Mark Regnerus, Author Of Discredited Gay-Parenting Study, Claims Porn Makes Guys Support Marriage Equality

Prof Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas is back in the news: Regnurus, you’ll recall, published a study this summer that claimed children born to gay couples had more problems with than kids from straight homes.

Now Regnerus is claiming increased support for same-sex marriage across America comes from people looking at so much darn porn.

In an article on the website for the Witherspoon Institute,  the right-wing think tank that paid for his discredited parenting study, Regnerus explains that porn “redirects sex—by graphic depiction of it—away from any sense of it as a baby-making activity.”

And once guys start thinking of relationships as something other than a baby-making arrangement, all hell breaks loose:

How about we take this to the next level?

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Porn also undermines the concept that in the act of sexual intercourse, we share our “body and whole self … permanently and exclusively.” On the contrary, it reinforces the idea that people can share their bodies but not their inmost selves, and that they can do so temporarily and (definitely) not exclusively without harm.

Moreover, the Web’s most popular pornographic sites do little to discriminate one sex act—or category of such—from another. Gazers are treated to a veritable fire-hose dousing of sex-act diversity. (These are not your grandfather’s Playboy.) So, add to the sharing of bodies temporarily and non-exclusively a significant dose of alternative forms of sexual activity—positions, roles, genders, and numbers—and that’s basically where porn presses its consumers today: away from sex as having anything approaching a “marital meaning” or structure…”

Of course, Regnerus isn’t talking about women—the ladies don’t look at pornography: “Women typically aren’t as into porn as men are,” he explains, “and yet women in general tend to support same-sex marriage more readily than do men.” Rather than acknowledge a clear flaw in his theory, Regnerus just plows through.

Data from the New Family Structures Study reveal that when young adult Americans (ages 23-39) are asked about their level of agreement with the statement “It should be legal for gays and lesbians to marry in America,” the gender difference emerges, just as expected: 42 percent of men agreed or strongly agreed, compared with 47 percent of women of the same age. More men than women disagreed or strongly disagreed (37 versus 30 percent), while comparable levels (21-23 percent) said they were “unsure.”

But of the men who view pornographic material “every day or almost every day,” 54 percent “strongly agreed” that gay and lesbian marriage should be legal, compared with around 13 percent of those whose porn-use patterns were either monthly or less often than that.

Statistical tests confirmed that porn use is a (very) significant predictor of men’s support for same-sex marriage, even after controlling for other obvious factors that might influence one’s perspective, such as political affiliation, religiosity, marital status, age, education and sexual orientation.

Y’know why, Dr. Regnerus? Because men who acknowledge they look at porn are honest. And they’re less judgmental. They accept than humans are sexual beings with natural urges they can’t just wish away. Which would make them more the kind of guys to support marriage equality—and not.say, expect gay men to magically turn straight.

Those other guys, the non-porn-viewers? Well, they’re just liars.