Here are 10 from the Family Research Council. (H/T Dangerous Idea)
The list:
- Children hunger for their biological parents.
- Children need fathers.
- Children need mothers.
- Evidence on parenting by same-sex couples is inadequate.
- Evidence suggests children raised by homosexuals are more likely to experience gender and sexual disorders.
- Same-sex “marriage” would undercut the norm of sexual fidelity within marriage.
- Same-sex “marriage” would further isolate marriage from its procreative purpose.
- Same-sex “marriage” would further diminish the expectation of paternal commitment.
- Marriages thrive when spouses specialize in gender-typical roles.
- Women and marriage domesticate men.
The eleventh one they missed is that a husband’s leadership is beneficial to a woman because it gives her direction and balances her emotional highs and lows. It’s not politically correct to say what women need from men in marriage, but it’s true. Just like men, women have weaknesses that can be corrected and compensated for by the opposite sex. The twelfth one they missed is that same-sex marriage is incompatible with religious liberty, as recent court cases have shown.
Anyway, here are the details on #7:
7. Same-sex “marriage” would further isolate marriage from its procreative purpose.
Traditionally, marriage and procreation have been tightly connected to one another. Indeed, from a sociological perspective, the primary purpose that marriage serves is to secure a mother and father for each child who is born into a society. Now, however, many Westerners see marriage in primarily emotional terms.
Among other things, the danger with this mentality is that it fosters an anti-natalist mindset that fuels population decline, which in turn puts tremendous social, political, and economic strains on the larger society. Same-sex marriage would only further undercut the procreative norm long associated with marriage insofar as it establishes that there is no necessary link between procreation and marriage.
This was spelled out in the Goodridge decision in Massachusetts, where the majority opinion dismissed the procreative meaning of marriage. It is no accident that the countries that have legalized or are considering legalizing same-sex marriage have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world. For instance, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Canada have birthrates that hover around 1.6 children per woman–well below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1.
I chose this one because I wanted to comment.
I think it’s common today for men and women to not put the production and development of children at the center of their marriage plans. They are not working a financial plan to prepare for children. They are not developing the skills they need to mentor and nurture others. They are resentful of any demands placed on them that restrict their freedom. And they want marriage to be about fun and self-fulfillment. This is not compatible with children, however. And that’s the point. The more we redefine marriage to be about adult selfishness – first with no-fault divorce, then with same-sex marriage – the less emphasis there is on the pre-marital preparations for making and raising children.
If you want to know what you should be doing with your life before marriage, then think of the process of having children and raising children. Think of how much it costs, what skills you will need, and how your character has to be trained. Many of the things that you see young people doing these days – binge drinking, hooking up, running up debt, cohabitating, avoiding things that are hard to do – are not preparing their character for the responsibilities, expectations and obligations that people face when they have children.
Suppose you have a friend who is not good at driving a manual transmission car or not good at weight lifting or not good at doing apologetics – are you able to help them do it, or are you incapable of taking responsibility? If you can’t take responsibility for helping an adult, you certainly can’t take responsibility for a child – children are much less capable. Now are you able to say no to doing things for your own happiness? If you are not able to give up your own happiness – and this is a thing that gets easier as you practice more – then you’re liable to look on your duties to your children with resentment – that you are being “manipulated” into it. You don’t suddenly learn how to put up with children just by walking down the aisle at a wedding. It takes training to get good at being generous with your time, money and effort. It takes practice.
In fact, a smart man who is courting a woman would be trying to get her to practice the behaviors of a wife and mother before he marries her. And the same for a smart women who is being courted by a man. For example, a man has to comfortable giving things to the people around him – he can’t be resentful about it. Even when he doesn’t particularly like those people, he has to focus on their needs, think about where he is trying to lead them, and then work a plan to provide for their needs so they get where he wants them to go. If a man doesn’t like the feel of caring for others who may not be grateful – or who may even hate him – then he should take steps to prepare his character to learn to like it. When a little kid says “I hate you!” to his father, who is paying thousands of dollars for him to grow up, it’s not an easy thing. Always being selfish before you marry is not good preparation for what children will demand of you. This is something I struggle with personally – being content to invest in others who turn out to be ungrateful, and even destructive.
