Tag Archives: GLBT

News

How would legalizing gay marriage affect your marriage?

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Here is a comprehensive backgrounder published in National Review.

It answers the following questions in detail:

  1. Why focus on opposing the recognition of same-sex partnerships as marriages? Aren’t widespread divorce and single parenting the real problems?
  2. Why worry so much about policy?
  3. Why wouldn’t you want to recognize committed, monogamous same-sex relationships?
  4. How would recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages hurt marriage?
  5. Isn’t the fight against redefining marriage a losing battle?
  6. Why limit freedom in the name of sectarian values?

Here’s the detail on number 4:

Recognizing same-sex relationships as marriages requires replacing one basic vision of what marriage is (in our law, and hence in our mores, and hence in practice) with another vision of marriage. The new vision is one that equates marriage with the much broader category of companionship. Companionate bonds have great personal value, but they can’t ground in a principled way the norms that set marriage apart.

To the extent that marriage is misunderstood, it will be harder to see the point of its norms, to live by them, and to encourage their strict observance. And this, besides making any remaining restrictions on marriage arbitrary, will damage the many cultural and political goods that first got the state involved in marriage. Here is a summary of those goods.

Real marital fulfillment. No one acts in a vacuum. We all take cues from cultural norms, many of which are shaped by the law. To form a true marriage, one must freely choose it. And to choose marriage, one must have at least a rough idea of what it is. The revisionist view would harm people (especially future generations) by distorting their idea of what marriage is. It would teach that marriage is essentially about emotional fulfillment and cohabitation, without any inherent connections to bodily union or procreation and family life. As individuals internalized this view, their ability to realize genuine marital union would diminish. This would be bad in itself, since marital union is good in itself. It would be the subtlest but also the primary harm of redefining marriage; other harms include the effects of misconstruing marriage.

Spousal well-being. Marriage tends to make spouses healthier, happier, and wealthier. But what does this is marriage, especially through its distinctive norms of permanence, exclusivity, and orientation to family life. As the state’s redefinition of marriage makes these norms harder to understand, justify, and live by, spouses will enjoy less marital stability and less of the psychological and material advantages that flow from it.

Children’s well-being. If same-sex relationships are recognized, not only will the stabilizing norms of marriage be undermined, but the notion that men and women tend to bring different gifts to parenting will not be reinforced by any civil institution. Redefining marriage would soften the social pressures and lower the incentives — already diminished these past few decades — for husbands to stay with their wives and children and for men and women to marry before having children. All this would harm children’s development into happy, productive, upright adults.

Friendship. Misunderstandings about marriage will speed our society’s drought of deep friendship, with special harm to the unmarried. The state will have defined marriage mainly by degree or intensity — as offering the most of what makes any relationship valuable: shared emotion and experience. It thus will become less acceptable to seek (and harder to find) emotional and spiritual intimacy in nonmarital friendships. Instead of being seen as different from marriage and therefore distinctively appealing, they will be regarded simply as less. Only the conjugal view, which gives marriage a definite orientation to bodily union and family life, preserves a horizon richly populated with many types of association and affection, each with its own scale of depth and specific forms of presence and care.

Religious liberty. As the conjugal view of marriage comes to be seen as irrational (“bigoted”), freedom to express and live by it will be curbed. Several states already have forced Catholic Charities to choose between giving up its adoption services and placing children with same-sex partners, against Catholic principles. Some defenders of marriage have been fired or denied employment or educational and career opportunities for publicizing their views. If marriage is redefined, believing what virtually every human society once believed about marriage — that it is a male-female union — will be seen increasingly as a malicious prejudice, to be driven to the margins of culture. The consequences for observant Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others are becoming apparent.

Limited government. The state is (or should be) a supporting actor in our lives, not a protagonist. It exists to create the conditions under which individuals and our freely formed communities can thrive. The most important free community, on which all others depend, is the marriage-based family; and the conditions for its thriving include the accommodations and pressures that marriage law provides for couples to stay together. Redefining marriage will further erode marital norms, thrusting the state further into leading roles for which it is poorly suited: parent and discipliner to the orphaned, provider to the neglected, and arbiter of disputes over custody, paternity, and visitation. As the family weakens, our welfare and correctional bureaucracies grow.

People on both  sides of this issue should be able to articulate the reasons for each point of view. The article is a good place to find the case for natural marriage.

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News

Frank Turek: is “equality” the issue in the same-sex marriage debate?

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Here’s part one in a two-part series.

Excerpt:

Here is my thesis: Marriage between a man and a woman is the foundation of civilized society and should be the only sexual relationship promoted by the government. That is the essence of the Marriage Protection Amendment, and its passage in no way violates anyone’s civil rights.

