Stand to Reason Blog

Inconsistent Same-Sex Marriage Advocates

In Australia, same-sex marriage activists are upset that polyamorists are trying to jump on their equality bandwagon. From The Australian:

THE main lobby group promoting gay marriage yesterday distanced itself from polyamorists demanding to be included in the proposed reforms, saying marriage involving more than two people would undermine a traditional institution.

As reported yesterday by The Australian, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has come under attack from polyamorists, including some who are members of her party, for insisting that marriage should be between two people of any sex, but no more than two.

Greens volunteer and polyamorist Naomi Bicheno wrote on Senator Hanson-Young's Facebook page: "I am disappointed that it has come across as an official party policy position of against polyamory instead of simply pro marriage equality."

Another person posting on Senator Hanson-Young's page, Chris Atlee, wrote: "If you support marriage equality shouldn't that include supporting polyamorous marriage as well? After all, it doesn't affect any of us does it?"

Here’s the problem: There’s no principled way to exclude polyamory from marriage, if one adopts the principles being argued by same-sex marriage advocates.

They argue: Marriage is about making a contract with the person you love.

They argue: Marriage equality (the right to marry whom you want) is a civil rights issue.

They argue: Other marriage constructions will not affect your marriage.

All of these arguments support polyamory equally as well as same-sex marriage. So now, when it suits them, they’re calling on the authority of “tradition,” without any means of justifying their preference for two people only.

There is, in fact, no principle behind their preferred boundaries at all. All they can do is declare their definition to be the correct one:

Alex Greenwich, the national convener of Australian Marriage Equality, told The Australian that his lobby group's concept of marriage was "what it's always been" of "two people who rely on each other in a relationship to the exclusion of all others".

That actually is not the concept of marriage that “has always been.” The concept of marriage that “has always been” is one where the boundaries are principled because they’re conformed to the nature of reality—the complementary differences between men and women.

The reproductive system is the only bodily system that requires another person to complete it. The bringing together of two physically complementary persons completes this system, and that is the type of union that society has an interest in protecting because that act is the act that produces children (whether or not it does so in any particular case*). If the union of a man and a woman didn't have the social consequences of creating a family by nature, marriage (the stabilization of that union by society) would never have existed.

Why define marriage as two people? Because two people complete the union that society has an interest in protecting.

Why define marriage as a man and a woman? Because those are the complementary persons whose union creates new life.

The traditional marriage advocate is arguing not from bigotry or even from tradition, but from principles of reality that remain unchanged despite anyone’s personal preferences.

By contrast, these same-sex marriage advocates are refusing to apply their principles equally to everybody. This is inconsistency at best and bigotry at worst.

(HT: @TweetingOutLoud)

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*The individual cases may vary in terms of the production of actual children, but it's not the government's job to ensure that marriage does lead to children, it's only its job to protect it because it's the kind of union that leads to children, and therefore needs to be protected because of what naturally will result from it in general. 

Same-sex Marriage Arguments

A columnist in the Chicago Tribune wrote a column about why the arguments against same-sex marriage fail.  I certainly appreciate that he responds to the arguments with rational responses rather than ad hominem attacks or red herrings.  That's a refreshing change.  But I still think his responses fall short of undermining the reasons.  Here's why.

"Gay marriage violates tradition." He says that tradition is a mixed bad and expanding rights requires overturning it.  In principle, he's right.  But we don't appeal to tradition just for the tradition's sake.  "We've always done it this way."  it's a universal tradition across millennia, cultures, races, and religions.  It's pretty much universal tradition.  So there's a pretty big precedent that can't be dismissed.  And there's reason behind this vast tradition.  It's the way societies work best to organize families to protect children to perpetuate the next generation.  Look, tradition has been overturned before the push for same-sex marriage.  It was most notably overturned in the U.S. when no-fault divorce was introduced and the sexual revolution ensued.  Families have been eroding for a while now and the results aren't good.  Experience would argue that there was wisdom behind tradition and we should return to it instead of advancing on to further social experiments.

"Gay couples can't produce children."  He cites other cases of marriage we allow that don't produce children.  True enough, but citing exceptions doesn't undermine the rule.  In general, society's interest in marriage is the children they produce.  Same-sex marriage doesn't create an exception but an entirely new class of marriages in which children do not result as a rule.  While individuals may be free to engage in these relationships, society and government just don't have a stake in them so marriage doesn't apply.