So I think this focus on parenting is a wonderful way for people to work backwards from the goal (healthy, happy, successful children) to the interim tasks and required skills. It helps us to get away from thinking that marriage is about us – our happiness, our needs. Unfortunately, not everyone who runs around telling people that they want to get married “some day” is really taking steps to prepare for marriage and parenting right now. Marriage is a commitment to self-sacrificially love another person – however much they change – for the rest of their lives, and to love any children who appear, too. People don’t like to read about marriage and think it through. But just saying “I want to marry someday” is not a proof of preparation for marriage, as the divorce rate attests. To get married, you have to train yourself to think of others, and to do hard things that don’t make you feel “free” or “happy”. There is no path to a successful marriage that does not involve responsibilities, expectations and obligations for husband and wife. It’s not “happily ever after”. It’s hard work!
WINTERY KNIGHT 
So, what happens when married homosexuals divorce and have a(or) child(ren)? Who gets custody and/ are either of them willing to take responsibility for the further care of the child(dren)? What happens to a boy when both his fathers neglect nor want him? I can’t even imagine the psychological problems that will erupt….
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It’s going to really suck for the kids. And homosexual relationships tend to have elevated instability – especially lesbian couples.
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It strikes me that all of your arguments miss the point. The issue isn’t whether homosexuality is harmful or whether children suffer when raised in homosexual households. That’s not the real gay marriage issue. The gay marriage issue is whether the tax and hundreds of other legal rules should be different for gay/straight couples, whether gay couples should be able to provide health coverage for their partners, and whether, when one is sick, the other can visit in the hospital.
I get it that you don’t like homosexuals. But they are people, and Jesus tells us to love them. Why do you rant at them and try to make their already difficult lives harder?
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I’m not sure if you understood the post. I am making a public policy argument not expressing my feelings about individuals or groups. The fact is that I have public policy concerns with same-sex marriage, not only the ones about children, but also with religious liberty and conscience rights, what children will be taught about marriage in public schools, etc.
Naturally, I cannot present an entire argument in a blog post. I was trying to make a point about how the requirements of marriage are driven by the needs of the children, and those needs become obligations to those who conceive the children. In short, I was favoring the needs of children over and above the needs of adults. Children do best with their biological mothers and fathers. I understand that gay adults want to raise children. But that would be like me wanting to own a cat and then not wanting to feed it meat. Children have needs, and that should be the basis of our public policy around marriage.
I also oppose no-fault divorce for the same reason. Are you going to say that Jesus loves divorce as well as homosexuality to me? Or maybe you would disregard all the studies showing how fatherlessness harms children, and instead say that I hate women and men who want to divorce? Do you oppose no-fault divorce laws? To me, those laws are identical to same-sex marriage laws in the sense that they redefine marriage to make it more comfortable for adults, but less performant for children. So where do you stand on that, and do you think that people like me who oppose such laws do so because we hate women? Do you further think that opposition for such laws signify a lack of concern for Jesus, who explicitly opposes frivolous divorce, as well as explicitly opposing gay marriage?
Now having said that, I am open to discussing permission of some legal concessions for homosexual unions, for example hospital visitation, and so on. But I oppose same-sex marriage as public policy.
I like these thoughts by my friend Lindsay (from Lindsay’s Logic blog).
She says:
Loving people does not mean that we refuse to disagree with behaviors that them to cause harm to themselves or to others, and that’s what we have to have a conversation about when we debate public policy.
Would you be open to reading a book on the arguments for same-sex marriage?