In order to see this, we need to ask, “For what primary purpose is the government involved in marriage at all?” It’s not because two people love one another or to make individuals “happy.” The main reason most governments promote the union of a man and woman exclusively is because only the committed union of a man and a woman perpetuates and stabilizes society. I’ll call this union “natural marriage” because of the natural biological compatibility of male and female bodies and to differentiate it from same-sex marriage.

Here are four ways natural marriage perpetuates and stabilizes society:

1. Natural Marriage procreates and provides the most stable, balanced and nurturing environment for children. While not every marriage results in children, the only marriages than can procreate are those between a man and a woman. And statistically, children and the country do best when kids are brought up in a biological two-parent home. Children from intact natural marriage homes are:

a. Seven times less likely to live in poverty

b. Six times less likely to commit suicide

c. Less than half as likely to commit crime

d. Less than half as likely to become pregnant out of wedlock

e. Develop better academically and socially

f. Are healthier physically and emotionally when they reach adulthood

This makes sense in light of the fact that men and women are different and parent differently—each sex brings unique abilities and role modeling that aids in child development. While single parents do amazing work, every child starts with and deserves a mother and a father. If you deny this, then which parent is dispensable?

2. Natural Marriage civilizes men and focuses them on productive pursuits such as procreating and caring for their family. Studies invariably show that marriage reduces crime. (How many married men do you know who roam neighborhoods in street gangs?) Civilization requires civilized men, and natural marriage does that well.

3. Natural Marriage protects women from being used and abandoned by uncommitted men. Women often postpone or give up their careers to have children, and Natural Marriage protects them and their children from deadbeat dads.

4. Natural Marriage lowers social costs to government and thus taxpayers. One major reason for our soaring deficit is the breakdown of the two-parent family. When the family breaks down, government expenditures swell to deal with increased crime and poverty. Increased taxation also slows the economy. That’s one reason why you cannot bifurcate the social and financial issues. They are inescapably connected.

In short, when our natural marriages are strong, our society is strong. When they are weak, our society is weak. That means all in our society—even those who never get married—benefit immensely from government promotion of natural marriage.

He is promoting fusionism there, which is my view of economics. Social and fiscal issues are tightly coupled and mutually reinforcing.

Here’s part two of two.

Excerpt:

But why not promote both natural marriage and same sex marriage?

Several reasons, but I can only briefly mention three.

First, same-sex marriage would make the institution of marriage genderless. There would not be two forms of marriage—natural and same-sex—but marriage legally and culturally would become a genderless institution about merely coupling. In Massachusetts it’s Partner A and Partner B. In other words, same-sex marriage divorces children from marriage. The law is a great teacher, and same-sex marriage teaches that marriage is about adult desires, not the needs of children. Marriage should be more about what children need than what adults want. If marriage isn’t about the needs of children, then what institution is about children and the next generation? So homosexuality really isn’t the issue here—making marriage genderless and childless is.

Second, since natural marriage and same-sex marriage are different behaviors with different outcomes they should not be equated legally. To see this, consider two questions.

Question 1: What would be the benefits to society if everyone lived faithfully in natural marriage? It would benefit everyone in society because it would result in a massive reduction in poverty, crime, child abuse, welfare, and government spending.

Question 2: What would be the benefits to society if everyone lived faithfully in same-sex marriage? It would be the end of society itself.

Now, I am not suggesting that a law would fully achieve either, but only to point out that natural and same-sex marriage should not be legally or culturally equated. The truth is homosexual and heterosexual relationships are not the same, can never be the same, and will never yield the same benefits to individuals or society. We hurt everyone, especially children, by pretending otherwise.

Finally, as jurisdictions with same-sex marriage show us, people lose their freedoms of speech, association, religion and even parenting due to the imposition of same-sex marriage. InMassachusetts, for example, parents now have no right to even know when their kids as young as kindergarten are being taught about homosexuality, much less opt out of it; business owners must now provide benefits to same-sex couples, and they can be fined for declining to provide services at homosexual weddings; Catholic charities were forced to close and leave Massachusetts and Washington D.C. because both governments mandated that all adoption agencies had to provide children to homosexuals. So much for freedom of religion! And in Canada, same-sex marriage has led to such a chilling restriction on speech, that my speech here today could get me fined or jailed if given there.

If you like what Frank Turek had to say there, just keep in mind that he’s written a book about the issue.

And I just have to throw in a quick quote from another case in favor of natural marriage by Ryan T. Anderson (one of the famous Gang of Three who wrote that fabulous new book on marriage).

