I suppose I'll respond at length with my reactions to the article as well. Afterward, I'll more or less let the thread be, perhaps with a few exceptions. This will likely get quite lengthy, so please bare with me. I write my thoughts on this as sincerely and as diplomatically as I am able to. So please, I only ask you to respond to this (if you so chose to) with the same courtesy and fair-mindedness that I hope to write this with. As I said, I don't want any drama:
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The state (or governing authority, etc) recognizes, supports, and grants both financial and legal benefits to couples of the opposite sex united in marriage because the state recognizes the obvious: that marriage as traditionally understood between a man and a woman provides a social, financial and cultural forum for men and women to channel their own biological drives in unity with their shared love to produce the most biologically, culturally and emotionally well-nurtured children under the guidance and care of a loving couple. The state is aware that such a union between a man and a woman will not only provide children for the next generation of society and its continuation, but will also provide children who have been raised in the most ideal social unit, nurtured biologically, culturally, and emotionally with a mother and a father to act as role models of both sexes, united in love through the unitive action of procreation. Is having children the only purpose of marriage? No. As I said, there are other responsibilities and purposes attached to marriage, including the cultural, biological, and emotional nurturing of children, and further subordinate purposes such as the sharing of love of the man and woman united in marriage. But one would be gravely mistaken to confuse the subordinate purposes of marriage with its main and most important purpose: the creating and nurturing of the next generation of society.
So why does the state not extend the benefits and responsibilities of marriage to members of the same sex, or brothers and sisters, or fathers and daughters? Because the state does not recognize nor does it have the obligation to recognize relationships in which two people simply love each other. 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 other, they state won’t recognize their relationship. The same is true of two brothers or two sisters. 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 others' 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.
Fathers and daughters also have long-term, committed relationships. There’s a special bond between them that develops and lasts for years. Fathers often say that the love they feel towards their daughter has a unique texture to it. They often say that it's taught them an aspect of love that, until they had a daughter, they never experienced. There are things that they’ve done and would do for their daughter that virtually no one else on the planet can make me do. And like many fathers and daughters, their special relationship could last half a century or more. But guess what? The state doesn’t care about them as a couple. It doesn’t matter how much they love each other. They 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.
At this point, many of you are likely to respond with: “Isn’t it better for a child to be adopted by a gay couple than to not be adopted at all?” which will be accompanied with two loaded 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.
"Wouldn’t it be better for the child to be adopted by the lesbians and grow up under scenario B?"
Well, sure, 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 does that prove? Only 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.
Often one who is raised by same-sex parents will argue that his same-sex parents 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 also declare themselves 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, again, 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.
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. 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. 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.” 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.
Lastly, I'm inclined to concur with the author of the article in question with regards to the position that marriage is, nowadays, resulting in divorce and resulting in terrible parenting and raising of children precisely because the natural tie to procreation within marriage has been so downplayed and cast aside. Marriage nowadays is seen through a selfish lens by couples entertaining it. They seek marriage for selfish reasons and motivations to make themselves happy, all the while forgetting the main purpose of marriage which is enshrined in the notion of providing for the the good of the children and the next generation under a stable, loving, nurturing and unitive union between a man and a woman. Such a radical and selfish new re-conception of marriage is precisely what is to blame, I think, for many of the social difficulties which have become so commonplace today.