Tag Archives: Same-Sex Marriage

News

UK district judge fired for saying that adopted children do better with a mom and a dad

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Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign
Gay activist vandalizes pro-marriage sign

This UK Daily Mail story was sent to me by Dina, and it shows what happens in countries where gay marriage and the gay rights agenda are a little more advanced than what we have here, under the Democrats. (Note that UK expressions like “sacked” and “struck off” mean termination of employment)

Excerpt:

A Christian judge has been struck off after claiming during a BBC interview that adopted children were better off with a man and a woman as parents than with a gay couple.

Magistrate Richard Page, 68, was sacked after 15 years at Maidstone and Sevenoaks courts, in Kent, after objecting to a gay couple adopting a child live on air.

The Judiciary Conduct Investigations Office confirmed that the father-of-three has been removed from the magistracy as a district judge.

They said that the grounds for his dismissal result from comments made on national television which a reasonable person would conclude he is bias against single sex adopters.

The interview came after Mr Page had spoken out against a child being adopted by a gay couple, and would be better placed ‘with a mother and father’ in 2014.

He was disciplined for his remarks, which were made in private to colleagues behind closed doors during an adoption case.

But during an interview, which aired in March 2015, Mr Page repeated his opinion.

He was recorded saying: ‘My responsibility as a magistrate, as I saw it, was to do what I considered best for the child, and my feeling was therefore that it would be better if it was a man and woman who were the adopted parents.’

Yeah, in the politically correct UK, that’s grounds for dismissal. Basically, this is the continuation of a long line of changes in marriage-related policy that were meant to privilege the rights of selfish adults over the rights of children.

It all started with no-fault divorce laws, which allowed spouses who were not “happy” in their life-long self-sacrificial commitments to easily get out of it by filing for divorce for any reason, or for no reason at all. This law was championed by trial lawyers and feminists, who think that marriage is about the needs, feelings and desires of selfish adults. They wanted to make it easier to get out of commitments that were entered into lightly, and they didn’t care about the children.

The next change to marriage policy was making cohabitation equivalent to marriage. Again, feminists and other liberals did not want to undertake a lifelong commitment that would be hard to get out of. They wanted the same tax benefits that marriage allows for temporary arrangements like living together. But living together temporarily is nowhere near as good for children as life-long, self-sacrificial married love.

The next change to marriage policy was redefining marriage to remove the complimentary genders norm, which further disenfranchised children to benefit self-centered adults. Instead of making the central purpose of marriage based on two complimentary sexes creating and nurturing new life, marriage is now about two people having intense emotional feelings of pleasure. Feelings which, by their very nature, cannot provide a stable, lasting environment for raising children.

And now we have gay adoption, which continues the privileging of selfish adults over the needs of vulnerable children. ALL of the social science evidence shows that male-female relationships are more stable over the long-term than same-sex relationships. There is less domestic violence, more monogamy, more fidelity and more stability. All of which are better for children. Children benefit from growing up in a home where a man loves a woman and is faithful to her, and where a woman respects a man, and is faithful to him.

And now we see how far the marriage redefiners on the secular left are willing to go to put the selfish desires of adults above the needs of children for stability. They are willing to terminate the employment of anyone who dares to speak out on behalf of children.

We really need Christians to be diligent in learning how to defend marriage, and to get married and stay married and model successful, loving, stable marriages to the culture as a whole. We need pro-marriage apologetics, and we need marriages that are focused on self-sacrificial love. We need marriages that focus on responsibilities, obligations and expectations, not on fun and thrills.

Polemics

Ryan T. Anderson presents the case for natural / traditional marriage

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Does government provide incentives for people to get married?
What effects does redefining marriage have on society?

I spend Tuesday night working through 3 chapters of Anderson’s book “Truth Overruled”, so I thought I would re-post this old post on marriage.

A must-read long paper from the Heritage Foundation. It’s a great concise presentation of the reasons why the United States should not redefine marriage. (H/T A tweet from Ryan T. Anderson)

Abstract:

Marriage is based on the truth that men and women are complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the reality that children need a mother and a father. Redefining marriage does not simply expand the existing understanding of marriage; it rejects these truths. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. By encouraging the norms of marriage—monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence—the state strengthens civil society and reduces its own role. The future of this country depends on the future of marriage. The future of marriage depends on citizens understanding what it is and why it matters and demanding that government policies support, not undermine, true marriage.

Excerpt:

Supporters of redefinition use the following analogy: Laws defining marriage as a union of a man and a woman are unjust—fail to treat people equally—exactly like laws that prevented interracial marriage. Yet such appeals beg the question of what is essential to marriage. They assume exactly what is in dispute: that gender is as irrelevant as race in state recognition of marriage. However, race has nothing to with marriage, and racist laws kept the races apart. Marriage has everything to do with men and women, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers and children, and that is why principle-based policy has defined marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

Marriage must be color-blind, but it cannot be gender-blind. The color of two people’s skin has nothing to do with what kind of marital bond they have. However, the sexual difference between a man and a woman is central to what marriage is. Men and women regardless of their race can unite in marriage, and children regardless of their race need moms and dads. To acknowledge such facts requires an understanding of what, at an essential level, makes a marriage.

And a bit later:

If the law taught a falsehood about marriage, it would make it harder for people to live out the norms of marriage because marital norms make no sense, as matters of principle, if marriage is just intense emotional feeling. No reason of principle requires an emotional union to be permanent or limited to two persons, much less sexually exclusive. Nor should it be inherently oriented to family life and shaped by its demands. This does not mean that a couple could not decide to live out these norms where temperament or taste so motivated them, just that there is no reason of principle to demand that they do so. Legally enshrining this alternate view of marriage would undermine the norms whose link to the common good is the basis for state recognition of marriage in the first place.