"Having a mom and a dad is better for children than having two moms or two dads."  All of our experience says so and so do studies.  Study after study in the last 30 years has demonstrated the horrific consequences for children in single-parent families and broken homes.  The damage to children and society as a result is significant.  J. Warner Wallace guest hosted the radio program Sunday and opened the show commenting on this.  You can listen here.

"Legalizing same-sex marriage will put us on the slippery slope toward legalizing polygamy." He asserts that same-sex marriage does not fundamentally alter the two-person model of traditional marriage.  Only if you consider the sexes interchangeable.  It's not as though the two people being male and female is incidental to the traditional marriage.  It's a fundamental change to the definition.  And there is a logical slippery slope between the way proponents of same-sex marriage justify their arguments and polygamy. Once the arguments are encoded in the law, there's nothing in principle that keeps the justification for one from justifying the second.  Supporters of same-sex marriage admit that further radical redefinition of marriage is part of the agenda.

"Same-sex marriage trivializes and therefore weakens the institution of heterosexual marriage." To the extent that heterosexuals have already weakened and trivialized marriage with divorce, living together, and out-of-wedlock parenting, the institution has already taken some significant hits.  But that doesn't mean we should make further changes that undermine it.  And the fact is that homosexual couples haven't taken advantage of the freedom to marry in significant numbers according to the U.S. Census and studies in other countries.  That seems to indicate that the goal isn't marriage as much as social acceptance that marriage conveys.

"Homosexual behavior is immoral and ought not be encouraged."  He doesn't want to argue morality.  Fair enough.  But arguments about morality aren't simply based in religion.  Largely, morality arguments are drawn from nature, which can give us a good justification for design and purpose.  Greg gives a case here

But all of this really is beside the point.  The real issue is whether or not marriage is a right.  It's not.  It's nor more a right than a drivers' license is a right.  As far as goverment's recognition of marriage, there is no right to either on.  They're civil arrangements that the goverment has an interest in.  The only obligation to rights the government has is to treat equally all citizens who meet the qualifications.  If you pass the driver's test, you get a license.  If you meet the qualifications for marriage, you also get a license and recognition from the government.  And in that respect, everyone - heterosexual or homosexual - has exactly the same access to marriage:  Each is equally free to marry one person at a time of the opposite sex.  The qualification for marriage has never been to marry who you love, it's bee to marry an individual that creates a union the government has an interest in.  Everyone else is free to carry on relationships as they wish. 

It doesn't come up in this column, but just because I think it's such a good argument, here is Frank Beckwith's explanation for why the analogy between interracial marriage and same-sex marriage fails.

Is Denying Same-sex Marriage Like Denying Interracial Marriage?

Let me be blunt: denying same-sex couples from marriage is not the same as denying interracial couples from it. Although anti-miscegenation laws were immoral, the same mistake is not happening today. And despite the rhetorical force of making the comparison, merely claiming it’s the same does not make it so.

One of the problems with this comparison is that it presumes sexual orientation is a genetically predetermined trait like race. But it’s not, as I’ve argued in a previous post. Numerous researchers have also testified to this. Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project to identify every human gene, has said regarding homosexuality: “Whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations…”[i] Harvard geneticist and homosexual, Dean Hamer, admitted that, “The best recent study suggests that female sexual identification is more a matter of environment than heredity.”[ii] Even the American Psychological Association, a group that advances homosexual causes, doesn’t claim that genes determine sexual orientation. They say, “Although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation is determined by any particular factor or factors.”[iii]

Homosexuality, then, develops also from environmental factors, not merely genetic ones. And since environmental factors vary in type, frequency, and degree, homosexuality is not inescapable. Depending on your developmental environment, you could or could not develop same-sex attractions.

Race, however, is entirely genetic and therefore inescapable. You’re not born an African American – you’re conceived as one. Your race is determined the moment the chromosomes of the sperm and egg blend together. Nothing will change that. Neither your mother’s diet, the hormones in her womb, nor intrauterine trauma will alter your birth as an African American. And once you’re born, your race is impervious to cultural, social, or psychological influences during childhood development. Nothing can alter – even slightly – your race.

That means homosexuals can’t claim they’re like African Americans in the sense that they are born that way. Their plight is not the same. African Americans are genetically born that way. Homosexuals are not.

