Rockway Institute In the News

SF think tank opens March 22, 2007 By Matthew S. Bajko

The Rockway Institute, a new San Francisco-based think tank, has been launched in an effort to stop the right-wing's "blatantly anti-gay distortion of research," stated the institute in a release this week announcing it had opened its doors.

Located across the street from Pier 39 along the city's waterfront, the institute's primary goal is to assemble a group of prominent social scientists, mental health professionals, and physicians to participate in media interviews, conduct research, and provide expert testimony about LGBT issues to federal and state legislatures and the courts.

"We have to change public opinion, and to change public opinion is a long range effort. The way to do it is through the media, that is the key way to reach all of America," said Robert-Jay Green , Ph.D., a professor at the California School of Professional Psychology and the institute's founder and executive director.

Last year Green, 57, received the go-ahead from the president of the university where he teaches to focus on creating the think tank. He has spent the last 12 months raising money and signing up experts. A Bay Area resident since 1977, he raised $120,000, with the Gill Foundation kicking in $50,000.

He named the institute after Alan Rockway, the author of a pro-gay resolution passed by Miami-Dade County officials in the late 1970s, which was later overturned after Anita Bryant led a homophobic fear campaign charging schools would be forced to hire gay teachers who would molest their students. After the defeat, Rockway moved to the Bay Area and helped start a mental health program at the LGBT-focused Pacific Center for Human Growth in Berkeley.

Green befriended the psychologist, who considered himself a gay bisexual and founded Bi-Pole, a national bisexual association. Rockway died of AIDS in 1987 at the age of 44. Green has spent his career focused on LGBT couples and families, and helped found the now-defunct Alternative Family Institute.

He moved forward with the think tank concept as a way to reduce the amount of anti-gay discrimination the LGBT community faces. The best way to achieve that goal, he reasoned, was through the media.

"We really need to be in all of these media telling the truth and the facts about LGBT couples and families," Green said.  

The think tank joins other efforts launched this year, such as Soulforce's and the ex-gay ministries watchdog group Truth Wins Out's http://www.Respectmyresearch.org Web site, to challenge distortions of research on LGBT people in the media. The two groups announced their Web-based effort after Focus on the Family founder James Dobson distorted several researchers' findings on LGBT families in a December 2006 piece for Time magazine.

The latest scientific squabble erupted earlier this month after Albert Mohler Jr., Ph.D., president of the Southern Baptist Seminary, stated on his blog if doctors come up with a prenatal test to determine if a baby is gay and scientists create "a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual. “ we would support its use."

Green said the think tank is vital considering all of the currently active court cases and legislative hearings concerning same-sex marriage, LGBT parenting rights, harassment of LGBT youth in schools, and workplace discrimination against LGBT employees make "very heavy use" of social science and mental health research findings.

"Because courts and politicians are now asking questions about why same-sex marriage rights are needed when civil unions or domestic partner laws offer some of the same legal benefits, we urgently need studies of the psychological effects of being excluded from marriage per se. Such data would be useful immediately in court cases and legislative decisions concerning same-sex marriage bans," stated Green.

Several research studies, one on gay men, one on children of gay parents, and two on gay male couples, are currently under way. Green said what is especially needed is a large-scale quantitative study examining the developmental outcomes of children raised by gay fathers after early adoption or after surrogacy, similar to studies conducted on the children of lesbian mothers.

"Results from such a study could inform LGBT adoption laws and child custody cases involving gay fathers nationwide," stated Green.

Already 30 experts have signed on to work with the institute. Several are Green's fellow faculty at the California psychology school – a nonprofit educational institution that trains clinical psychologists and is a graduate division of Alliant International University. There are also 20 Rockway Institute Fellows; many are professors at major research universities in the U.S. who are international leaders in their specialized areas of LGBT research.
Most fellows reside in Northern California or the Northeast, but the institute is recruiting more experts from across the U.S. as well as those who speak Spanish.

The institute is partnering with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation to hold media trainings this May in San Diego during the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association and in San Francisco this August during the annual convention of the American Psychological Association. The think tank's fellows will also hold a public forum at the New School University in New York on June 7 titled "Lesbian and Gay Relationships: Fighting the False Science of the Right." For more info visit http://rockway.alliant.edu.