Originally published in the Chicago Free Press, September 17, 2003.
A funny thing happened on the way to the Federal Marriage Amendment.
At the Sept. 4 Senate subcommittee hearings on "What is Needed to Defend the Bipartisan Defense of Marriage Act of 1996?" (against gay marriage), none of the witnesses who opposed gay marriage made a coherent case against it. None even tried very hard.
Of six witnesses, only conservative columnist Maggie Gallagher and African-American pastor Rev. Ray Hammond attempted to address the substantive harms of gay marriage. But what they actually addressed was the importance of marriage in childrearing and the social costs of fatherlessness and unmarried motherhood. It is as if they believe that arguing for heterosexual marriage constitutes an argument against same-sex marriage.
To be sure, Hammond offered dire warnings about gay marriage "eras(ing) the legal roadmap to marriage and the family," as if heterosexuals won't know how to marry if gays can marry. And Gallagher opined that marriage is "the place where having children and creating families are actually encouraged," as if the goal were to encourage more married couples to have children.
"How can Bob and James' marriage possibly affect Rob and Sue's marriage?" Gallagher finally asks. And replies: "There are long, complicated and erudite answers to this question. Fortunately there is also a short simple and obvious answer. ... In endorsing same-sex marriage, law and government will thus be making a powerful statement: our government no longer believes children need mothers and fathers."
Children may well benefit from having a mother and father. If so, that is an argument against unwed motherhood and for forcing heterosexual child producers to marry (say, by reviving shotgun marriages or making a paternal DNA match constitute civil marriage to the mother) and for making divorce far more difficult.
In short, it is an argument about what heterosexual parents should do, not about gay couples who do not and by themselves cannot have children. In other words, Gallagher is saying she does not have time for a long argument against gay marriage, so she will give a short one about something else.
To quote James Thurber's story The Thirteen Clocks: "'If you can touch the clocks and never start them, you can start the clocks and never touch them. That's logic and I know and use it,' said the Golux."
Gallagher continues by claiming that legalizing same-sex marriage means the government would be saying that "Two fathers or two mothers are not only just as good as a mother and a father, they are just the same."
But Gallagher's "short, simple and obvious" answer is at best an argument against gay couples' adopting or rearing children from intact opposite sex couples, not one against marriage by two men or two women who want to merge their lives, care and provide for each other, and have access to the numerous means governments offer to promote that end. Marriage, Gallagher seems to forget, is not just about children. It is also about adults and their relation to each other.
But even if, other things being equal, opposite-sex parents are better than same-sex parents, other things are seldom equal in the real world where most of us live. Conservative polemicists seldom acknowledge the fact of neglected, rejected or abandoned children whose biological parents divorce, die, refuse to marry, are abusive or are incapable of caring for children. Such children often end up in orphanages, group homes or the poorly monitored foster-care system.
We live in an imperfect world of better and worse choices where the optimum is not always available. Are single parents better than no parents? Children obviously benefit from having parents who love and care for them. Most states acknowledge this by allowing single people, including gays and lesbians, to adopt or retain custody of children.
Are two parents, including same-sex parents, better than one? Two parents may provide a higher family income. Two parents have more time to provide attention, support and affection to their children. Children can see two equal adults cooperating together, negotiating their plans, discussing disagreements - exemplifying adult partnering, something children of single parents never see. So yes, two parents are better than one.
Do children benefit from their parents being married? Conservative insist that marriage provides financial and emotional security for children that parents who merely live together cannot provide. There is no reason to disagree. And that obviously applies to same-sex couples raising children as well as opposite sex couples, and for the same reasons.
In the final analysis, in an era of increasing gay visibility and gay awareness, gay marriage opponents - to the extent they are not merely religiously motivated bigots - need to ask themselves this: When they say they want to "protect" marriage by preventing gay marriage, which scenario do they imagine will incline young heterosexuals to take marriage more seriously - the increasing visibility of married gay couples, or the increasing visibility of unmarried gay couples living together and single gays living independently?