Democrats maintained control of the Senate in the 2022 mid-term elections, and as a result, they are holding a vote on a bill that will deprive children of relationships with their biological mother and/or biological father. Katy Faust, who we cited in our episode defending natural marriage, writes about it for the Daily Signal.
Here is the political news from her article:
Control of the U.S. Senate has been decided and now we hear that Democrats have scheduled a vote Wednesday on the misnamed Respect for Marriage Act, in hopes of legislatively cementing the mother- and father-loss that the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling endorsed seven years ago.
What’s the “Respect for Marriage Act”?
When it comes to issues like this, I trust the Alliance Defending Freedom to explain it, since they are the ones who go to the Supreme Court for these cases.
They say:
The so-called Respect for Marriage Act is a misnamed bill that expands not only what marriage means, but also who can be sued for disagreeing with the new meaning of marriage.
While proponents of the bill claim that it simply codifies the 2015 Obergefell decision, in reality it is an intentional attack on the religious freedom of millions of Americans with sincerely held beliefs about marriage.
The Respect for Marriage Act threatens religious freedom and the institution of marriage in multiple ways:
- It further embeds a false definition of marriage in the American legal fabric.
- It opens the door to federal recognition of polygamous relationships.
- It jeopardizes the tax-exempt status of nonprofits that exercise their belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman.
- It endangers faith-based social-service organizations by threatening litigation and liability risk if they follow their views on marriage when working with the government.
The truth is the Respect for Marriage Act does nothing to change the status of same-sex marriage or the benefits afforded to same-sex couples following Obergefell. It does much, however, to endanger religious freedom.
This is serious. If you are reading this, you should definitely contact your senators in Washington to make sure they vote against this legislation.
OK, so the first problem is religious liberty trouble, but this law is bad for children, too.
Let’s go back to Katy, writing for Daily Signal:
With Obergefell, the Supreme Court made gay marriage the law of the land and mandated that government institutions and processes could make no legal distinctions between adult romantic relationships.
Two married men cannot be treated any differently than a married man and woman. Indeed, from the perspective of adult emotional fulfillment, there may be no distinction.
But from the child’s perspective, these two couplings are polar opposites.
A child who is the product of a married man and woman receives the complementary developmental benefits of a male and female parent, the two adults who are (statistically) the safest, most connected to, and most invested in them, and are granted 100% of their biological identity.
A child raised by married men is deprived of the emotional and developmental benefit conferred exclusively by mothers, are being raised by at least one adult who statistically increases their risk of abuse and neglect, and are deprived at least 50% of their heritage and kinship network. In short, same-sex marriage requires child loss.
Many of us warned that making husbands and wives optional in marriage would result in mothers and fathers becoming optional in parenthood. The past seven years have validated those concerns.
In the name of nondiscrimination, the Supreme Court ruled in 2017 that two married women may be listed as parents on a child’s birth certificate, legally erasing the child’s father on the day of birth.
The old definition of marriage required opposite sexes work together to provide an environment for raising children. Not every couple has to have children, but every child born in a marriage has two biological parents nearby who have a biological interest in the child’s development.
Now that we have got rid of that male-female dynamic, people are just manufacturing kids with IVF and surrogacy, and those children DON’T have either their mom or dad nearby.
“Infertility” has been redefined so that same-sex couples can have their child “trappings” of marriage covered by insurance. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., proposed legislation that would use tax dollars to subsidize creation of intentionally motherless or fatherless children. Surrogacy tourism is on the rise, and entire industries are devoted to procuring custom-ordered motherless babies.
Her article also talks about how studies attempting to show that same-sex parenting is benign are problematic:
In 2016, after examining every single same-sex parenting study, researcher Walter Schumm concluded: “[S]tudies that show ‘no difference’ often used poor methodology (non-random samples, parental (self-) reporting vs. actual child outcomes, short duration, etc.) to reach their conclusions.”
Unsurprisingly when you employ the gold standard of the scientific method, “no difference” actually meant “significant difference.”
One such study found that compared to children with opposite-sex parents, children of same-sex parents:
- Experienced “definite” or “severe” emotional problems at a rate of 14.9% versus 5.5%.
- Were diagnosed with ADHD [attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder] at a rate of 15.5% versus 7.1%.
- Struggled with learning disabilities at a rate of 14.1% versus 8%.
- Received special education and mental health services at a rate of 17.8% versus 10.4%.
Perhaps the disparity is a result of the same-sex couple’s inability to marry, you argue. There’s data on that as well.
A review of outcomes for children raised by unmarried and married same-sex couples found that “above average child depressive symptoms rises from 50% to 88%; daily fearfulness or crying rises from 5% to 32%; grade point average declines from 3.6% to 3.4%; and child sex abuse by parent rises from zero to 38%.”
Turns out you can’t legislate away the benefit that children receive from being raised by their own mom or dad, even if you call it marriage.
I think that people have a vague feeling that there is something wrong with redefining marriage, but they don’t know what it is. It’s right there in plain sight. When you take away a mom from a child, the child loses something. When you take away a dad from a child, the child loses something. When the child cannot see a man and a woman working together to provide a stable, calm environment for the child, the child loses something. Children’s needs are more important than adult desires.
