III: The other horn of the dilemma
So far, we’ve been speaking about marriage
as a specific relationship that has a specific function in society. But moreover, we’ve been talking about traditional marriage, i.e., one in which
one man and one woman remain together for twenty years or more, and in which
all children are products of that same union.
However, traditional marriage is not the only context in
which children are raised. For example,
1 in 3 American children are raised in a single-parent home, including two-thirds
of black children, over half of Native American children, and two-fifths of
Hispanic children.[1] Forty-two percent of all
American adults have at least one step relative: a step or half sibling (30%),
a living stepparent (18%) and/or a stepchild (13%).[2] Many children are being raised by both
biological parents, but not within marriage or any understood long-term
commitment (11% of all children under 1, diminishing to 2% of children from 6
to 11 and 1% of adolescents).[3]
In Part
II, I alluded to the rise of alternative family arrangements, such as
cohabiting parents, single parents, grandparents-only, and blended families, to
illustrate the point that gay marriage is “a solution without a problem”. Traditional marriage may have sentimental
pride of place, but if it’s no longer necessary, then gay marriage isn’t necessary,
either. In fact, it has all the
appearance of awarding the happy couple a free cruise on the Andrea Doria.
However, this horn of the dilemma is contingent on the
alternatives being “as good as” traditional marriage in bringing up children
healthy and well-adjusted. If we’re all
the good Darwinists we’re supposed to be — this is supposed to be a secular argument, after all[*]
— we should be suspicious of any claim that “mother” and “father” are roles
anyone can be plugged into as substitutes for the biological originals without
noticeable difference in outcomes.
Sure enough, even when we limit our gaze to mixed-sex
couples, it turns out that blended families, cohabiting couples and grandparents-only
family arrangements don’t produce outcomes as consistently good. For instance, “[although] most adopted
children are healthy, adopted children have been shown to be at elevated risk
for adjustment problems, externalizing behaviors, conduct disorders, and
attachment disorders.”[4] Or this: “On every health indicator
except those identifying allergies, children in blended step families had
poorer health than children living with two biological parents. Children in blended adoptive families [i.e., families where
the non-biological parent adopted the biological parents’ children]
did not differ on physical health status from children living with both
biological parents (except on dental health) but showed many of the same
disparities in mental health and special health care needs as children in step
families.”[5] This is but a quick sampling, constrained by
time and resources; if called on to flesh it out, though, there are plenty of
studies on the subject to back me up.
Keep in mind that we’re not looking at data on same-sex parents. Both sides regularly accuse each other of
fudging the research data to fit their agendas; as I said before, I have no
taste for playing “My scientists can beat up your scientists”. Moreover, the GLBT lobby has shown that it
will do everything in its power to squelch any study that doesn’t support the
Preferred Narrative; science can’t take place where politics determines
the only results allowable. Finally,
it’s not my intention to assert that the outcomes are universally bad; alternative
families do produce healthy, well-educated and well-adjusted adults … just not
as often as do traditional families.
However, with the evidence working against the supposition
that blood relationship has nothing to do with parenting, the proposition that
a same-sex partner can step into the role of the opposite-sex genetic parent
without any negative effect is already at a disadvantage … at the very least,
the odds are against. Contrary to the
beliefs of the TQs of the alphabet soup, there is some hard-wiring involved in
being either male or female which operations, hormone therapy and wishing really
intensely don’t overcome. And so much
evidence has been gathered regarding the negative effects on children of an
absent/disengaged father[†]
that, when it’s suggested that the role of the father can be dispensed with
altogether (as at least one feminist paper has done),[‡]
skepticism must give way to outright disbelief.
So here is the other horn of the dilemma: If traditional
marriage is the most successful environment to raise children in, then why
would we want to encourage and subsidize a bunch of “second- and third-bests”? All things considered, the default policy
ought to be to reinforce success, and
that would mean privileging traditional marriage above other family structures. On the other hand, if we argue that no
familial arrangement ought to be privileged over others, then there’s no reason
for us to privilege gay unions through the instrument of same-sex marriage.
By the GLBT lobby’s own admission, though, the push for SSM
isn’t about children; it’s about equal rights and equal protection under the
law. I don’t phrase it that way to make
it sound selfish; self-serving motives aren’t by definition bad or evil
motives, and pure selflessness is — sadly — hard to come by. No, the final segment of this outline must
deal with the equality issue.
But if there’s a constant to the first three segments, it’s
that children are at the heart of
marriage because reproduction is at the heart of sex. We need not blame these other family
structures for the degradation of traditional marriage. But it’s also clear that these alternative
structures, taken separately or together, can’t match the value of traditional
marriage. In this sense, calling a gay
union a marriage, and privileging it with the benefits reserved to traditional
marriage, wouldn’t make gay parenting any more effective than alternative
hetero structures. It could only
reinforce the fact that we have lost sight of marriage’s true function and
worth.
[*]
Properly understood, evolution poses no inherent conflict with equally understood
Christian teaching. Period; paragraph;
end of rabbit hole.
[†]
For a collection of relevant stats, see “Parenting Statistics” at
DadsWorld.com: http://www.dadsworld.com/parenting-statistics/importance-of-fathers.html.
[‡]
Silverstein, L.B., & Auerbach, C. F. (1999). Deconstructing the essential
father. American Psychologist, Vol. 54 No. 6, pp. 397-407. This paper was the basis for the 2010 National
Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study (NLLFS), which claimed to find that lesbians
made better parents than hetero or male gay couples.
[1]
Source: Population Reference Bureau, 2010, cited in Data Center, Annie E. Casey
Foundation Kids Count: http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/acrossstates/Rankings.aspx?ind=107.
[2]
Parker, Kim (2011, January 18). A Portrait
of Stepfamilies. Retrieved August
22, 2012 from Pew Research Center: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1860/survey-stepfamilies-demographics-opinions.
[3]
Kreider, R. M. & Elliott, D. B. (2009). The
Complex Living Arrangements of Children and Their Unmarried Parents.
Retrieved August 22, 2012 from US Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/complex-poster.pdf.
[4]
Bramlett, M. D., Radel, L. F., & Blumberg, S. J. (2007, February). The
Health and Well-being of Adopted Children.
Pediatrics, Vol. 119
Supplement No. 1, pp. 554-560. Retrieved
August 22, 2012 from Pediatrics: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/119/Supplement_1/S54.full.
[5]
Bramlett, M. D., & Blumberg, S. J. (2007, March). Family Structure and
Children’s Physical and Mental Health. Health
Affairs, Vol. 26 No. 2, pp. 549-558. Retrieved August 22, 2012 from Health
Affairs: http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/26/2/549.full.