But the differences grow more significant. Since homosexuality is not merely the product of genes, it is mutable. Homosexuals can and do change. I personally know men who have changed. This type of mutability has been observed for thousands of years and documented by researchers for the last one hundred years (I’ve written about this in a previous post). In fact, sexual orientation in females is quite fluid.

Actress Anne Heche is an example. She grew up as a heterosexual, got involved in a lesbian relationship with Ellen DeGeneres, then married a man with whom she had a child, and now is living with another man. The same is true of former “Sex and the City” star, Cynthia Nixon. She grew up heterosexual, married a man, and had two children. In 2004, she became a lesbian. Nixon also infuriated the homosexual community by claiming that her change in orientation was, “a choice.” She went on to explain: “I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me… Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate?”[iv]

My point is not that sexual orientation is a choice. I’m simply acknowledging that it’s mutable for some people.

Race, however, is immutable. I don’t know any African Americans that have changed their race. None of them have become Swedish for a few years. It can’t happen, even in principle.

But there’s even a more significant problem with comparing homosexuals with African Americans, especially with regards to the issue of marriage. Interracial couples can marry because they can fulfill an essential function of marriage. As Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse has explained, marriages bind males and females for the long term and protect the rights children have to be with their parents. Male-female unions are the precise kind of pairing that produces children and provides the ideal environment to raise them. Having an African American marry a Caucasian doesn’t impact that function in any way.

Homosexual couples, on the other hand, don’t include both sexes. Not only are they incapable – by nature – to produce children, but they are also ill-suited to raise kids who need a mother and a father (I’ve argued this in a previous post). That’s why the state has never sanctioned the relationship of two men or two women, but they sanction interracial unions so long as they’re heterosexual.

Homosexuals are hoping to convince the culture that their plight is the same as African Americans. Naturally, this has a strong, rhetorical effect. But with careful reflection it becomes apparent the two groups are not parallel in meaningful ways. That’s because race and sex are not the same. This makes all the difference.

 

This post by Alan Shlemon is part of a Thursday series responding to common challenges pertaining to homosexuality. You can read Alan's previous posts on this subject here.

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[i] F. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2007), 260.

[ii] D. Hamer and P. Copeland, Living with Our Genes: Why They Matter More Than You Think (New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell, 1009), 188.

[iii] http://www.apa.org/topics/sexuality/orientation.aspx, accessed 4/30/12.

[iv] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/magazine/cynthia-nixon-wit.html?pagewanted=all, accessed 4/30/12.

 

Atheism and Universal Human Rights

The purpose of this post is merely to provide clarity rather than to argue for the theist position (see all of STR for those arguments). The consequences of an idea do not necessarily prove that idea to be true or false, but we had better be clear about precisely what’s at stake.

What implications in the area of human rights follow from atheism? I noticed that some comments left on two recent posts were helpful in clarifying this aspect of the atheist worldview, so I compiled the separate ideas in an order that creates one argument. (I have tried to retain the original meaning of each excerpt in its context. Ellipses denote an excerpt from a new comment.)

Intrinsic [human] value? Is that value without a valuer? Why should I believe in that?... You uphold universal human rights, not me…. [E]ven if historically everyone thought that rights were grounded in God, unless they had good reasons for thinking so, I have no need to follow in their tradition. Don't you agree that, usually, if we don't have a good reason for thinking that X is true, we should withhold belief in X?

[Y]ou appear to take for granted that special sense of [intrinsic human] value you talked about earlier, and which I mentioned before I do not recognize…. Why should we grant that all human life has this special value?... I do not agree that anyone belonging to the human "kind" have such special value that they ought to be granted the right to life.

It seems like rights are usually granted by groups of people…. I understand "rights" to be freedoms and/or privileges granted to or won by [insert qualification here] beings. So I'm not able to make sense of rights apart from the granting or winning thereof. Since _______ cannot win for himself his rights, they must be granted to him. But we are under no evident obligation to do him this great favor.… I don't think there are such things as "unalienable" rights. In my opinion, Jefferson got that bit wrong.

Since I’m trying to get to the heart of the principle being espoused, I’ve removed the specifics in the third paragraph because they’re irrelevant. The specifics that could be filled into those blanks while applying this understanding of rights to law are numerous and interchangeable, depending on the preferences of the people in power.

