David’s post, below, is evocative, beautiful, makes you think. And a few short words leapt out at me. He referred to “those who support gay rights but oppose gay marriage.”
Yes. That’s how to say it.
I support adoption by gay and lesbian persons, protections in housing and the job market, protections for gay and lesbian legal or bio parents to have equal access to child custody after a divorce or break up, and more. I subscribe to the continuum theory of sexuality, that some number of people are pretty much wholly gay or wholly straight and many of us fall somewhere in the middle, so there is some degree of choice about these matters but for some more than others. There is definitely an element there of just being what God made us.
But I don’t support legalizing same sex marriage. I believe, based on sensitive observation, personal experience, and what we know of social science so far (and with regard to children in gay and lesbian families in particular, we need to know more) that children experience a loss when their mother and father are not in their daily life. Sometimes the loss cannot be helped. Sometimes adults could have acted more responsibly. Whatever the case, saying that loss is OK, essentially saying, as a matter of law and public norms, that children don’t necessarily need their mother and father — as I believe legalizing same sex marriage requires us to do — I believe there is substantial reason to be concerned that this claim will hurt more children than it will help.
I support gay rights, but not gay marriage.
Do you?
Categories: Marriage
We agree!
I support your right to transportation, just not riding on this bus. I support your right to water, just not your right to drink from this fountain. I support your right to serve in the military, just not the US military. I support your right to work, just not at any establishment I might see you. I support your right to visit each other in the hospital, just not if it offends anyone. I support your right to live together, just not to protect each other. I support your right to give your inheritance to each other, just not tax free like heterosexual couples. I support your right to make medical decisions for each other, just not without pay thousands to attorneys. I support gay rights, just the ones I feel you deserve….and none of the ones that heterosexual have. Saying you “support” gay rights but don’t support gay marriage is hollow. It is empty and lacks reasoning. It is not a requirement of marriage to procreate, and you do not have to be married to procreate. If you want to use the “children” issue then how do gay parents protect their children? Many homes have single parents…should they be forced to give up their children? Many marriages end in divorce…should they be forced to stay together for the children? Your neighbors marriage is not what makes a home a bad environment…a bad home environment is a lack of love and commitment inside your own home. Stop looking for reasons to justify discrimination.
Dear Mookie: I appreciate what you say here, and the way you say it. I am paying attention, and I am thinking about your questions. May I ask you one question, too? Do you feel that children lacking either their father or their mother experience a loss?
Elizabeth, Regardless of how anyone feels about gays in general, we can look at the fact that reproductive rights are not restricted. Gay men and women can and do have children. This is something you cannot control. By denying equal protections of marriage for their children we have only put a stamp of moral disapproval on gay relationships. We have not addressed the situation. Denying gays marriage does not stop the collapse of any other marriage. It does not encourage heterosexual couple to stay together. I do not believe that children experience a “loss” when raised in a loving home. Mother and Father are also verbs. A child can be mothered and nurtured by a man and a child can be fathered and disciplined by a woman. Many children are raised in single parent homes and a parent must mother and father a child. Does that mean we should deny people who have children out of wedlock the right to future access to marriage because a step parent is not a natural parent? Denying gays the protection of marriage because children will somehow be missing a gender role model is like saying a child cannot wear a winter coat because he has 2 parents of the same sex. Denying access to the coat does not change the makeup of the family. In fact it only harms the child. It takes a village to raise a child. Role models come in all shapes and sizes, from grand parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, or neighbors. You say you support gay rights, if that is true step up and be that gender role model for a child, but don’t keep her parents from legally protecting each other and the child. It seems unreasonable to make gays live up to your ideal of marriage instead of focusing on what the real problems of society are. I think the benefits of gay marriage far out weigh the “loss” of a gender role.
Dear Mookie –
Thank you for writing me back. If it’s alright, I’d like to ask for clarification. You seemed to answer my question by talking about gender role models. I did not ask about gender role models, nor am I especially concerned about gender role models. I’m asking, do you, yourself, feel that children experience a loss when their own mother and/or father is not in their daily lives?
