Flawed evidence about gay marriage
Oh boy. Here we go.
The evidence shows that gay marriage is equal to or better than traditional marriage, according to a Federal Court judge. But what sort of evidence?
In one sense, Judge Walker can’t be blamed for his decision since he was provided a great deal of inaccurate and incomplete information through the trial process. I hope that future amicus briefs will be able to correct those deficiencies.
It’s not that heterosexuals think their marriages are superior per se but that heterosexual marriage has vulnerabilities that are not found in same-sex relationships. Kurdek (2008) found that gay/lesbian couples reported greater levels of happiness over time than did heterosexual couples, especially the latter who had children. Kurdek admitted that gender conflicts would be expected to be more prevalent in heterosexual relationships. There are also more risks in heterosexual relationships in terms of unwanted pregnancies or struggles over fertility control.
At the same time that heterosexual relationships inherently entertain higher risks, they also provide society with a very important product – biological children who are genetically related to both of their parents, which tends to be correlated with taking better care of children (unrelated boyfriends, for example, often abuse their girlfriend’s biological children).
As an example of the bad information provided to the court, it is clear that lesbian parents have far less stable same-sex relationships than do heterosexual parents, even when the lesbian parents have advantages in terms of higher education or income (Schumm, 2009). The court was told that lesbian relationships are just as stable as heterosexual relationships, which may be true but only for persons who are not parents. The court may not have been told about the high rates, on the order of 50 percent within three years, of extramarital affairs engaged in by gay men in civil unions or marriages (Schumm, 2009).
The court was probably told that lesbian and gay parents are not more likely to have non-heterosexual children, which my research shows is false (Schumm, in press). The court was probably told that the children of lesbian and gay parents are doing just as well as the children of heterosexual parents. What is overlooked is that there is a great deal of cherry-picking going on, pitting highly educated, high income gay or lesbian parents against less educated, lower income heterosexual parents. I have yet to see any study control for education and for per capita household income before making comparisons between the two types of parents.
For example, Patterson and her colleagues (Farr, Forssell, & Patterson, 2010) recently published an article claiming that gay and lesbian parents of adopted children were parenting just as well as heterosexual adoptive parents. I tried to submit a rejoinder to that journal but the editor told me that his journal doesn’t accept any letters to the editor or criticisms of their published reports. Now there’s a great ploy – send your papers to outlets where you know in advance that your research, once published, will escape any criticism no matter how flawed your article might be!
However, in Patterson’s report, the gay father households had an average income of US$190,000 compared to $150,000 for heterosexual households and probably had fewer children. Neither level of household income represents anything close to what the average parent, heterosexual or non-heterosexual, must manage economically. For example, my base pay at the University after working here for over 30 years is less than $83,000, though I earn more by teaching overtime and getting occasional summer research money. With that, I have had to support my wife and seven children over years, including many years which involved much less income. And most people would consider me quite advantaged economically compared to the average household. And yet, our per capita household income would be almost trivial compared to that of the subjects who participated in Patterson’s research.
Patterson presented data from the “teachers” of the three-year-old children but the “teachers” were mostly daycare providers being paid by the parents. Now, why would anyone expect such an employee to run down the children in their care by describing them as psychologically troubled? Furthermore, there were no measures of social desirability used that could have been used to statistically control for any tendencies to overrate their children’s levels of psychological adjustment.
These types of flaws are widespread in research on gay and lesbian parenting but whether Judge Walker apprehended these issues, or even was provided clear evidence about them, is questionable.
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It’s one thing to mention in a blog some studies that come to anti-gay conclusions. It’s another entirely to find anti-gay research that can stand up to cross-examination and basic standards of critical analysis. THAT is why you guys lost Prop 8.
I knew this article would spur some controversy.