Here is the logic:

1. There is no God in which to ground intrinsic human value and the resulting universal human rights.
2. Therefore there is no such thing as intrinsic human value or universal human rights (including the right to keep one’s life).
3. Instead, rights are given by a group of people in power to individual humans who are able to win those rights by meeting the qualifications set by that group.
4. If any human is not able to win those rights by meeting those qualifications, the group is under no obligation to grant those rights to that human.
5. Therefore there are no such things as “unalienable” rights.

Are you concerned? Perhaps not if you’re confident you’re in the “in-group.” But who has any guarantees under this principle? Once we ground rights in the will of the people in power, there is nothing to constrain their preferences to what you consider to be a reasonable line between valuable human beings and non-valuable human beings.

Again, the fact that the adoption of this understanding of rights can, has, and will lead to atrocities doesn’t prove it isn’t accurate (though I don’t think we can just dismiss our moral intuition against what logically follows from it). However, it should be a cause of concern to both theists and atheists,* and I hope it will be yet another motivation for you to vigorously argue for the truth in the public square.

__________________

*While the line of reasoning above is what I usually hear from atheists, Wesley J. Smith argues it’s possible for atheists to support universal human value, as long they change their view of the second half of #3 (how we recognize the value of a human being):

Happily, human exceptionalism does not require belief in a transcendent God, or indeed, spiritual allusions of any kind if we understand that what matters morally is not the capacities of the individual—which, after all, are transitory—but our intrinsic natures as human beings—which are innate.

In other words, if an atheist accepts the idea that rights are not won individually, but instead are equally shared by all human beings because our shared human nature makes us all the kind of being that is worthy of protection, then the concept of universal human rights can be preserved.

I haven’t yet met an atheist who would agree to this, but perhaps the two halves of #3 could be separated and the second half rejected. The major difference would remain—rights would still be in the hands of men rather than unalienable, but at least for the time being, there would be no grounds by which men could justify excluding some human beings from the protected human family.

Should Homosexuals Be Allowed to Marry Whom They Love?

Are we really depriving homosexuals the right to marry the person they love? Yes. But there’s nothing unusual about that. Nobody has the right to marry any person they love. Everyone has restrictions.

When you take an honest look at the marriage law, it turns out that there is nothing unfair about it. Homosexuals have the same rights and the same restrictions as heterosexuals. For example, there is no legal right granted to a heterosexual that does not apply in exactly the same way to every homosexual. Both can marry in any state. Both can marry someone of the opposite sex. Both can receive the benefits that come with legal marriage. Heterosexuals and homosexuals are treated alike.

There is also no legal restriction for homosexuals that does not also apply in exactly the same way to every heterosexual. Neither one can marry their sibling. Both are prohibited from marrying someone already married. They can’t marry a child. And neither has the freedom to marry someone of the same sex.

The marriage law applies equally to every person, whether they are homosexual or not. Everyone is treated the same.

Homosexuals cry foul, of course, because the kind of person they are legally entitled to marry is not a person they love. They believe this is a restriction that is limited to them. But it’s not. There isn’t a person in the United States that has unfettered freedom to marry anyone just because they love them. There are numerous parings of people who love each other and can’t marry.

I have a male friend who I’ve known for over a decade. We have a long-term, committed relationship. We talk every week, we make sacrifices to visit one another, and we’re there to meet each other’s needs. We’re not sexually involved, but I routinely say I love him and he says the same to me. I can’t marry him even though he’s someone I love. I’m restricted. The state won’t recognize our relationship.

Brothers and sisters usually develop strong bonds. They love one another and often have deep, meaningful relationships that can last a lifetime. Their commitment to one another is significant. But they can’t marry one another. Though they love each, they state won’t recognize their relationship. The same is true of two brothers or two sisters.

Fathers and daughters also have long-term, committed relationships. There’s a special bond between them that develops and lasts for years. I can say that the love I feel towards my daughter has a unique texture to it. It’s taught me an aspect of love that, until I had a daughter, I never experienced. There are things that I’ve done and would do for her that virtually no one else on the planet can make me do. And like many fathers and daughters, our special relationship could last half a century or more. But guess what? The state doesn’t care about us as a couple. It doesn’t matter how much we love each other. We can’t get married.

There are dozens of more examples of pairs of people who develop strong, meaningful, and long-term relationships. These people love each other, but that doesn’t mean the state is required to recognize them within the definition of marriage.

