and eliminated Regnerus from its witness list before the trial even began. Regnerus testified for two days in the state of Michigan, and the judge’s ruling on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage in the state of Michigan took a distant back seat to the judge’s excoriation of Mark Regnerus and the NFSS. If you read the NY Times or WaPo or watched the major media, you would have been led to believe that homosexual parenting had been found equally “sufficient” and/or “healthy & nurturing” as traditional parenting. This was absolutely incorrect. Nevertheless, this was the impression left as a consequence of charlatan scholarship that fueled the “walk in the park” that was Obergefell v. Hodges.
So I ask you, Mr. Almisry, do you see a point to continuing to prop up charlatans and creeps like Regnerus after the battle, at least on this front, is lost – he’s currently devoted himself to the study of masturbation – or do you think his forum devotées are more invested in settling a score with me? Personally, wasted water’s all that is. But I confess ambivalence…
M. Stankovich, in a world where Ann Coulter and Senator Cotton have an audience one must EXPECT that Regnerus will be considered to be an ORACLE!
Vladyka Tikhon,
And it is only in the make-believe world of the internet that “monks in the city,” deacons without revealed credentials, and iconographers feel qualified and competent to “critique” complex research protocols and statistical analysis and clinical data on the use of low-dose hormone administration in humans. And having finished their deliberations, “reasonably” conclude that I’m the idiot. At least we could expect a new and better mousetrap from them. And so it goes…
Bishop Tikhon, in a world where the Christ-hating Left dominates the academy, one must expect that Prof. Regnerus would be condemned as a “CHARLATAN” by the likes of Stankovich.
I await the posting of your credentials, proto-poseur.
I have a degree in English literature and have worked for many years as a writer and editor of English. Those are my credentials, and they qualify me to judge that you have repeatedly misused the words “mutually exclusive” to deny the connection between same-sex attraction and sodomy.
You have obstinately refused to admit this deliberate misuse, and your refusal disqualifies you as an authority on the subject. You cannot be trusted to tell the truth or admit when you have been wrong.
Ah, “the Christ-hating Left!” Ever hear of the “Deutsche Christen?” That’s how they defended Hitler.
It’s only one step from “Christ-killers” to “Christ-haters.” There IS a responsible Right, but they are rarely heard from, especially here.qnd I would never sink so shamefully low as to call them “Christ-hating.” By “Stankovich,” Ptotodeacon, do you refer to Michael Stankovich? When you are more acclimated to our Orthodox Church and Her ways, you’ll always look for the image of God in others and show respect for their status as part of the Holy Laos and refer to them by their Christian names.
I suppose the only reason you are not calling your Professor Regnerus a heretic is because he tried so valiantly to interact with the big boys on your behalf. You WANT him to be an acknowledged authority, but Michael S. blew that canoe out of the water!!
The retired OCA bishop in California somehow deems it suitable to chastise Protodeacon Brian P. Mitchell by (1) resorting to a reductio ad Hitlerum (Jewish philosopher Leo Strauss’ apt phrase for hasty, juvenile Nazi comparisons, perhaps the lowest form of non-argument that, according to a variation of [Mike] “Godwin’s Law,” automatically disqualifies the user in an online exchange), and (2) insulting the Protodeacon personally and questioning his Orthodox longevity (which spans some two decades) for referring to Dr. Stankovich without the academic title.
I don’t recall any occasion on this website when the retired OCA bishop in California has taken that same Dr. Stankovich to task for his array of disrespectful–and jejune–epithets against the Protodeacon, including proto-poseur in the post that appears, ironically, directly above his own here.
Perhaps “retired” does not mean what most of us understand by that term.
“Perhaps “retired” does not mean what most of us understand by that term.”
Are you lumping +Tikhon (Fitzgerald) with your hero, the retired and self-deposed former Metropolitan of the OCA and Archbishop of Washington?
Clearly Karl, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Archpriest ! I NEVER EVER took ANYONE including Protodeacon BRIAN, to task for not addressing ANYONE by his title. I, rather, deplored his ignoring Michael Stankovich’s Christian name. In MY experience (obviously not yours) Orthodox clergy refer to and ADDRESS those not ordained by their CHRISTIAN name. For That haughty Protodeacon to address or speak of Michael Stankovich as”Stankovich” is offensive to what the Protodeacon would have us believe is HIS piety! You, Archpriest, have here born false witness. I believe I have here and elsewhere on the Internet expressed my dislike and distrust for Crredentialism—why would i insist anyone address Michael Stankovich or YOU by referring your academic credentials (as you may like to do relative to your own)?
