George Yancey takes on the Progressive critics of Mark Regnerus’s recent study on same-sex parenting.

I have liberal friends who like to tell me that “reality has a liberal bias.” Well it certainly does when scholars are not allowed to go where the evidence takes them if it violates a progressive political tenet. This is not as much about stopping Regnerus. His work is out there and it will be debated regardless of what is done now. This is about stopping the next scholar who dares to violate the unspoken acceptable conclusions we are to draw from science. We all know that science and scientists are not completely objective. But if we cannot at least make an attempt at being disinterested in the results and not playing to a certain political bias then we do not have science. We have polemic propaganda. There is nothing wrong with polemic propaganda in the right context but it is not science. We should stop pretending that it is science.

Maybe we can get a little insight into the “Republican war on Science”. There are clearly some indefensible Republican activities. But if Republicans suspect that science is not an open search for the truth but rather merely attempts to reinforce the political aims of the Left, then why should we be surprised that Republicans do not accept global warming, evolution or other scientific ideas connected to progressive political aims. Perhaps the best way to deal with this war on science is not to merely rant against the political party you hate but to produce science open to all possibilities and when the research suggests a finding that is counter to liberal presuppositions that we treat it like we treat the ones counter to conservative presuppositions. Mirroring the proper attitudes and actions for conservatives would go a long way to show how science should be used in our society.