Tag Archives: Gay Marriage

Polemics

Mark Regnerus: will same-sex marriage hurt the institution of marriage?

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From the Public Discourse.

Introduction:

Lots of changes in marriage have, and will continue to, come about. What should we expect next? That’s the question Liza Mundy pursues in her cover story in this month’s Atlantic Monthly. “The Gay Guide to Wedded Bliss” explores the ways in which same-sex marriages may very well school those of us who have already entered—or someday will enter—the hallowed and embattled institution. Mundy is confident that such unions “could help haul matrimony more fully into the 21st century,” and that real influence is possible. This is in stark contrast to the politically tailored message that same-sex marriage will change nothing.

“What if same-sex marriage does change marriage, but primarily for the better,” she wonders aloud. How would this work? By giving us “another image of what marriage can be,” she asserts. What sort of image? According to Mundy, it’s the cardinal virtue of equality, or egalitarianism. Sameness and fairness.

Before we prematurely declare this image worth mirroring, consider for a few moments the side effects Mundy identifies on the way to the egalitarian utopia she praises. Three in particular stand out.

He continues by going over the three issues, but this one is the one that everyone needs to know:

Mundy first explores the instability—or “dynamism,” if you’re an optimist—of lesbian relationships. Don’t want a divorce, Mundy asks? “Don’t marry a woman,” she warns. University of British Columbia economist Marina Adshade concurs. The author of a new book—Dollars and Sex—on the fascinating economics of relationships, Adshade notes the dismal science around breaking up in Britain, where “62% of civil union dissolutions (i.e., divorces) in the UK are between women despite the fact that lesbian relationships only represent 44 percent of civil partnerships in that country.” The greater instability, she reasons, is simply about gender differences in relationship preferences, and nothing more. I tend to agree.

The elevated breakup rate among lesbian couples has been an open secret for a long while. Even NYU sociologist Judith Stacey—no fan of marriage in general—noted it back in 2000 in small, nonrandom studies of upper-middle-class, educated white lesbian parents, demographic factors historically associated with stability rather than dissolution. Stacey and her colleague Tim Biblarz attributed the instability to, among other things, the participants’ “high standards of equality.” In Mundy’s words, “women are just picky, and when you have two women, you have double the pickiness.”

Writing in Slate last year, June Thomas highlights this predilection toward shorter, intense relationships, and wonders whether the marital shoe actually fits:

I’ve noticed that my visceral anti-marriage animus is particularly strong when I hear twentysomething lesbians talking about their wives and fiancees. Are they really going to mate for life, like swans in sensible shoes? That seems attractive at 35, but at 25 it’s positively Amish. Worst of all, it threatens the continued evolution of a talent perfected over the millennia as our relationships have gone unrecognized by church and state: a gift for breaking up. Lesbians tend to bond intensely and often.

The pattern is evident in the Netherlands as well as Norway and Sweden, where Mundy notes that the risk of breakups for female partnerships more than doubles that found in male unions. The actual study she cites estimates that in Sweden 30 percent of female marriages are likely to end in divorce within six years of formation, compared with 20 percent for male marriages and 13 percent for heterosexual ones. The study’s authors suggested that lesbian couples may be more “sociodemographically homogamous” than other couples, a fancy term for “too similar,” and speculate that this may be conducive to a high level of dynamism, but perhaps not to the kind of inertia that has long been a hallmark of marital stability.

Using nationally representative data on American relationships, Stanford demographer Michael Rosenfeld reported at the 2012 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association that lesbian couples report higher relationship satisfaction alongside higher break-up rates. The greater comparative instability among lesbian couples persists even after a lengthy series of control variables is included, including the presence of children.

Did you know that lesbian relationships are far more unstable than straight relationships? Children raised in such relationships would already be raised without a father, and without being able to observe the interaction of a man and a woman in marriage. But they are not likely to have even the stability of having their mother and the other woman raising the child. Lest you think that the birth mother would get custody, be aware that judges are assigning parental rights to the non-maternal woman in these cases. Is that fair to the child?

News

Natural marriage defenders defeat redefinition of marriage in Illinois

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The National Organization for Marriage has the story.

Excerpt:

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) today celebrated the failure of legislation to come to a vote late this evening in Illinois seeking to redefine marriage, thus preserving marriage in the state as the union of one man and one woman. The bill’s House sponsor, Rep. Greg Harris, announced this evening that he did not have the votes to pass the measure and would not bring the legislation to a vote. Assuming this is the case, the bill is thus dead until the fall when the Legislature reconvenes for a veto session.

“This effort to redefine marriage in Illinois was one of the most fiercely contested legislative battles in the country this year,” said Brian Brown, NOM’s president. “This is a great victory for our allies and supporters, as well as Illinois families who have worked tirelessly with us to preserve marriage in Illinois. We are gratified that our collective hard work has paid off in this stunning victory.”