Are we now willing to let public policy be decided by a solitary judge on the basis of the soft (i.e. not physical) sciences rather than by the people or the political branches? Consider how progressive taxation might be overthrown as unequal and arbitrary, global warming remediation might be mandated or prohibited, or universal public health care might be mandated or prohibited if is cleverly framed by a single judge. Will we now have science courts rather than law courts? Is any vote of a legislature or of the people safe from a judiciary than can claim to read the minds legislators or voters and determine that they acted irrationally and therefore can be (indeed, must be) overruled? Even if you agree with Judge Walker in this instance, do you not see this as laying the foundations of a judicial tyranny?
Rob said: “THAT is why you guys lost Prop 8.”
We won Prop 8 at the voting booth and even in the state Supreme Court.
A “loss” in district court is puny by comparison. Walker is playing a political game that he cannot actually hope to win. So it is grandstanding. Another example of the SSM-vogue.
@Rob Tisinai
Hello. We won Prop 8.
Yes, but as Romer v. Evans teaches us, it is unconstitutional to vote to deny individual civil rights when there is no reason other than animus against a particular class of people. When stripped of religious and moral disapproval, there are no legitimate government purposes for denying the right to marry to LGBT people. Although I know that you claim that denying marriage to same-sex couples will undermine the alleged “essential public purpose of attaching mothers and fathers to their children and to each other,” there is no rational or logical connection to the extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples and a corresponding loss of heterosexually-based attachments. In other words, same-sex marriage will have no effect on the ability or desirability of heterosexual couples to get married and to attach to their children and to each other. Nor will the denial of the right to marry to same-sex couples prevent us from raising children. Our children will just be less protected than the children of straight married couples. Thanks a bunch!
Of course, Prop 8 didn’t deny homosexuals the right to marry. It merely restored the traditional definition of marriage, a definition that homosexuals don’t like. Millions of homosexuals have married under the traditional definition of marriage. They are not being denied the right to marry. California family law also effectively grants every state protection to homosexuals and their families that heterosexuals enjoy but the word “marriage.”
The California Supreme Court (which narrowly favored the redefinition of marriage) found no inalienable right was violated by Proposition 8, though Attorney General Jerry Brown specifically asserted there was one.
The United States Supreme Court in 1972 dismissed Baker v. Nelson “for want of a substantial federal question,” even though the plaintiffs asserted that the traditional definition of marriage violated the first, eight, ninth, and fourteenth amendments. The Supreme Court didn’t buy it.
In Romer v. Evans, Justice Kennedy wrote that the law was so unique as to “confound this normal process of judicial review” and “defies…conventional inquiry.” This hardly strikes me as a good precedent here. The law was unique and to my knowledge unprecedented. The Colorado amendment in question does strike me as singling out one group in a strange and legally complicated way. Nevertheless, Justice Scalia and two other justices dissented.
By the way, the polygamists say thanks a bunch for throwing them under your bus. Of course, polygamists can create children naturally within their unions, something not possible within homosexual unions. Nevertheless, California law also isn’t favorable to polygamy. Homosexual unions require a third party to have a child, sort of polygamy but with at least one biological parent automatically denied all rights.
Sigh. Leo, you just can’t seem to understand that a right that cannot be exercised without grievous individual harm is no right at all, can you? Gay people don’t want to marry people of the opposite sex! They are NOT sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex! Would YOU marry someone you weren’t at all attracted to? Are you attracted to the same sex? What if you were only allowed to marry a person of the same sex? Would that feel like you had rights equal to gay people who are in fact attracted to the same sex? Just try for two seconds to put yourself in the shoes of another and see how it feels.
Your appeal to history doesn’t cut it. Sometimes even the U.S. Supreme Court gets it wrong. Have you ever heard of a case called Plessy v. Ferguson? That’s the case where the phrase “separate but equal” comes from, and it took the Court another 60 years to get it right in Brown v. Board of Education. Sometimes state supreme courts get it wrong too, and it takes a higher court to set them right. But if we focus on the promises contained in the federal constitution–the ones specifically referring to liberty and the equal protection of the laws–it seems fairly clear to me that individual citizens are entitled to the same rights and protections as everyone else without interference from others who don’t like them or who don’t approve of their choices. And I submit that the right to marry has nothing whatsoever to do with the sex of your chosen partner, just like it has nothing to do with his or her race, religion, national origin, or ethnicity. It has to do instead with promises made by two human beings to one another within the context of a relationship that is different from all other human relationships. And it all comes down to love.
