CNA<\/a>).- A professor raised by two women has defended sociologist Mark Regnerus, who is under investigation for academic \u201cmisconduct\u201d following an activist's complaint about his work on same-sex parenting.<\/p>\n\t\u201cThe children of same-sex couples have a tough road ahead of them \u2013 I know, because I have been there,\u201d wrote Robert Oscar Lopez, who teaches English at California State University\u2013Northridge, in his Aug. 6 Public Discourse essay \u201cGrowing Up With Two Moms: The Untold Children\u2019s View.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe essay was published by the Witherspoon Institute, which was involved in funding the Regnerus study. In it, Lopez describes his \u201cvery difficult\u201d upbringing, and thanks Regnerus for highlighting the experiences of others like himself.<\/p>\n
\tPublished in the Social Science Research journal, Regnerus' June 2012 findings showed that adult children of same-sex households tend to have lower incomes, more physical and mental problems, less stable relationships and higher crime rates.<\/p>\n
\tBlogger Scott Rose, who advocates homosexual \u201cmarriage\u201d on the New Civil Rights Movement site, wrote a complaint to Regnerus' university which resulted in the professor being investigated for alleged scholarly \u201cmisconduct.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLopez, a married man with a complex personal history, said in his essay that Regnerus is under attack for highlighting \u201cwhat the gay activist movement has sought laboriously to erase, or at least ignore.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWhether homosexuality is chosen or inbred, whether gay marriage gets legalized or not, being strange is hard,\u201d wrote Lopez, who identifies as bisexual \u201cbecause it would take several novels to explain how I ended up 'straight' after almost thirty years as a gay man.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cWhen your home life is so drastically different from everyone around you, in a fundamental way striking at basic physical relations, you grow up weird,\u201d the California State University professor reflected.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI have no mental health disorders or biological conditions. I just grew up in a house so unusual that I was destined to exist as a social outcast.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe effect of such an upbringing \u201ctakes a mental toll, makes it harder to find friends, interferes with professional growth, and sometimes leads one down a sodden path to self-medication in the form of alcoholism, drugs, gambling, antisocial behavior, and irresponsible sex,\u201d he attested.<\/p>\n
\tRaised by his mother and her \u201cfemale romantic partner\u201d between 1973 and 1990, Lopez was his mother's youngest child and the only member of the family whose childhood did not include his father.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cIn other words, I was the only child who experienced life under 'gay parenting' as that term is understood today,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n
\tLopez expressed love for his mother, but said that \u201cgrowing up with gay parents was very difficult, and not because of prejudice from neighbors.\u201d He had \u201cno male figure at all to follow,\u201d while his mother and her partner \u201cwere both unlike traditional fathers or traditional mothers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cAs a result, I had very few recognizable social cues to offer potential male or female friends, since I was neither confident nor sensitive to others,\u201d he observed. \u201cThus I befriended people rarely and alienated others easily.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tThe English professor pointed out that most adults who identify as homosexuals had the advantage of being \u201creared in a traditional home.\u201d Lopez, lacking traditional role models of either sex, \u201csuffered because of it, in ways that are difficult for sociologists to index.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLopez came to identify as bisexual in college, before dropping out of school and becoming involved \u201cin with what can only be called the gay underworld. Terrible things happened to me there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\tLater, he was surprised to become romantically involved with a woman. He married and became a father, choosing to \u201cput aside my own homosexual past\u201d and vowing \u201cnever to divorce my wife or take up with another person, male or female, before I died.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI chose that commitment in order to protect my children from dealing with harmful drama, even as they grow up to be adults,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWhen you are a parent, ethical questions revolve around your children and you put away your self-interest \u2013 forever.\u201d<\/p>\n
\tLopez did not participate in Regnerus' study on the children of same-sex couples, but began corresponding with him after the work was published. In his essay, he thanked the sociologist for highlighting life experiences he believes some homosexual activists might prefer to overlook.<\/p>\n
\tPart of the controversy surrounding the Regnerus study stems from its funding by the Witherspoon Institute, known for its social conservatism. Lopez also describes himself as a conservative, and anticipated activists' response to his defense of the University of Texas at Austin professor.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cMany have dismissed my story with four simple words: 'But you are conservative.' Yes, I am. How did I get that way? I moved to the right wing because I lived in precisely the kind of anti-normative, marginalized, and oppressed identity environment that the left celebrates,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n
\t\u201cI am a bisexual Latino intellectual, raised by a lesbian, who experienced poverty in the Bronx as a young adult. I\u2019m perceptive enough to notice that liberal social policies don\u2019t actually help people in those conditions. Especially damning is the liberal attitude that we shouldn\u2019t be judgmental about sex.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\u201cSo yes, I am conservative and support Regnerus\u2019s findings,\u201d Lopez wrote. \u201cOr is it that Regnerus\u2019s findings revisit the things that made me conservative in the first place?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n
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