Sometimes people point out that in these examples there is no sexual activity and that’s why it’s not the same as a homosexual pair. But why does that matter? Why do we have to use our sex organs with one another to qualify for marriage? Isn’t it enough that we love each other and are committed? Making sexual activity a requirement for marriage is arbitrary.

So what do all these relationships (and many others) have in common? None of them produce the next generation. Committed male friends, siblings, and parent-child relationships don’t have kids.

There is one kind of couple that, throughout all of human history, is known to produce children: heterosexuals. Long-term, monogamous, heterosexual unions as a group and by nature produce the next generation. They create families that become the building blocks of civilization. These families are the most stable and advantageous environment for raising children. They not only stabilize society, they make society possible. That role can’t be underestimated.

Notice that I said, “As a group and by nature.” As a group, heterosexual couples have kids. There may be exceptions, but the group’s tendency is to produce children. Laws are designed to generalize for the group. “By nature” is a reference to the fact that heterosexual unions produce children by the natural function of their sexual activity. Unlike male friends, siblings, and other relationship couples, it is biologically natural for heterosexuals to produce children.

The government, that normally has a hands-off policy to most relationships, gets involved in sanctioning these long-term, heterosexual unions. It creates a group of privileges and protections for these male-female couplings because it recognizes their role in creating and stabilizing society.

But the government doesn’t get involved in any other relationship pair. It doesn’t legally sanction two male friends, siblings, or father-daughter relationships. That’s because, though there are exceptions, they don’t as a group and by nature produce the next generation. They might love each other – deeply and for a long period of time – but that is irrelevant to the government. The state has a concern to perpetuate and protect our civilization and that explains its vested interested in heterosexual unions.

So why does the government not sanction the relationship of two homosexual males? For the same reason it doesn’t sanction the relationship of male friends, siblings, or a father and daughter. Homosexual couples don’t as a group and by nature produce the next generation. Although, theoretically, homosexuals can adopt, this is the exception. Most same-sex lovers don’t pursue parenting. Furthermore, children don’t naturally result from their sexual activity.

Instead, the state must intervene and grant them children. As Jennifer Roback Morse explains, “Same-sex couples cannot have children. Someone must give them a child or at least half the genetic material to create a child. The state must detach the parental rights of the opposite-sex parent and then attach those rights to the second parent of the same-sex couple. The state must create parentage for the same-sex couple. For the opposite-sex couple, the state merely recognizes parentage.”

A common objection is that marriage can’t be about children because not all married couples have kids. First, although that’s true, every child has a mother and father and a right to know them. These children have a vested interest in the union and stability of their parents. But that’s not something they can protect. Society needs to secure that right for kids so far as we are able.

Second, even if some marriages don’t produce children, it doesn’t nullify the natural tie of marriage to procreation. The purpose of marriage remains regardless of whether married couples actualize it or not. Books are meant to be read even if they collect dust on a bookshelf.

Third, marriages create the optimal environment for raising children. Same-sex marriage intentionally creates the condition where a child is denied their mother or father or both. This is not healthy, a claim that has been long noted by researchers.

The push for same-sex marriage is not primarily about the right to marry the person you love. No one has that right because everyone – including heterosexuals – is restricted. Nor is it to secure the right to adopt children. Homosexuals could be granted every legal right and privilege of marriage, but they would still demand the right to legal marriage.

That’s because this battle is not principally about rights, but about respect. Homosexuals demand public approval for their lifestyle and relationships. As Time magazine wrote, same-sex marriage advocates, “want nothing less than full social equality, total validation—not just the right to inherit a mother-in-law’s Cadillac. As Andrew Sullivan, the (also persistently single) intellectual force behind gay marriage, has written, ‘Including homosexuals within marriage would be a means of conferring the highest form of social approval imaginable.’”[i]

Make no mistake about it. Redefining marriage will impact our culture. It won’t be today, next week, or next year. It will be in the long-term because ideas have consequences. When you sever the natural tie of marriage to procreation and no longer require that children be attached to their parents, you’re doing violence to a vital institution. Marriages start families and families produce the next generation. This is how we secure and stabilize society. That’s why you can’t take a sledgehammer to the core of civilization – the family – and expect that no harm will come.

 

This post by Alan Shlemon is part of a Thursday series responding to common challenges pertaining to homosexuality. You can read Alan's previous posts on this subject here.

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[i] “Will Gay Marriage be Legal?” Time, 2/21/00.