As I have noted before, someone who is inclined to be involved in a polygamous relationship is not deprived of his or her fundamental right to marry. That person still can exercise the right to marry the partner of his or her choice, even if the state limits the marriage relationship to two partners. Gay people don’t have the right to marry even ONE person of their choice. The fact that you can sit there and say that gay people have the right to marry because they could always marry a person of the opposite sex reveals your cruelty and fundamental misunderstanding of sexual orientation. It’s not a switch that you can just turn on or off you know. You would resign your fellow citizens to misery regardless of the “choice” they could make under those circumstances–either deny your own nature and marry a person of the opposite sex and be miserable, or be forever excluded from the most fundamental and universal human institution of marriage. That is some compassion you have there.
Finally, as evidenced by the tens of thousands of happy and thriving children throughout this country who are being raised by same-sex couples, by adoptive parents, by other family members, and in other family situations that do not fit the nuclear family mold, LOVE IS WHAT MAKES A FAMILY. But hey, don’t just take my word for it–ask my kids. Allowing LGBT people to marry woon’t prevent straight people from marrying and raising their own biological children, and refusing to grant LGBT people the same right to marry that straight people have won’t stop us from forming families and sometimes bringing children into those families. Heck, my own youngest daughter (and biological niece) is the product of a failed heterosexual union and of biological parents who don’t even want their own child! Many same-sex couples pick up the pieces when the lives of young children are damaged and discarded by their biological parents. But oh my goodness, we must protect the children from loving and caring adults!!!
Oh, and in case you weren’t aware, when a third party is involved in “helping” a same-sex couple have a child, he or she is not “automatically denied all rights.” What typically happens is that person, out of the goodness of his or her heart in wanting to help other people to become parents who otherwise would not be able to do so, VOLUNTARILY WAIVES any possible rights to the child that ultimately results from the DONATION of genetic material. No one is denied or deprived of ANYTHING. Oh, and before you come back with “but the child is deprived of at least one biological parent” let me remind you that many children are raised successfully without both biological parents (adoption being the biggest reason, followed by divorce, abandonment, etc.). And by all reputable accounts, these children are just fine. They don’t miss what they never had. My own sweet little girl has visitation with my sister, her biological mother, by my choice. But this little girl could care less whether she sees her biological mother or not. Why? Because her mother NEVER formed a parent-child bond with this child. Instead, this baby formed her primary attachments with myself and my partner. And as long as WE are there every day for her, she is missing no one. Kids don’t care about the sex or gender of their parents. They care about the love, attention, nurturing and support that they receive from those parents. Why is that so hard for you to understand?
Sigh. Heidi, the gay friendly California Supreme Court found no grievous individual harm in Proposition 8. Gay people aren’t being forced to marry against their will. They aren’t even being denied the right to form unions of their own choosing with all the family law rights of heterosexual couples. I thought that was a reasonable go-along, get along solution. Gays get everything but the ability to redefine a word by fiat. To suppose that gay friendly California is like the Jim Crow South is facetious at best. You seem to believe that the current California Supreme Court has six irrational bigots on the bench who are totally unsympathetic to your cause. Do you really believe that?
I agree that sometimes the Supreme Court and tradition get things wrong, but they shouldn’t be tossed aside willy-nilly. There are reasonable approaches to changing the law and unreasonable ones. In Judge Walker’s case, I believe we are seeing egregious judicial overreach.
The legal offense of bigamy is defined as being when a person has obtained “legally recognized” marriages to more than one living mate at the same time. Bigamy in California is punishable by up to $10,000 fine and a year in prison. That is serious punishment, grievous harm you might say. If GLBT couples in California were being punished by $10,000 fines and a year in prison, I would be on your side of that issue. But the GLBT community is happy to throw polygamists under the bus and sees no moral contradiction in that.