Illinois is a heavily Democratic state and has been widely considered by the gay marriage lobby as virtually certain to redefine marriage. Backers of the legislation have frequently claimed, falsely, that they had the votes in hand to pass the legislation (SB 10). President Obama had urged his former colleagues to vote to redefine marriage, and it was a top priority of both Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Governor Pat Quinn. It even was supported by a former Republican Chairman who was forced to resign from his post for advocating a position contrary to Republican principles.

“So much for the inevitability of gay marriage,” said Brian Brown. “With a coalition that included strong support from the African American community as well as so many others throughout the state, we did what nobody in the intelligentsia thought was possible. This is a huge victory at a pivotal time, and totally undercuts the lie that somehow same-sex marriage is inevitable.”

NOM spent well over $125,000 on grassroots activities to defeat the bill, but praised others in the coalition for securing the victory.

Good news for those of us who support the idea that natural marriage is the best arrangement for protecting the needs of children and the interests of society as a whole. Illinois is one of the bluest states in the country, but it’s nice to see that NOM was able to pull together enough people to get this legislation defeated.

News

Amy Hall: Will right and wrong always be obvious?

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Here’s a post from Amy Hall of Stand to Reason that will cause you to think.

She writes:

A person doesn’t have to know the Bible in order to know right and wrong, right? Well, yes and no. It all depends on what value system is being fed to that person by society. A society saturated in a Christian understanding of morality will reinforce that understanding, even among its atheists. A society without the background of Christianity behind it will enforce a different understanding of morality. Atheists have the mistaken idea that objective morality is simply obvious to everyone, but the truth is, it’s not. All one has to do is look back through history (and in other cultures today) to see that this is so. Our damaged consciences are malleable.

Is murdering your child right or wrong? Ask these mothers in India, where it’s commonplace in some areas to let your girl die if you prefer a boy. Ask pre-Christian cultures. This is why I think atheists are being far too hasty when they argue that Christianity is expendable—unnecessary for a good society. If we see atrocious moral crimes in cultures not influenced by Christianity, we have no reason to think our current standards will continue in a culture that rejects Christianity.

[…]As I’ve written before, intrinsic human value has to be taught. A society’s view of the human person and its value will affect what that society views as being moral: We are just animals. Imperfect animals aren’t worth the trouble. Therefore, there’s a case to be made for killing them rather than caring for them. That conclusion reasonably follows from the non-Christian premise. As Christianity fades in influence and a different view of the human person gains acceptance, don’t expect that our society will continue to recognize that conclusion to be immoral. At that point, people will still consider themselves to be perfectly moral…but only because they’re judging themselves by a different standard of morality.

It’s difficult for us to recognize the depth our depravity when “everyone else is doing it.” Ask Gosnell’s nurses.

I like this post because it connects an apologetic concern to real life. This concern about right and wrong isn’t merely theoretical. It’s practical.

Think about the abortion really means, in practice. Basically, you have two-grown ups who are engaging in a recreational activity. In the course of that activity, they create a new innocent life that is distinct from their lives. A new human genetic code. This new person is weaker than either of her two parents. And her life imposes certain obligations on them. She needs food, and safety, and care. Like a baby bird who has fallen out of her tree. But when there is no God, there is no purpose to putting your needs second, and someone else’s first. You could do it, if it makes you feel happy. But having to take care of a newborn doesn’t normally make people who are have risky recreational sex happy. After all, people who have recreational sex instead of procreative sex are looking for recreation not responsibility.

And so what do these powerful people do to the new life they have created? Do they let this new life impose obligations on them? Do they let this new life lower the amount of happiness they themselves will have? No. They kill it. For the strong to refrain from killing the weak when the weak impose obligations on them, there has to be a design for human nature that makes moral obligations and selflessness rational, instead of merely pleasurable. Because we all know that being saddled with a newborn baby is not fun. There has to be something more going on than the pursuit of pleasure if the baby is going to live.

Similarly with no-fault divorce and gay marriage. First, we enacted no-fault divorce, which weakened the stability of marriage so that many children now grow up fatherless.  No one is careful about marriage anymore in order to provide children with what they need. Instead, we just “marry for love” and then dissolve it when it doesn’t feel good anymore. Same-sex marriage is the same thing again. The voluntarily removal of the biological father or mother from a child’s life. And why? Because the needs of children don’t matter. They’re smaller than we are, so we don’t care about them.

Is there anything more going on in our society other than the seeking of pleasure? I think that the seeking of “happiness” instead of goodness is now the dominant view. No one wants to be responsible for anyone else. No one wants to be obligated to anyone else. We all seem to want to be free of feeling bad. If we do wrong, we don’t want to be judged or reminded about what we did. If we hurt someone else, then we don’t want to have to make restitution for what we did. We try to hand our children off to strangers so that we don’t have to teach them ourselves. We don’t want to learn anything that might make us feel obligated to do the right thing instead of what we feel like doing. Other people are  just there to give us pleasure. It’s sad.

All of these concepts had meaning in a Judeo-Christian society that encouraged marriage and families. But those days are drifting away. Once upon a time, we had a social consensus that what mattered was doing the right thing – what we were designed to do. And it was OK to not feel good and to not feel happy, if you were doing the right thing. Happiness wasn’t the main goal of life. Now things are different.