Thank you,
Elizabeth
Elizabeth, Children experience no more of a “loss” with gay parents than they do with heterosexual adopted parents. Yet we do not deny an infertile couple marriage rights for fear the adopted child will have some “loss”. I don’t believe any child would condemn their gay parents for caring for them and loving them, the same as adopted heterosexual parents. They may want to know who gave birth as a heritage journey, but that is no different than any adopted heterosexual couple either. It seems as though you want to shift the argument to a field that you feel gays cannot compete. That somehow gays do not qualify as parents. I will remind you what I stated previously, It is not a requirement of marriage to procreate nor must you be married to procreate. Gays are not infertile. I feel you may be insincere when you state you are for gay rights. Marriage currently has 1138 rights attached to the civil legal contract. I believe that if you looked at each of all of those 1138 you would be very much for them. Yet somehow draw the line at using the word marriage. If you are for all the rights the only possible reason to not use the word marriage is to retain the ability to discriminate. To be able to separate gay couples from heterosexual couples. Marriage protects children. Children sometimes have gay parents. Why should those children go unprotected? Why should those relationships go without equal protections?
Mookie, I’m afraid that two gay men can *never* have children together. This a simple fact. They can *raise* children together, but those children will not be both of theirs. They will be the children of one, or the other, or neither.
In the case of adoption, a child already exists who needs a home. If the home that is found for him is with a gay couple, or an infertile couple, then so be it.
But there’s a big difference between adoption, and choosing to deliberately create a child who will not be raised by one of his parents, as in donor-conception.
A question to ponder: What exactly is the point of the government/society giving special privileges to “marriage” when there are so many different kinds of loving (and not so loving) family arrangements that could equally benefit from these privileges. Isn’t it discriminating not to extend all these benefits to all of the different kinds of family forms? (I will answer my own question – yes it is) What does “marriage” have to do with sex? What does “marriage” have to do with the number two? What does “marriage” have to do with children?
Is Beyond Marriage (http://www.beyondmarriage.org/) where we are ultimately headed? Perhaps.
I think the debate should focus MUCH less on adult’s sexual relationships and family choices and MUCH, MUCH more on the best interests of children – starting with the banning of anonymity, regulation of repro-tech and the acknowledgment that biological mothers and fathers do very much matter.
Personally, I define marriage in the traditional way – it IS discriminating by nature – because if marriage means anything then it really means nothing – but that’s just me.
Hi Mookie –Do you feel children experience a loss when they do not have their own mom and dad in their everyday lives? I’m asking about what is, to me, a basic premise. I’m wondering whether you and I agree or disagree on the premise that children experience a loss when their own mother or father is not in their every day lives.
Thanks,
Elizabeth
Tom, reproductive rights are not regulated. It is impossible to tell certain people (gays) that they cannot reproduce and that straight couples can make those choices unconditionally. We must deal with reality. As for 2 men never reproducing, you are incorrect. Technology already exists. They can remove the DNA from an egg, and replace it with the DNA of one of the males. Like when they clone. Then they fertilize it with the sperm of the other male. Making the baby genetically the child of both men. Again there is virtually no way to control reproduction rights of others. You may not like it, but it is reality. I am amazed where you chose to draw the line. Gays do not accidentally have children. They very carefully plan and chose to have children. Unlike some heterosexuals that have an accidental children. They can be poor and unprepared to handle parenthood. Making for a miserable childhood. Gays also don’t have abortions to end an accidental pregnancy. All in all gays are more prepared to handle parenthood. That’s not to say they make better parents, just that they have thought long and hard about it.
Elizabeth, again many children grow up in different families. What is best for the child is to be raised in a loving nurturing environment. I fail to see the difference between a gay couple adopting a child and heterosexual couple adopting when it comes to providing a good home. You yourself said that gender roles did not matter. Nature has not taken anything from us, that science has not given back. Just because they are gay does not mean they are sterile. You can ask any adopted child who their mother or father is, they will always say it is their adopted one. If you ask a child with gay parents the same and the answer will also be their adopted gay parents. Love does not discriminate.
What would you say if someone wanted to limit your reproduction rights?
Karen, How can allowing 2 loving consenting adults to marry mean nothing by allowing more people to marry? Marriage is a legal contract. It protects the individual partnership that signed the legal contract. How does the gay couple down the street being able to make medical decisions for each other or inheriting ones estate affect your marriage? How does it make marriage less valuable? Once gays can marry will you decide you don’t need to inherit your husbands property, or sign for emergency surgery? Why is it that gays protecting each other threatens you?