Excerpt:

Government recognizes marriage because it is an institution that benefits society in a way that no other relationship does. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means to ensure the well-being of children. State recognition of marriage protects children by encouraging men and women to commit to each other and take responsibility for their children. While respecting everyone’s liberty, government rightly recognizes, protects, and promotes marriage as the ideal institution for childbearing and childrearing.

Redefining marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children. It would deny as a matter of policy the ideal that a child needs a mom and a dad. We know that children tend to do best when raised by a mother and a father. The confusion resulting from further delinking childbearing from marriage would force the state to intervene more often in family life and cause welfare programs to grow even more.

In recent years marriage has been weakened by a revisionist view that is more about adults’ desires than children’s needs. Redefining marriage represents the culmination of this revisionism: Emotional intensity would be the only thing left to set marriage apart from other kinds of relationships. Redefining marriage would put a new principle into the law—that marriage is whatever emotional bond the government says it is.

Redefining marriage to abandon the norm of male-female sexual complementarity would also make other essential characteristics—such as monogamy, exclusivity, and permanency—optional. But marriage can’t do the work that society needs it to do if these norms are further weakened. All Americans, especially conservatives who care about thriving civil society capable of limiting the state, should be alarmed.

Redefining marriage is a direct and demonstrated threat to religious freedom that marginalizes those who affirm marriage as the union of a man and a woman. We have already seen this in neighboring Canada and right here in places such as Massachusetts and Washington, D.C.

I keep hearing people talk about tolerance, tolerance, tolerance. But I don’t think they understand the purpose of marriage. If they did, they would see that we need what marriage provides, and that we need to promote it. The marriage issue is not a buffet where you pick what you like.

Commentary

Dawn Stefanowicz explains her experience being raised by a gay parent

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*** WARNING: This post is definitely for grown-ups only! ***

I was listening to a Dr. J podcast on “Why Marriage Matters”, and I heard about a woman named Dawn Stefanowicz, who was raised by her gay father in Toronto.

So, I looked around and found this interview with Dawn posted on MercatorNet. This is mature subject matter.

Intro:

Gay marriage and gay adoption are being fiercely debated in a number of countries. Usually these issues are framed as a human rights issue. But whose rights? Patrick Meagher, MercatorNet’s contributing editor in Canada, recently interviewed a woman who was raised by a homosexual father. She feels that her rights as a child were completely ignored.

Dawn Stefanowicz (www.DawnStefanowicz.com) grew up in Toronto. Now in her 40s, she has written a book, Out From Under: Getting Clear of the Wreckage of a Sexually Disordered Home, to be released later this year. Stefanowicz has now been married for 22 years, is raising a family, and also works as an accountant. She has also testified about same-sex marriage in Washington and Ottawa.

Sample:

MercatorNet: How did you feel about what was going on around you?

Stefanowicz: You become used to it and desensitised. I was told at eight years old not to talk about this but I knew that something was wrong. I was not thinking “this is right or wrong” but I was disturbed by what I was experiencing. I was unhappy, fearful, anxious and confused. I was not allowed to tell my father that his lifestyle upset me. You can be four-years-old and questioning, “Where is Daddy?” You sense women are not valued. You think Daddy doesn’t have time for you or Daddy is too busy to play a game with you. All this is hard because as a child this is the only experience you have.

MercatorNet: How did this affect your relationship with others?

Stefanowicz: I had a hard time concentrating in school on day-to-day subjects and with peers. I felt insecure. I was already stressed out by an early age. I’m now in my 40s. You’re looking at life-long issues. There is a lot of prolonged and unresolved grief in this kind of home environment and with what you witness in the subcultures.

It took me until I was into my 20s and 30s, after making major life choices, to begin to realise how being raised in this environment had affected me. Unfortunately, it was not until my father, his sexual partners and my mother had died, that I was free to speak publicly about my experiences.

And:

MercatorNet: Why do so few children speak out?

Stefanowicz: You’re terrified. Absolutely terrified. Children who open up these family secrets are dependent on parents for everything. You carry the burden that you have to keep secrets. You learn to put on an image publicly of the happy family that is not reality. With same-sex legislation, children are further silenced. They believe there is no safe adult they can go to.

Have you ever considered what effect it has on a child that they have to grow up without their mother or their father? Is that good for them? Is that something that we should be promoting so that there is more of it? It’s a sad thing to tell adults that they cannot do whatever they want, but it’s a sadder thing to harm children just so that adults can do whatever they want. We need to choose to be careful not to harm children by making poor decisions.

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