Bad LGBT Parents? Bad UT study, audit finds

Unlike some are saying, both sides aren't spending that kind of money. There's nobody throwing a million dollars at me to show that Americans all love gay marriage or something. It ain't gonna happen. And in fact with the collapse of federal funding for social sciences, there's less and less grant money to do anything with.

Is there the danger any research over sexuality and the family is going to be politicized?
Well, that would be unfortunate. Because ideally social scientists are looking at these things kind of objectively. They're motivated by particular scholarly questions more than political motivations. And they're trying to see what's going on in the family. How are family forms changing? What does this mean inter-generationally?

What about UT's inquiry this week into Regnerus?
I want to make it very clear about my own motivations and my own perspective regarding Regnerus and what he's done here. On one hand, I think this is a bad study. Obviously, it shouldn't have been published and I also believe that it is political research – I'm certain of that. But that does not mean that somehow Regnerus has committed some kind of ethical offense. There doesn't need to be any investigation of Regnerus.

The issue of somehow making this an administrative reprimand is ridiculous. He did political research. So can other people from other political persuasions. There's no reason for an investigation. He is being smacked by his peers really hard. And that's punishment enough. So a lot of this discussion about what should or shouldn't be done – I mean, what? What do you want done? You want to fire him? You can't fire people for doing something political. You gonna fire left-wingers for working for Planned Parenthood.

What needed to be done is what has been done, I think. People said look, you're gonna have to put a heavy asterisk next to that social science research paper there. There's a self-correcting mechanism, I think.

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