Love is a wonderful thing. When I was younger I was constantly told that two people don’t need a piece of paper to love one another. Now I am told they do need a piece of paper, not counting the cases involving jail for a year and a $10,000 fine.
Voluntary sperm donation is a very dubious proposition in my view. The donor has to voluntarily agree to not love his natural offspring and not love their mother. It is unloving and prejudicial to the rights of the child to deny the child a father. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 7.1, says “The child shall [have] as far as possible, the right to know . . . his or her parents.” Anonymity violates that right. Even briefly meeting your sperm donor years later, however, is a feeble kind of knowing. It is not surprising then that donor conceived adults compared to those adopted or conceived by their own parents are hurting more, are more confused, are more isolated from their families when they grow up, and on several key measures they are doing less well than those raised by biological parents and adoptive parents. (see http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/who_did_i_come_from_the_children_of_donor_dads_grow_up/ and http://familyscholars.org/my-daddys-name-is-donor-2/) Unlike adoption, these are not children rescued in extremis, but children deliberately created to be isolated from their fathers. True, humans are resilient and can survive all sorts of trials, at least some can, but the natural rights of a child to its father is being sacrificed here, not to mention the natural rights of a father to his child.
The sperm donor industry is loosely regulated market and a very big business. Approximately one hundred fifty sperm banks generate hundreds of millions of dollars in business each year. When was there ever an unregulated market without eventual market exploitation? Currently, donors can maximize their income by donating over and over. Yes, many of them are paid. Bodily fluids are poured into vials and sold to women. The resulting high-tech half-orphans by design may have hundreds of half-siblings around the world. Donor offspring not only have to deal with the loss of a biological father. They also have to struggle with the astounding implications of what happens when reproduction is commercialized and detached from its natural roots. Why do adults have a right to a child so created, while a child has no right to a father? “They don’t miss what they never had” is an astonishing statement of the new ethics. Welcome to the brave new world.
Heidi, many adopted children seek out their bio parents. They do have a need to know where they came from, even when their adoptive parents were wonderful. (It’s not a judgment on the adoptive parents, but it’s often difficult to go through emotionally for everyone involved.) There are tons of documented cases of this. There are websites being set up for kids to find out who their donor parents are because they’re curious. Don’t ignore that this is going on.
The new model is built on reproductive technology: couples with children conceived with the help of donor eggs and/or sperm and perhaps carried by a surrogate mother; single women with children acquired by donor insemination; same-sex couples with one or more children who might be the offspring of one of them and an ex-spouse; the result of gametes from one partner and a donor, or from two donors, and possibly gestated by a surrogate mother.
Unlike adoption or fostering, there is often minimal governmental regulation or screening.
Along with along with all this has grown a radical change of focus from the child to the adult, from the child’s wellbeing to the adult’s sense of wellbeing.
Some children so conceived will adapt well. Others not so well. Here are some comments from such children.
“It’s always the rights of the parents, the donor, the clinic. Why is it that the rights of donor-conceived people aren’t even considered in the equation?”
“I realized that I am, in a sense, a freak. I finally understood what it meant to be donor-conceived, and I hated it.”
“If I had to choose between being conceived with half of my identity and half of my kinship deliberately denied from me for eternity — or never being born — I’d choose never being born. We were created to carry a loss. A loss that no human being should have to endure.”
See
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38679526/ns/health-kids_and_parenting/
Welcome to the brave new world.