Here’s one I greatly admired by three excellent academics, including a professor from Princeton University named Robert P. George:
A collection of academic essays on public policy issues around marriage:
An anthology of scholarly studies on same-sex parenting:
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Douglas, I was also struck by the fact that the arguments in the article all concerned research on family dynamics rather than the procedural basis of marriage law. However, I think taking marriage as being about access to tax and legal benefits is beside the point I will make below.
If as under the current US Constitutional law controversy, marriage proscriptions are subject to a higher level of scrutiny due to the concern of discrimination, then I think the case can be made that government has compelling interests in recognizing only man-woman pairings. One interest lies not in securing tax and legal benefits for the couple’s sake, but in keeping the man and woman together for the sake of any children that may naturally arise from the union. The beneficiaries of this contractual constrainment include the children produced, and society at large.
Any other pairings or familial arrangements with children should be entitled to enter into similar constraining contractual arrangments, but if it is not between a man and a woman then it is a different kind of arrangement that will not require the same level of attention from the courts. For typically a man and a man will not end up fathering eight children and then grow tired of childrearing and each other. But it is not uncommon for this to happen to a man and woman.
This distinction is not arbitrary or based on animus. It is based on human nature, and is a humane solution and recognition of practical realities that Christians and any persons of good will–applying nonreligious reasoning–can recognize and support.
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WK, If you respond to Mr. Ell (and I see you already have), I hope you can do so more kindly than he has to you. To say that “That’s not the real gay marriage issue” is, at the very least, dismissive of a real and even critical argument. At worst, it’s pure balderdash.
And then he throws in a personal attack, “I get it that you don’t like homosexuals” that is false and diminishes both the point he is trying to make and the chance of positive dialogue.
Kudos for continuing to work so hard on important issues.
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I replied! I hope you approve of my reply. He is a super-smart guy, so I wanted to give him a super-smart reply. The best I could do in 15 minutes!
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It goes to show that super-smart does not automatically mean super charitable. Nice work, WK.
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Allow me to continue my efforts to have a constructive debate. In my law office there is a gay attorney who has a partner (I think they are marrried). Together they have adopted an adorable black baby girl.
Now let’s start with the facts that some people are homosexual and that homosexual people live with homosexual people, and that many of those households have children living in them. What is served by saying that those people aren’t entitled to the legal benefits of marriage? We’re talking civil marriage here, so let’s leave out please religious issues. Would you say this young girl, who would almost certainly be living in a group foster home if they had not adopted her, is being harmed?
I know I’m not going to convince you but that’s how I see it. If you don’t want comments of this type I won’t make them again.
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In my humble opinion it seems that there is a mixing of two issues here.
One is: Should gay people be allowed to adopt kids.
The other is: Should gay people be allowed to marry.
While I would argue that gay people are not the best to take care of kids surely you are not saying that by not having a certificate of marriage from the state that child is now going to have a lower standard of care from those gay people. Why are these connected in your mind? Both can adopt the child today.
The other argument you are trying to slip in here is: Well she would be better off adopted by gay people then if she was still in foster care. But that’s a completely different issue than if gay people should be married. Surely you see that.
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The problem is not comments defending your view. The problem is dismissal of arguments presented against your view and assuming they have been offered out of animus.
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Robert P. George has made the critical point in the book mentioned above (What Is Marriage?) and reiterated it in a follow up with Patrick Lee called Conjugal Union. Homosexual behavior for sexual gratification is not conjugal and therefore not inherently interesting to the state. Having a friendship or loving someone isn’t by itself a reason to consider the relationship suitable for the category and special considerations of marriage.
Ryan T, Anderson has been another illuminating contributor to this debate testifying before the Supreme Court as well as having been a co-author with Robert P. George.
As a civil issue it has to do with the coherence of what we mean by the word “marriage”. The defining characteristic of being, at least in principle, capable of conjugality rules out same sex couples but does not exclude polygamy, child marriage or incest. Of course, other considerations might.
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