rebecca LANDO

robot-heart-politics:

(via fucknoliberals)

Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of propagating society, so there is no reason for the state to grant them the costly benefits of marriage, unless they serve some other state interest. The burden of proof, therefore, is on the advocates of gay marriage to show what state interest these marriages serve. Thus far, this burden has not been met.

Homosexual relationships do nothing to serve the state interest of One may argue that lesbians are capable of procreating via artificial insemination, so the state does have an interest in recognizing lesbian marriages, but a lesbian’s sexual relationship, committed or not, has no bearing on her ability to reproduce. Perhaps it may serve a state interest to recognize gay marriages to make it easier for gay couples to adopt. However, there is ample evidence (see, for example, David Popenoe’s Life Without Father) that children need both a male and female parent for proper development. Unfortunately, small sample sizes and other methodological problems make it impossible to draw conclusions from studies that directly examine the effects of gay parenting. However, the empirically verified common wisdom about the importance of a mother and father in a child’s development should give advocates of gay adoption pause. The differences between men and women extend beyond anatomy, so it is essential for a child to be nurtured by parents of both sexes if a child is to learn to function in a society made up of both sexes. Is it wise to have a social policy that encourages family arrangements that deny children such essentials? Gays are not necessarily bad parents, nor will they necessarily make their children gay, but they cannot provide a set of parents that includes both a male and a female.

The argument that the state creates and supports marriage solely because propagation of the species is kind of, well, arbitrary, right? And not to mention not at all correct. The state’s reasons for giving recognition to unions between two people is that legal marriages uncomplicate many legal situations—namely taxes, legal ownership, health care proxies, and inheritance. The state’s reasons for incentivizing marriage (largely via tax codes) is that marriage in general promotes social stability, home ownership, a settled labor force, etc. None of these are specifically related to having children, and by allowing 10% of the population to enjoy the benefits of legal marriage—or the state benefits that any heterosexual couple, married or not are afforded—it promotes general social stability.

The fact that gay couples can and do have children, foster children, and adopt children (1 in 4 same sex couples are raising at least one child) only makes the government’s lack of official recognition of their relationships more difficult. The result is often protracted custody battles, foster children getting bounced out of stable foster homes because the state takes issue with gays fostering children, and leaves many children who might otherwise be adopted by gay parents as wards of the state—which is far worse than kids growing up without one mommy and one daddy.

But while we’re on that point, let’s look at David Popenoe’s book. From amazon, the description says:

The author, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, is also cochair of the Council on Families in America. Popenoe’s research findings on fatherlessness parallel many of Blankenhorne’s. Most notably, children from single-parent families are more prone to poverty, juvenile delinquency, and dropping out of school than their two-parent counterparts. The chief cause: lack of a father role model and difficulties of single-parent supervision.

It’s worth noting that Popenoe’s research doesn’t examine families with same-sex parents, but rather focuses exclusively on heterosexual parents. But let’s break down Popenoe’s claims: Children of single-parent families are more prone to poverty because they are also from single-income families. Poverty alone is a strong determinant of juvenile delinquency, dropping out of school, performing poorly in schools, etc., regardless of the number of parents in the home. When the only parent you have works to pay the bills, and there’s no one else to look after you, supervision is of course an issue. And the sense of abandonment when a child’s father (or mother) leaves or is absent from the child’s life? That is without question emotionally damaging to children.

But what of children who have two parents—albeit not both biological—who love each other and love the child? Are children hurt by the lack of having both a man and a woman to look up to in the home? The few studies conducted on this subject say that they aren’t.

The argument, not necessarily Popenoe’s, that children are harmed by not having both genders represented in the home is not borne out by the information we have at present. A parent abandoning child or being absent from a child’s life? Very damaging. A single parent raising a child on a single income? The resulting poverty is also usually damaging. Children of same-sex parents who have stable homes, where they are loved and cared for, and where finances are not an issue? On par with their peers raised in similar circumstances by heterosexual parents.

Advocates of gay marriage claim gay couples need marriage in order to have hospital visitation and inheritance rights, but they can easily obtain these rights by writing a living will and having each partner designate the other as trustee and heir. There is nothing stopping gay couples from signing a joint lease or owning a house jointly, as many single straight people do with roommates. The only benefits of marriage from which homosexual couples are restricted are those that are costly to the state and society.

The problem comes, of course, when living wills are ignored, as they often are in the case of homosexual couples. The wills are contested by disapproving families or hospitals demand the homosexual partner jump through legal hoops to prove that they are, in fact, the one the person who is sick or dying wants with them and to make important decisions for them. Inheritance can also be contested by disapproving families, and same-sex partners have to fight tooth and nail to keep from being forced to sell the home they shared with their partner by their partner’s family so that the family can receive a share in the property and often do not receive benefits from life insurance and other assets when parents contest the partner’s right to them. Hard to believe, but discrimination against gays is still widespread and common. (And yes, that was sarcasm.)

Until recently, the primary purpose of marriage, in every society around the world, has been procreation.

This isn’t true. Example: in some Islamic cultures (please note the some!), women can be temporarily married to men for matters of convenience—men staying in a home with women who might otherwise have to cover or be put out of their daily work in order to avoid an unrelated man in their home, for instance—or women are married to Holy Books so that property will stay in families, avoiding disinheritance due to lack of male heirs upon the death of the property-owning male.

Other historical reasons for marriage in European culture are related to procreation, but are not specifically about procreation. Marriage was a way to lend legitimacy to certain female partners of wealthy men and to their resulting offspring. This sort of legitimacy was vital in matters of inheritance: if you had one son to a mistress and then another son later to your wife, it made determining which son had the most right to property and other assets easy. At the time, inherited property and other wealth went almost exclusively to the eldest son in order to maintain an estate (which gave authority and prestige to a title) in its entirety. Determining the most legitimate heir was necessary. If you were a king or other ruler, matters of legitimacy and inheritance could throw your entire kingdom into disarray.

So while, yes, marriage is related to procreation, it is more about conferring legal legitimacy on children (and the parents of those children) in order to determine matters of inheritance than it is about sanctioning someone’s having a child. Legality is something that is as applicable to homosexual couples with children—who are a fact in our society, regardless of whether you think the ways they go about having children are as legitimate as those of heterosexual couples—as it is to heterosexual couples with children.

The biggest danger homosexual civil marriage presents is the enshrining into law the notion that sexual love, regardless of its fecundity, is the sole criterion for marriage.

The bigger problem is if we allow our own personal discomfort with homosexuality to keep us from recognizing that the point of legal marriage is, in fact, resolving and bringing clarity to legal complications that result from sharing a life and children with another person. There is no logical reason to use state marriage as a way of conferring moral sanctity on people who have children “the right way,” when the state gains very little from legalizing the moral aspect of child-bearing. The state does benefit from easy resolution to legal issues and the general social stability that results from people being tied to other people, though.

Secular or not, I feel that the author has allowed his moral discomfort with homosexuality to distort his view of what marriage actually is.