The Competing Views of Marriage

Ryan Anderson, Robert George, and Sherif Girgis have written a post explaining why the central issue in the marriage debate—even more central than the question of whether the state should recognize same-sex marriages—is the question of what marriage itself is. As they say, “[T]his is not a dispute featuring ‘bigots’ on one side, any more than it has ‘perverts’ on the other. It is a debate of reasonable people of goodwill who disagree about the nature of the most basic unit of society.”

Here is their brief description of the competing views:

THE HISTORIC VIEW
Marriage as a comprehensive union: Joining spouses in body as well as mind, it is begun by commitment and sealed by sexual intercourse. So completed in the acts by which new life is made, it is specially apt for and deepened by procreation, and calls for that broad sharing of domestic life uniquely fit for family life. Uniting spouses in these all-encompassing ways, it also calls for all-encompassing commitment: permanent and exclusive. Comprehensive union is valuable in itself, but its link to children’s welfare makes marriage a public good that the state should recognize, support, and in certain ways regulate. Call this the conjugal view of marriage.

THE REVISIONIST VIEW
Marriage as the union of two people who commit to romantic partnership and domestic life: essentially an emotional union, merely enhanced by whatever sexual activity partners find agreeable. Such committed romantic unions are seen as valuable while emotion lasts. The state recognizes them because it has an interest in their stability, and in the needs of spouses and any children they choose to rear. Call this the revisionist view of marriage.

(You can see how if one begins with the first definition, same-sex marriage makes no sense—not because of bigotry, but because of the unique, natural aspects of a man-woman pairing. But if one holds the second definition, to deny marriage to same-sex couples makes no rational sense, and can only be explained by bigotry. This conclusion is unfair, but it persists because these competing definitions are not understood.)

As they point out, those who hold the revisionist view are not able to give coherent reasons under their defining principle of “people who love each other” for the state setting this kind of a relationship apart from others. Since the revisionist definition isn’t linked to the natural properties of the two people in relationship (as is man-woman marriage), all boundaries end up being arbitrary:

[T]he more candid, and consistent, revisionists have long accepted these points. Years ago, 300 prominent scholars and activists signed a statement arguing that we should recognize polyamorous and multiple-household sexual relationships. These activists agree that making sexual complementarity optional would make all its other norms arbitrary — and therefore unjust to leave intact. We only disagree on whether this top-to-bottom dismantling of the institution of marriage would be a good or a bad thing.

Their post is too brief to go into detail, but you can download their paper, “What Is Marriage,” originally published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, to review their arguments in more depth.

Should Homosexual Couples Be Allowed to Adopt?

I often hear this question loaded with two scenarios:

• Scenario A: The child lives in an institution, is routinely neglected, given poor nutrition, and often physically and sexually abused.
• Scenario B: The child lives with two loving women who are lesbians, who have stable jobs, live in a house, and have lots of family in the area.
• The question: Wouldn’t it be better for the child to be adopted by the lesbians and grow up under scenario B?

Well, sure, I guess when you construct the options that way, who will argue with you? I guess the child would be better off with the lesbians. So what’s that prove? Nothing.

I could construct two scenarios in a different way. What if the lesbians didn’t have a stable relationship, couldn’t keep steady jobs, experienced domestic violence in their home, and often used drugs. The other adoptive option was a married heterosexual couple (one a doctor and the other a teacher), who lived in the same home for 18 years, and who had already adopted a child.

Given those two options, wouldn’t it be better for the child to be adopted by the heterosexual couple? Sure, but what’s that prove? That you can construct any combination of scenarios designed to prove that a certain set of people would be better parents.

But you don’t determine public policy based on the exception or extreme case. For example, there might be some instances when it’s justified to run a red light – like rushing a dying person to the emergency room – but that doesn’t mean we should make running red lights legal. That’s bad public policy.

It reminds me of Zach Wahls, the 19 year-old University of Iowa student who made an impassioned appeal for same-sex marriage and parenting to the Iowa House of Representatives. His YouTube video went viral (more than 16 million views) after he argued that his lesbian mothers did a fine job of raising him. Maybe they did, but you can’t generalize one’s person’s experience for an entire group of people. Just because two homosexuals were able to raise a healthy, well-adjusted child (assuming they did), that doesn’t mean homosexual couples – as a group – make the best parents.

