Controversial Parenting Study Reaches the Courts

Left: Matthew J. Franck

“There’s not enough data for society or the courts to move away from the fundamental position that the optimal environment [for children] is the biological married heterosexual family,” Trumbull continued.

The ACP brief appears to be consistent with a strategy put forward by prominent opponents of same-sex marriage after the release of Regnerus’ research.

Maggie Gallagher, who co-founded the National Organization for Marriage, said on the Christian Broadcasting Network that the study would be “important in the legal cases as they progress.”

Matthew J. Franck of the Witherspoon Institute — the group that funded the bulk of Regnerus’ study and whose co-founder, Robert George, is also NOM’s chairman emeritus — has similarly predicted that the new study will be useful in the courts.

“How much does this new study matter for the legal debate over same-sex marriage? A very great deal,” Franck wrote. “Same-sex marriage advocates have argued in state and federal courts that traditional marriage laws have no ‘rational basis,’ or that they fail some other more stringent form of ‘scrutiny’ under constitutional provisions guaranteeing due process and the equal protection of the laws.”

Frank concluded that when lawsuits over DOMA and California’s same-sex marriage ban reach the Supreme Court, “the counsels of good social science can be added to the standard norms of constitutionalism to counsel against the willful judicial invention of a right to same-sex marriage.”

The Advocate partnered with The American Independent to bring you this story. The American Independent is a progressive nonprofit news organization committed to impact journalism.