Insofar as society weakens the rational foundation for marriage norms, fewer people would live them out, and fewer people would reap the benefits of the marriage institution. This would affect not only spouses, but also the well-being of their children. The concern is not so much that a handful of gay or lesbian couples would be raising children, but that it would be very difficult for the law to send a message that fathers matter when it has redefined marriage to make fathers optional.

And one last one:

In fact, much of this is already occurring. Heritage Foundation Visiting Fellow Thomas Messner has documented multiple instances in which redefining marriage has already become a nightmare for religious liberty.[48] If marriage is redefined to include same-sex relationships, then those who continue to believe the truth about marriage—that it is by nature a union of a man and a woman—would face three different types of threats to their liberty: the administrative state, nondiscrimination law, and private actors in a culture that is now hostile to traditional views.[49]

After Massachusetts redefined marriage to include same-sex relationships, Catholic Charities of Boston was forced to discontinue its adoption services rather than place children with same-sex couples against its principles.[50] Massachusetts public schools began teaching grade-school students about same-sex marriage, defending their decision because they are “committed to teaching about the world they live in, and in Massachusetts same-sex marriage is legal.” A Massachusetts appellate court ruled that parents have no right to exempt their children from these classes.[51]

The New Mexico Human Rights Commission prosecuted a photographer for declining to photograph a same-sex “commitment ceremony.” Doctors in California were successfully sued for declining to perform an artificial insemination on a woman in a same-sex relationship. Owners of a bed and breakfast in Illinois who declined to rent their facility for a same-sex civil union ceremony and reception were sued for violating the state nondiscrimination law. A Georgia counselor was fired after she referred someone in a same-sex relationship to another counselor.[52] In fact, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty reports that “over 350 separate state anti-discrimination provisions would likely be triggered by recognition of same-sex marriage.”[53]

This article is long and comprehensive. It will take some time to read. It’s includes logical arguments as well as empirical evidence from research – with footnotes. I really recommend taking a look at the article. Even if it takes a long time to read, it will definitely expand your mind to think about why we had a definition of marriage in the first place, and what we would lose by changing that definition. When you debate people who want to redefine marriage, it’s very important to appeal to logical arguments and evidence from studies. Get the conversation away from emotions and instead introduce facts and arguments.

You can get an even longer treatment in the new book by Ryan T. Anderson and his co-authors Sherif Girgis and Robert P. George. This is *the* book to get on the marriage issue.

News

New study: open relationships in the gay community

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Young people seem to like gay marriage more than they like individual liberties
Young people seem to like gay marriage more than they like individual liberties

Story from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Excerpt:

A new study released this week by the Center for Research on Gender & Sexuality at San Francisco State University put statistics around what gay men already know: Many Bay Area boyfriends negotiate open relationships that allow for sex with outsiders.

[…]”I think it’s quite natural for men to want to continue to have an active and varied sex life,” said 50-year-old technology consultant Dean Allemang from Oakland, who just ended a 13-year-open relationship and has begun another with a new boyfriend.

“I don’t own my lover, and I don’t own his body,” he said. “I think it’s weird to ask someone you love to give up that part of their life. I would never do it.”

Hoff, who just received a $3.5 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to continue the study for five more years, initially started her research based on findings that HIV infection is on the rise among male couples.

“So much of the HIV prevention effort is aimed at a different set – men in dance clubs or bathhouses having anonymous sex,” she said. “HIV prevention might want to expand its message to address relationships; we have to look at risk in a greater context.”

In her study of gay couples, 47 percent reported open relationships. Forty-five percent were monogamous, and the remaining 8 percent disagreed about what they were.

Another researcher quoted in the story explains how same-sex marriage is compatible with an “open relationship”, and that this interpretation of marriage would be a redefinition of traditional marriage.

Related to that, there is this radio interview with a gay activist.

Excerpt:

“It’s a no-brainer that (homosexual activists) should have the right to marry, but I also think equally that it’s a no-brainer that the institution of marriage should not exist. …(F)ighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there — because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie.

The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist. And I don’t like taking part in creating fictions about my life. That’s sort of not what I had in mind when I came out thirty years ago.

I have three kids who have five parents, more or less, and I don’t see why they shouldn’t have five parents legally… I met my new partner, and she had just had a baby, and that baby’s biological father is my brother, and my daughter’s biological father is a man who lives in Russia, and my adopted son also considers him his father. So the five parents break down into two groups of three… And really, I would like to live in a legal system that is capable of reflecting that reality, and I don’t think that’s compatible with the institution of marriage.”

To me, making a relationship “open” puts an emphasis on each person feeling good, rather than each person committing to love the other self-sacrificially. I wonder if young people understand that. What would be interesting, I think, would be to ask all the young people – especially young women – how they would feel if their partner’s idea of marriage involved having an open relationship. How do they feel about non-exclusivity incorporated into the new definition of the word “marriage”.

It seems to me that it’s one thing to say that marriage is a man and a woman committing to love each other through to old age, regardless of changing feelings and unmet desires. A relationship based on the natural definition of marriage is focused on commitment, and not fulfillment of desires. And that works well for children, who need stability, even if the desires of adults are not met. If marriage is about people abandoning exclusivity and permanence in order to get what they need to be happy “in the moment”, then neither person will be able to depend on the other when they are old, ugly and sickly.

Here’s a video that explains the basics of why people like me support natural marriage:

The word marriage means, one man, one woman, for life. And both parents sacrifice to raise the children they create. And no frivolous divorce, either. And if you ask me, it should also mean no sex before marriage, formal courtship, approval of both sets of parents, and the wife stays home when the children under five.