Mookie, if you think it’s a good idea for two men to have a child together via DNA manipulation then you and I have far bigger disagreements than are ever going to be resolved.
To clarify what I think you are saying Mookie in response to Elizabeth’s question: “Do you feel that children lacking either their father or their mother experience a loss?”, is that it doesn’t matter? I just want to make sure I am understanding your response.
Dear Mookie –
I’m with Tom; I’m afraid you’ve lost me.
Scientists in Japan created a mouse with two mothers and no father. To do so, they created over 450 embryos of which 370 were implanted and ten were born alive. Only one survived to adulthood; the others died of a range of birth defects. See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/04/0421_040421_whoneedsmales.html
“First do no harm” flies out the window at this point.
For more on my approach to this, see my report “The Revolution in Parenthood: The Emerging Global Clash Between Adult Rights and Children’s Needs.”
http://www.americanvalues.org/parenthood/parenthood.htm
Mookie:
If “marriage” was only about extending legal benefits to adults, then there really is no reason to call this “marriage”. It would be a civil union or domestic partnership, which I do believe should offer those legal protections and benefits.
But the word “marriage”, to many people in our society and culture is specifically male and female because sperm and eggs make children, fathers and mothers. Mothers and fathers (of the social AND genetic kind) who commit to each other and to their offspring matter to the children. And the studies are beginning to show that even genetic fathers who don’t commit to their children or the mothers of their children still very much matter to those children.
One of the legal concerns that I have about how the redefinition of “marriage” effects the redefinition of parenthood, was recently addressed in this article:
http://mydd.com/2010/5/16/iowa-department-of-public-health-having-trouble-with-marriage-equality
“It is a biological impossibility for a woman to be a biological father of a child, yet Plaintiffs contend that in all cases of children born to lesbian couples the non-birthing spouse should be entered on the birth certificate as the father with no notice provided to the biological father. While these Plaintiffs may have conceived using an anonymous sperm donor, clearly not all lesbian couples conceive in that manner, and the legal rights and duties of these biological fathers and their children remain in limbo unless an adoption has occurred.” [...]
The state also acknowledges that there may be instances in which the presumption of paternity may result in the wrong male being listed on the birth certificate — such as in cases of artificial insemination or marital infidelity. Those instances, the state argues, can and do occur, but in the case of same-sex couples applying such a presumption of legitimacy to the child “would in every case result in naming a parent on a birth certificate who has no biological connection to the child.”
One of the reforms that I am advocating for is to honor biological parenthood over intent parenthood by treating/handling “donor conception” as a form of adoption requiring the biological father/mother to formally relinquish their parenthood responsibilities and requiring a non-biological/genetic “parent” to formally adopt the child – no matter their “marriage” status. I am not a lawyer of course – perhaps a lawyer would like to comment on this?
[...] told him about our new blog. He visited, found this post, and wrote me how shocked he was that he knew someone that he thought he respected who felt this [...]
Mookie, I would have to agree with Elizabeth.
I have family that is “happy”, and I love them and their partner very much. But I don’t think that they should have a child together because of implications to the child.
As a donor conceived offspring I grew up in a nurturing environment but it didn’t help my kinship losses.
The village argument lacks substance because in the village there was always your biological mother and father, you knew who they were and had access to them, and them to you.
Gay people can’t reproduce because they lack the biology to do so, very simple. So it is possible to tell 2 gays that they can’t reproduce. That will never change in the traditional sense, no matter what medical technology brings us.
And as has already been mentioned the sensationalism of media often masks the real story behind these technological breakthroughs. Dolly the sheep died prematurely due to complications of her cloning but not too many people are aware of that fact.
Mookie, we can certainly control reproductive technology and prohibit genetic engineering. You are simply wrong that we have to allow two men to hire a lab to make a baby for them. Just as we don’t have to allow cloning of human babies, or genetic engineering of babies, we don’t have to allow same-sex conception or transgender conception. All those things should be prohibited by a simple federal law that limits conception of children to the union of a man and a woman’s sperm and egg, and outlaws attempting to create a person any other way, and imposes million dollar fines and twenty year jail terms for all involved in the attempt.
Apparently you would oppose that law, but think of how it would enable a constitutional distinction between marriage and civil unions, because it would create a difference in rights of same-sex and both-sex couples. With such a distinction, CU’s could pass in all fifty states and be federally recognized as marriages.