Why We Talk about Anti-Gay Bias

The Washington Times has (indirectly) declared that not being “entirely heterosexual” is a negative outcome. And it did this in a news article, not an editorial.

In a widely-quoted piece on Mark Regnerus’ gay-parenting study, the Washington Times wrote:

He found that, when compared with adults raised in married, mother-father families, adults raised by lesbian mothers had negative outcomes in 24 of 40 categories…

Actually, no. Regnerus didn’t find that at all. Rather he found 24 statistically-significant differences, and of those differences he wrote:

…in the vast majority of cases the optimal outcome—where one can be readily discerned—favors [intact biological families].

Emphasis added. See what the Times did? It put words into Regnerus’s mouth. Regnerus did not say all these outcomes were negative. That was invented by the Times.

Here’s the kicker. One of the those differences is whether someone “identifies as entirely heterosexual.” Regneros didn’t classify this was positive or negative. He gives a few examples of outcomes that are “obviously suboptimal (such as education, depression, employment status, or marijuana use),” but sexual orientation isn’t on that list.

By now, though, this Washington Times falsehood has been widely reported as truth when it’s nothing of the sort.

What makes this so insidious is that it’s unstated. In one place the reader hears that all the differences were negative. In another, that one of those differences was sexual orientation. The association sinks in without ever being explicitly connected.

But it’s still there, a little splash of anti-gay bias that lands in the article almost unnoticed, one more drop of rain added to the river of homophobia.