Neither of my children are the result of anonymous sperm donors, although my youngest daughter may as well be, having been abandoned by a biological father who wants nothing at all to do with her and would like nothing more than to have his rights terminated so that he could get out of paying child support! My older daughter came from the old-fashioned way of having babies, and her father and I have successfully co-parented her in a friendly, mature and supportive way even though we never married and even though our relationship ended when she was 7 1/2. My younger daughter (my partner and I are her legal guardians right now and expect to adopt her in the near future) is also my biological niece (my sister is her biological mother who is a drug addict and incapable of parenting). What is interesting to me about my experience with my younger daughter is that my sister lived with my partner and I while this child was an infant. However, she failed to bond with her own child. Not being able to stand the sight of our niece being deprived of the love and affection that every child needs, my partner and I stepped up to the plate and began to parent this beautiful little girl. Consequently, this baby formed her primary attachments with us, not with her own biological mother, even though her own mother lived with us! She cried for US, not for her mother. WE were the ones who could soothe her, not her mother. Now, at almost two years old, she calls my partner and I “Mama” and “Mommy” respectively, without any prompting from us. She knows that WE are her parents. Now, this doesn’t mean that she has no relationship whatsoever with her biological mother, but it is not a parent-child relationship–it is more like a aunt-niece relationship. Our little one is not upset when her mother leaves, and she doesn’t run into her arms when her mother arrives. Yet when my partner picks her up from day care each evening, she shrieks with joy and races to be held. She is such a smart and happy little girl. My point? Mere biology is NOT what makes someone a parent. Love, bonding, and the act of parenting is what does.
My close friend was adopted. Several years ago, she met her biological mother for the first time. She was certainly curious about her biological roots, but she is the first person to say that this woman, who she calls by her first name, is NOT her mother. That title is reserved for the woman who raised her–the woman who has no biological connection whatsoever with her. Yet again, it is not biology that creates a parent-child bond. It is the act of parenting, love, nurturing, and actually raising a child.
But not having had the experience of sperm donation, I would never suggest that there are not complexities that exist with those situations. I also can see why anyone born from that process would be curious about their biological history. But to suggest that the sperm donor is that person’s father is foolish. My younger daughter has a biological sperm donor in a sense, but he has not earned the title of father. That only happens when a man actually raises a child, and he doesn’t even have to be biologically related to that child. My other niece’s stepfather is her father–and she wants nothing whatsoever to do with her biological father who recently reappeared in her life after disappearing for 8 years. Kids attach to the people who love and raise them. Does this mean that they won’t have questions, curiosities, and perhaps sometimes even grief when they are not raised by their biological parents? No. But it also doesn’t necessarily mean that they would prefer that their lives or parents be any different than they are.
In any event, and regardless of how you feel about sperm donation and ART generally, WHAT does any of this have to do with the right to marry for same-sex couples? The refusal of marriage equality hasn’t prevented same-sex couples from using ART to bring children into the world. It has only prevented the children that result from this process from having the same protections and dignity that the children of heterosexuals enjoy. Continued inequality won’t stop these children from existing. A lesbian won’t be convinced to “turn straight” just because some people think her child needs a father. One possibility is that anonymity may disappear, and that is not necessarily a bad thing if everyone is on board and mature about it. But lesbians and gay men will still love each other, will still want to get married, some will still raise children, and nothing will be different with or without marriage equality except for the level of happiness and protection for same-sex couples and the children of some of those couples who raise them.
This focus on children and ART is really just a red herring intended to provide a justification for bigotry.
Heidi asked questions that are not asked by the marriage law:
“Would YOU marry someone you weren’t at all attracted to? Are you attracted to the same sex? What if you were only allowed to marry a person of the same sex? Would that feel like you had rights equal to gay people who are in fact attracted to the same sex? ”
There is no mention of any of that in the eligiblity requirements under the man-woman basis of the marriage law. So Heidi makes stuff up and pretends she is interpreting the law.
Heidi declares: “Sometimes even the U.S. Supreme Court gets it wrong.”
As do lonesome district court judges — especially those who ignore controlling precedents.
* * *
Citing “seperate but equal” is strange coming from an SSMer who just got through explaining (and apparently attempting to justify) a type of relationship based on sex-segregation and/or sexual-orientation segregation.
I mean, if the SSMer truly believes that race and sexual orientation are moral equivalents, then, why all this promotion of segregative types of arrangements which resemble “seperate but equal”?
Meanwhile the social institution of marriage integrates the sexes and is indifferent to sexual orientation and is indifferent to identity politics — gaycentric or otherwise. There is no “one drop” rule for sexual orientation; and no ancestory criteria for sex differentation; none of the stuff of racialist segregation even remotely applies in this case.