The Protodeacon;s post CRIED OUT FOR A Reductio ad Hitlerum, I freely and gladly ADMIT!
I find it a little titillating when someone finds conduct objectionable when affecting someone he is sympathetic with, while the very same conduct is recommended for an instance who disagreed with him! Is that not the infamous situational ethic, Archpriest? ( He “can’t recall” when i treated MichaelStankovich as I treat Ptotodeacon BRIAN…
Please,,enlighten us who sit at your credentialed feet and let us know “what most of us mean by the tern” retired” !!??!!The Protodeacon BRIAN– TWO DECADES a Deacon and still in some respects hardly Catechized! It’s a tragedy, not an insult. Oh, how wonderful was the Saint Nicholas Church when Fathers Arkady Moisjew, Pul Lutov, and a REAL protodeacon, Vladimir Malash nourished the flock. All the blood ran out of the parish life after they were gone…
Much of the OCA changed in ensuing years—-a new breed of clergy who learned everything from academia rather than from real human and continuous experience of those who came here from old world communities where the living tradition was in the very air onr breathed rather than JUST on the page!
I am, indeed, retired:
1954-1957> U.S. Army Signal Corps.
1960-1965: 1966-1971 U/S. Air Force
1971-1976 Orthodox Diaconate
1976-1987 Orthodox Priesthood
1087-2007 Orthodox Episcopate
NOTE: I was received into the Orthodox Church in 1960 in te Orthodox Chapel at Lackland AB, Officer Training School.
Oh yes, I qualified “Expert” in the M-1 rifle and the carbine and the .45. ..
I am one of the very very few Orthodox Bishops who dares to participate in the PUBLIC FORUM called “the Internet”, although retired Metropolitan Jonah has taken up frequent exposure on “Facebook.”
From my consecration to the episcopate until my retirement, I believe the Diocese of the Weat may have DOUBLED the number of its parishes, SOLELY through God’s blessing on us
I would like to add in my humble opinion that Vladyka Tikhon Fitzgerald is the wisest member of the Orthodox clergy I have ever met. I have learned much from him, because he has that enviable combination of liturgics and simple piety. This is not meant as flattery, but as my own experience of his teachings on the Orthodox Faith.
Archpriest Alexander,
Allow me the fundamental distinction: what is the Navy officer’s term for the one who “talks through his hat,” embarrassing everyone up and down his chain of command until someone feels enough anxiety to rescue him (and God bless you & Fr. Hans for the spirit of endurance)? Oh wait, you were not a naval officer. The term is “hump.” And this is an earned distinction, because you cannot be a “hump” because you are simply overly zealous and have a good heart (i.e. your intention is good, but you’re misguided and will be “naturally” edged to a lower deck. No, a “hump” is arrogant and does not care that he makes everyone look bad, because he shamefully takes advantage of camaraderie, and the ethics of “real men” to have each others backs. A “hump” is parasitic and consumes the guts of “real men” to survive. You rail against the very anointed of God to defend what, exactly? Honor? Integrity? Righteousness? No. A hump. I truly am embarrassed you even saw fit to enter this discussion because, from my heart, I know you are a better man. And I am also smart enough to know there is a 30% chance you will ever see this message in Mr. Michalopulos’ dedicated policy to an “open forum.”
Well, I guess you could call me left in my views, Fr. Deacon. But “Christ-hating”? That can only be called reaching.
You, Nicholas, may not be Christ Hating, but much of the Hollywood left appears to be. They are the ones that influence our young people. Perhaps it would behoove our people to watch that awful movie “The Red State.” It depicts a crazy pastor who lures gays and people looking for illicit sex in general to his so-called church, where he has them executed in the name of Jesus.
