The work of the Austin Institute and Mark Regnerus, contributing editor to The Witherspoon Institute’s online journal, Public Discourse, and professor of sociology at UT-Austin, continue to pay dividends in the social science of sex and sexuality. You may be aware that it was Mark’s efforts that led to the retraction of a study about the harmful influence of antigay stigma on the mortality of sexual minorities. Robert P. George wrote about it in the WSJ a year ago. We recently learned that Mark has aided in yet another victory–a “correction” just issued in the American Journal of Psychiatry that tempers the overreaching claims about the mental health benefits of surgery performed on patients with gender dysphoria. He spotted the problems first, late last year in Public Discourse. Other critics followed, offering their complaints to the journal editor, who in turn asked the study’s authors to re-analyze their data. In the end, the surgical benefits vanished, and the surgery even prompted greater anxiety in such patients. This is obvious evidence of how a small number of committed scholars, keeping up pressure on a massive group of pro-LGBT activists, researchers, and journal gatekeepers, continue to yield fruit beyond their numbers.