Many single fathers have to raise children by themselves. They do the best they can given their circumstances. I’m sure some of these children will declare themselves – like Zach Wahls – to be just fine. But does that mean we should promote single male adoption?

The real question is whether a child who needs to be adopted is best served by a heterosexual couple or a homosexual couple – all things being equal. The question focuses on the needs of the child, not the wants of homosexuals who are politically motivated to normalize same-sex marriage and parenting.

The answer is straightforward: decades of published research in psychology, social science, and medicine demonstrate that children do best when raised by a mother and father (especially the biological parents) in a long-term marriage.[i] That’s because a mother and a father each provide a unique and important contribution to their role as parents. Children who are raised – for example – in fatherless families suffer, on average, in every measure of well-being. They have higher levels of physical and mental illness, educational difficulties, poverty, substance abuse, criminal behavior, loneliness, and physical and sexual abuse.[ii]

Homosexual adoption, by design, will deny a child either a mother or father every time. By legalizing same-sex parenting, society declares by law that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. That means a mother offers no unique contribution to a child. A man could provide all the benefits of a woman.

Besides being counterintuitive, this deprives a son or daughter the distinctive benefits of being raised by both sexes.[iii] A compassionate and moral society comes to the aid of motherless or fatherless children. We don’t intentionally design families to deny children a mother or father. But that’s the result of same-sex parenting.

Lesbian parent Rosie O’Donnell confessed to Diane Sawyer in an ABC interview that her six-year-old adopted son, Parker, said, “I want to have a daddy.” Rosie answered him, “If you were to have a daddy, you wouldn’t have me as a mommy because I’m the kind of mommy who wants another mommy.”[iv] Notice the attention is shifted from the needs of children to the wants of couples. Although Parker asked for a father, his request was trumped by Rosie’s personal desire to be a lesbian parent.

Do Rosie and her lesbian lover know how to raise Parker to become a man? Do they know how to teach him how to treat a woman or his future wife? How will they be his role model?

Glenn Stanton and Bill Maier explore this idea and the suggestion that merely two loving adults are all that’s needed to raise kids: “The two most loving mothers in the world can’t be a father to a little boy. Love can’t equip mothers to teach a little boy how to be a man. Likewise, the two most loving men can’t be a mother to a child. Love does little to help a man teach a little girl how to be a woman. Can you imagine two men guiding a young girl through her first menstrual cycle or helping her through the awkwardness of picking out her first bra? Such a situation might make for a funny television sitcom but not a very good real-life situation for a young girl.”[v] And these are just a few of the absurdities that arise when you jettison the commonsense notion that men and women are both unique and valuable in their role as parents.

Same-sex parenting doesn’t make sense and that is why it must be forced on the people by the state. Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse explains: “Marriage between men and women is a pre-political, naturally emerging social institution. Men and women come together to create children, independently of any government...By contrast, same-sex ‘marriage’ is completely a creation of the state. Same-sex couples cannot have children. Someone must give them a child or at least half the genetic material to create a child. The state must detach the parental rights of the opposite-sex parent and then attach those rights to the second parent of the same-sex couple. The state must create parentage for the same-sex couple. For the opposite-sex couple, the state merely recognizes parentage.”[vi]

The price of homosexual adoption is too high. For it to work, the state must redefine marriage, create parentage laws for homosexual couples, and deny the unique role that mothers and fathers play. In the end, children lose and we lose. Children are harmed, which in the end affects everyone in our culture. For this reason, I believe even homosexuals should oppose homosexual adoption.

 

This post by Alan Shlemon is part of a Thursday series responding to common challenges pertaining to homosexuality. You can read Alan's previous posts on this subject here.

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[i] This is supported by multiple studies including Mary Parke, “Are Married Parents Really Better for Children?” Center for Law and Social Policy, Policy Brief, May 2003, p. 1, and Kristin Anderson Moore et al., “Marriage From a Child’s Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children, and What Can We Do about It?” Child Trends Research Brief, June 2002, p. 1.

[ii] Much of this research is referenced in David Popenoe, Life Without Father (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

[iii] See Yale Medical School’s Dr. Kyle Pruett, Fatherneed: Why Father Care Is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child (New York: Free Press, 2000), 17-34.

[iv] PrimeTime Thursday, March 14, 2002.

[v] Glenn T. Stanton and Bill Maier, Marriage on Trial: The Case Against Same-sex Marriage and Parenting (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 71.