One cannot imagine an Orthodox Christian approving of such sentiments, but I’m afraid brainwashed young people will link any Christian denomination which opposes same-sex marriage with the crazies depicted in the film. For example, when a gay man is about to be executed (in the ‘church”), you have a crazed woman openly praying, “Send the sinner straight to hell”. We don’t pray for ANYBODY to be sent to hell. I pray for the salvation of all, friend and foe alike.
My own mother was in some way abused by an uncle, a fact I didn’t learn until a few weeks before her death. I never found out which of her mother’s four brothers it was.It did explain why my mother cut off all relations with her mother’s family. She didn’t become lesbian, but she failed two marriages and turned to alcohol, she died an embittered atheist.
She feared the uncle in question may have molested his younger sister, my grandmother. What I think we can all agree on is that nobody should violate a child’s innocence.
I think Marion Zimmer Brady was in the SCA, a group that recreated the middle ages. About 30 years ago I went to some of their events and I think she was a member. Her books are not that bad a mixture of Science fiction and the middle ages.Its very possible that the girls parents were that odd since I remember that Brady was very against anything tradional.
I don’t support kid sex. I talking about the books dealing with dragons on alien worlds for Marion Zimmer Brady..
That was an interesting story about Marion Zimmer Brady and her husband I agree up to a point with the author but they are gays that also come from straight families where homosexuality is a sin and they are kick out. Also, some christian families have ended up with gay kids that they tried to make straight, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. As for abuse causing being gay, the hippie preacher that helped built up two Evangelical churches Calvary Chapel and Vineyard had problems with homosexuality through out his life, Lonnie Frisbee died of Aids in 1993. He was abused as a child and their is a film called Frisbee, a tale of a Hippie preacher.
Yes, that’s what we all are told over and over-kids kicked out for revealing they are gay (of course none of the people I know were kicked out). But just that reaction tells me the house-hold is unhealthy.
To say everyone who is gay is like this, would be wrong. That story is more about where the obsession with sex can lead and does lead more often than we know. I would like to think that most people don’t take it so far.
Yes Christian families sometimes have gay children-a lot of priests kids are gay-why is that? The incense?
“Gayness” is a response to something.
Well, my mother said she know a young man that was homeless that was gay and got out of it working as a telephone operator. I think that both Marion Zimmer Brady and her husband were very strange, and don’t approve of their behavior. I can see some people pushing there kids to be gay or some become gay over abused. My beef with the Family Research Center is they will good friends with Bill Gothard that had sex with several young teenage girls. He never married and was responsible for the home school movement among evangelicals in the 1980’s. Gothard was also friends with the Duggar family. Josh Duggar committed incense with his sisters. There is also bad heterosexual behavior and the Family Research Covers this up alot among Gothard, Josh Duggar and others.
Well I’ll agree, none of that should be covered up and they should disassociate with the lot of them. Every well meaning group needs to be looked at closely. That’s just how it is.
The claim that gays love each other in a permanent, faithful monogamous genuine love is propaganda. It is as rare , or non existent as the percentage of humanity not born, make and female. The wicked and perverse just lie, claiming their love is equivalent to males and females who love each other. Emotional attachment, not love is the flimsy bond between them, As a subculture, they are as promiscuous as porn lover heterosexuals. Who love filth. And never forget, St John Chrysostom said they are worse than murders. This Holy Father warns us with dire strong language., most uncommon from this eloquent and most seemly writer. This, Theologian, who loved Christ’s sheep, and did not lie, guides us to flee from this plague of the Great whore.at any and all times,I read a posting from an ex-,monk ,who as a young man was assaulted by Gleb Podmoshensky( Abbot Herman of Platina) in a homosexual manner. He was a son of a HOOM priest, and he was full of a desire to serve God. He has yet to overcome his feelings of betrayal from someone he trusted and looked up to, as the HOOM lionized this twit at first. These people can do grievous harm to youth, Stop ordaining professing gays as monks and priests. It is spiritual lunacy
An interesting article on Marriage . . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/415799/why-arent-we-talking-about-most-important-form-privilege-america-lee-habeeb
Thanks for pointing us to an extremely important examination on the deleterious effect of single-parent families in our society.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/science/many-social-science-findings-not-as-strong-as-claimed-study-says.html?_r=0
Very important for those just believing scientific articles on their face.
And all these bad studies, but Mark Regnerus is not mentioned. . . interesting eh?