The racialist identity politics of the anti-miscegenation system is echoed in gay identity politics where selective sex segregation is to be endorsed by the government under the auspices of the social institution that has always integrated the sexes; and is echoed where responsible procreation is disparaged based on the supremacy of identity group politics. It happened under white supremacy and SSMers hope it will happen under gaycentric supremacy.
In both versions of of supremacy there is a foundational claim about purity. Heidi keeps reminding us of this over and over.
Then she manages to mangle the supposed right to marry the person of one’s choice when she denies the right to polygamous marriage. Her argumentation offers no good reason to deny the right to underaged marriage, also.
But apparently even the presence of love and commitment and consent and, yes, sexual attraction and romance would not trump these lines of ineligiblity. Heidi shrugged when it came to polygamy and so until she explains clearly otherwise, it is safe to say that she’d shrug at these other lines (incest and underaged), as well, given her own superficial argument for redrawing the lines around eligilbity based on a characteristic that is not as inborn as relatedness and not as unchosen as age.
* * *
Heidi, like many SSMers, says: “VOLUNTARILY WAIVES any possible rights to the child that ultimately results from the DONATION of genetic material. No one is denied or deprived of ANYTHING.”
1. You have just conceded that there are parental rights that arise from the two-sexed nature of human procreation. Waiving these would be necessary for what you have in mind.
2. You give short shrift to the child’s birthright which is an odd thing for you to do given all your constant talk of rights.
3. The practice of third-party procreaion is not so well studied that you can fairly announce conclusions with the certitude that you just did. Something is denied; someone is deprived; and you know it but wish to wave it away as insignificant.
4. This practice of third party procreation, as well as adoption, has at least two pre-requisites: 1) parental relinquishment with government approval as per the above pre-emptive strike, and 2) government intervention to assign a substitute mom or dad. So clearly their is something lost and an effort is made to make-up the shortfall.
5. Unlike the adoption of an orphaned child or the step-parent adoption of a child of divorced or estranged parents, the practice of third party procreation begins with the wants and desires of the adult, not the needs and best interests of the yet-to-be-created child. In the scenario you advocated, the child is created expressly for a fatherless or motherless home; the adult preference for a sex-segregative realtionship trumps the child’s birthright. The child clearly cannot give consent so you do not depend on her consent but rather her ignorance of that which she has been deprived.
Yet adult children who were “donor conceived” are beginning to make themselves heard.
Anyway, SSM can not create the child-parent relationship that you described because what you described depends on something else other than SSM status. You have conceded as much.
* * *
The practice of third-party procreation has created new scenarios in which donor-conceived children (as adults) and their donor-parents or donor-siblings or other donor-relatives meet and fall in love due to genetic sexual attraction. Sometimes they are aware of their relatedness; sometimes they are not.
Their relationships meet the standards of SSM argumentation: love, romance, sexual attraction, consent, and even raising children (their own, adopted, or from previously procreative relationships); all the stuff that supposedly justifies a license and special status for SSM.
Yet incestuous marriage is explicitly outlawed — unlike one-sexed gaycentric arrangements. A minority? Yeap. A sexual minority? Yeap. Their relatedness is more obviously inborn than same-sex sexual attraction so they meet that pro-SSM point as well. Do they have a choice to marry someone else? Yeap, but that’s not good enough according to SSMers. And so forth.
They are deprived of the supposed right that Heidi demands for herself and her identity group. Her argument also makes the case for redrawing the line to accomodate those who experience genetic sexual attraction.
Just as Heidi is on the record as having shrugged at polygamy — showing her indifference — might we not expect her to concede that her argumentation produces yet another shrug, this time at incestuous marriage?
The real problem is that SSM argumentation destroys the basis for line-drawing around marriage. Why should two sisters imagine themselves to be entering a sexually incestuous relationship just because they want equal status with SSM when it comes to banding together to raise their children? It would be a sisterly relationship and not a sexualized one. And there is no requirement for SSM that makes same-sex sexual attraction or behafvior mandatory. So what really is there to bar them, justly, from eligilbity to the same status as tha which SSMers demand for the gaycentric version of the one-sexed scenario?