[vi] http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/15099

Same-Sex Marriage

In light of the vote in North Carolina to only recognize marriages between one man and one woman, here's a post I wrote a few months ago (when a three-judge panel struck down Prop 8), compiling some resources to help you think through this issue and discuss it with others.

Virtues and the Economy

I wrote not long ago about how a change in values in 18th-century Britain (as a result of a million people coming to Christ) affected their economy. In Indivisible, James Robison and Jay Richards also explore how the Christian worldview intersects with economics.

In order to succeed in a free market (where the rule of law is enforced), you must find a way to serve others—to provide them with something they value enough to purchase from you. This is true, regardless of your reasons for trying to make money, whether noble or not-so-noble. At the very bottom of it all, you must serve others in order to be successful and make money in a free market. In this way, all motivations are channeled in a direction that is outwardly focused on others’ needs, and people are served.

But as Robison and Richards point out, in order to successfully make a living serving in this way, certain virtues are required and rewarded:

Free enterprise, or entrepreneurial capitalism, requires a whole host of virtues. Before entrepreneurs can invest capital, for instance, they must first accumulate it. So unlike gluttons, entrepreneurs must save rather than consume much of their wealth. Unlike misers, they risk rather than hoard what they have saved. Unlike the self-centered, they anticipate the needs of others. Unlike the impulsive, they make prudent choices. Unlike the robot, they freely discover new ways of creating and combining resources. Unlike cynics, they trust their neighbors, their partners, their culture, their employees…. This cluster of virtues is the essence of what Rev. Robert Sirico of the Acton Institute calls the "entrepreneurial vocation." Not everyone is cut out to be an entrepreneur, but everyone can benefit in a society where entrepreneurs are free to pursue their calling.

Robison and Richards explain how our ability to create wealth in this way—to actually make the size of the wealth pie increase (not just increase one slice at the expense of others)—reflects the truth of the Christian worldview:

New wealth comes not from matter alone, but from how we represent, inform, and transform matter—from mind. This most profound truth of economics is just what Christians should expect, since we know that each of us is created in the image of God…. At the base of the free enterprise system is not greed or consumption, which are everywhere, but intuition, imagination, and creation.

The creation of new wealth actually argues against materialism. The creative minds of human beings, not physical material, are the greatest resource available to us.

Richards wrote a clear and compelling book, Money, Greed, and God, that explores these ideas in more depth, and I recommend it, particularly if these ideas are new to you and/or you disagree with what you’ve read here. Give that book a try, and see what you think.

We Don't Need "Mother" and "Father" Anymore?

The Huffington Post celebrates the idea that non-traditional families are breaking down our understanding of gender differences: “We aren't mother or father anymore; we're just parents.”

Gay and lesbian couples and single moms and dads by chance or choice embody changing ideas about sex and sex roles, they are also transforming the gender based definitions of parenting. They are challenging us all to reevaluate the terms of marriage. Along with single parents raising children, they are also transforming the nature of parenting -- and showing how Americans have transcended the gender-based definitions of parenting. We aren't mother or father anymore; we're just parents….

Yes, the terms "mother" and "father" do still usually convey a biological distinction between who inseminates and who gives birth, but the rise of donor insemination and surrogate pregnancies open debate even on that.

Whether we acknowledge it willingly or not, the differing social roles the mother-father nouns once designated are rapidly converging. Certainly, there are still things that fathers undertake more than mothers, such as teaching a child to ride a bike. Some things often seem to fall more to mothers, such as arranging childcare. But each parent can, and does, tend to everything.

The differences between the sexes are more than just biological. And they certainly go beyond preferences for particular tasks. All you have to do is reflect on your own experience to see that this is so.

Did your father tend to enforce standards? Did your mother encourage emotional intimacy?

Did your father push you to mature? Did your mother tend to nurture?

The list could go on and on because the differences between the sexes are as deep as who they are, what they value, and how they relate to people. These differences show themselves not merely in the tasks each sex chooses, but in how each approaches any particular task. Of course either parent can do any task, but what they teach their children in and through the completing of each task will be different.

Men and women are complementary. The lessons learned from both parents are valuable and unique to the strengths of each sex, and children are in desperate need of both. The obscuring of this is not something to celebrate. But it’s exactly what must be done in order to promote same-sex marriage, so you can expect to see more of it.