Surely they do not assume that sisters would not show-up for the license and the status. Surely they do not expect that people seeking the status willl just self-regulate and deny themselves what the SSMers insist is a right and a demand for human dignity.
Heidi’s anecdotal emphasis continues but it undermines her stance: “a biological father who wants nothing at all to do with her and would like nothing more than to have his rights terminated so that he could get out of paying child support”.
Why should he pay support if he would choose to relinquish? What is your principled reason for deny him that option?
I support the vigorous enforcement of the presumption of paternity — within marriage and mimicked outside of marriage. But you have rejected the coherent set of principles known as responsible procreation. What alternatives do you propose?
What makes the “donor” father entitled to relinquish but not the non-donor father?
Heidi, you will acknowledge, surely, that the use of ARTs does not depend on use of “donated” gametes. That “donation” procreation is a rather small part of the use of ARTs. Right?
Parental relinquishment is not usually a feature of ARTs. But it is always a feature of ARTS when used by one-sexed scenarios — whether that be single person, a twosome, or a moresome. The other sex is required but marginalized.
Can you acknowledge this or are you fearful of conceding too much?
I think he meant you lost the Prop 8 trial.
Marriage really isn’t about children, as no state requires a couple to have children in order to get or stay married, or to get married once the children arrive. The procreation angle is simply the homophobes trying to create some eligibility requirement that would exclude same-sex couples.
Maggie Gallagher is a marriage expert whose research shows that children are better off in life when they are raised by married parents. Her expertise on this subject is one more reason society should not just be permitting same-sex marriage but encouraging it when there are children in the household.
Sean, we lost the policy choice game that Walker put on. Based on the actual constitutional questions at issue, the Cooper legal team trounced Olsen-Boise.
SSM is not really about same-sex sexual attraction, same-sex sexual romance, or same-sex sexual behavior. No SSM anyplaces requires those who show up to SSM to engage in any of that. The emotive angle is simply the pro-gay bigots trying to pretend that the real issue is not marriage but rather gayness.
The reasearch, Sean, is in the context of sex integration and responsible procreation.
SSM, according to the arguments of SSMers themselves, lacks a core meaning that can touch this core meaning of marriage.
You say that SSM is not about children, and by your stated standard (as per your remark above) it is not about encouraging child-raising within the context of marriage. You are just trying to appropriate the name, marriage, to apply to your favored subset of nonmarriage.
However, gayness does not define SSM, since there is no gayness requirement that would make it mandatory for those who’d SSM. So the nonmarriage category is inclusive of your favored gay subset.
Meanwhile there is a legal requirement that both sexes participate in a marital relationship; and the sexual basis for the marital presumption of paternity is a legal basis that is vigorously enforced; that sexual basis is also expressed in terms of coital relations for sexual consummation, grounds for annulment, grounds for adultery, and so forth. When people consent to enter the social institution of marriage, this is part and parcel of that to which they consent.
SSM on the other hand has no such elements — even according to your own stated standard regarding what is and is not legally required by SSM laws. You snookered yourself.
Chairm: “Meanwhile there is a legal requirement that both sexes participate in a marital relationship”
Not for long!
“and the sexual basis for the marital presumption of paternity is a legal basis that is vigorously enforced;”
Really? How? Does this not go to the “totalitarianism” idea you were squawking about?
“When people consent to enter the social institution of marriage, this is part and parcel of that to which they consent.”
I would love to see even a survey of people getting married to see if they are aware of even half of this tripe.
Mark, this vigorously enforced legal presumption is the inverse of the fantasies produced by your totalitarian impulse.
You can go to surveys, if you wish, but we’ve been discussing the law and, yes, this legal presumption is part and parcel of that to which consent is given — not just by the participating individuals but also by society via government and the vigor of enforcement of this just law.
What do you have against the unity of fatherhood and motherhood, Mark? Whay are you so antagaonistic toward the marital presumption in the law and in the culture? Maybe nothing. Maybe it merits another Big Shrug from you. Be forthright in your response, please.