In a recent newsletter, the National Organization for Marriage cites a new government study as evidence that gay marriage will hurt kids, because the research finds that kids suffer less abuse with married biological parents than with a single parent, a parent living with an unmarried partner, or a parent and step-parent.
They got it half right. Having two married biological parents is good for kids, and better than the alternatives the study examined. We here at IGF are all for it. But that doesn't make having, say, an unmarried mom and mom better than having a married mom and mom. As a correspondent points out:
Does NOM never, ever learn? These same figures indicate that for either two-adult family structure (both biological parents, or one biological and one step-parent) the chance of abuse to the child goes down drastically IF THE COUPLE GETS MARRIED. For the first kind of family, the risk drops 80 percent. For the second kind of family, the risk drops nearly 60 percent. Even for single biological parents, the child's risk drops by about 15 percent if that single parent finds and marries someone.
So they jump to the conclusion that if a child is living in a gay household, the way to protect the child is to NOT let the parent get married.
It would at least be consistent if they used this data to say gays (and singles and steps) shouldn't be allowed to care for kids in the first place. But that's not Maggie Gallagher's position! She acknowledges that the parenthood is OK, but is just against protecting the kids.
For years, opponents of same-sex marriage have traded on a non-sequitur: if SSM is not optimal, then it should not be legal. If you believed that, though, you would have to ban marriages that create step-families, which lots of evidence shows are not as good for kids. Thank goodness, the real world doesn't work that way.
14 Comments for “NOM’s Fuzzy Logic”
posted by Lymis on
All they have left is the kids. There is no even marginally valid reason relating to adult relationships to ban civil same sex marriage, and they know it. And public opinion is rapidly moving in the “why is what they do any of my business” direction.
Reassure them that their religions can still discriminate and judge all they want, and it’s over.
But she can still use kids as the scare tactic, two pronged. They can scare people about their own kids (“They’ll teach it in school!” “Higher percentage of child abuse!”) and they can pearl clutch about other people’s kids (“Not the optimal household for kids!” “Where will they learn to change the oil?” “Selfish, selfish!”)
But she really is clutching at straws with both. Especially with our kids, because she had to deal with “if gay couples are already raising kids, how does it help the kids to ban their parents from marrying?” As though we’ll say “Gosh, this is hard! Can I send the kids back?”
posted by Chairm on
Jonathan,
You don’t get it.
What is the special reason for the special status of the social institution?
There is nothing about same-sexed sexual behavior that attaches it to the well-being of children.
Negating the opposite-sexed sexual basis for the marital presumption of paternity means either replacing that basis with something else or leaving a chasm at the center of the social institution.
Which will it be, Jonathan — a substitution that is supposedly superior or the abolishing of something that is supposedly bigoted?
* * *
In the real world society does draw lines based on the the core of marriage or, as you might put it, the optimal.
1. The solidarity of fatherhood and motherhood.
2. The unity and integration of the sexes.
3. These combined as a coherent whole (i.e. as a foundational social institution of civil society).
Based on societal concerns for responsible procreation and sex integration, we do have lines of eligibility which are drawn against
A) some related people, but not all related people;
B) some immature people, but not all immature people;
C) some previously married people, but all previously married people;
D) some consenting people, but not all consenting people.
These lines are justified by the core meaning of marriage, which is extrinsic to the SSM idea.
Step-parent adoption is an example where an exception is treated as an exception rather than as the basis for a new rule that abolishes the optimal: Society may legitimately prioritize adoption based on marital status.
Society does not treat the lone unwed parent as a married duo. We don’t treat the grandmom-mom duo as married even if they are raising children together in a mutally loving relationship. Society withholds marital status from polygamous and group scenarios in no small part due to the societal concerns about sex integration and responsible procreation — and, yes, ‘blended families’.
Some of these arrangements are not only ineligible as marriage, they are criminalized. They are illegal and outlawed.
But the gaycentric version of a one-sexed arrangement — raising children or not — is legal and is NOT outlawed.
If you are going to offer insights into who does and does not “get it”, Jonathan, then, stop talking of a “ban” on so-called “gay marriage”.
Talk of the special reason, if such exists, for a special status based on gayness.
Afterall, you are not the only supporter of SSM who emphasizes gayness in your pro-SSM arguments. If gayness is the thing that differentiates “gay marriage” from the rest of nonmarriage, then, justify the eligiblity lines, if any, based on gayness.
And do so, please, while noting that no place that has an SSM law has made it compulsory for those who’d show up for a license to SSM to perform same-sex sexual behavior, or to prove same-sex sexual attraciton, or to sign affidavits attesting to same-sex romance.
If gayness is not the key, then, the SSM law would not legalize “gay marriage” in the sense you implied in your blogpost.
posted by Chairm on
Lynn said: “why is what they do any of my business”.
Exactly.
What is the reason to issue a license based on gayness?
Be reassured that there is no ban on gayness. And none on the relationship type that is “gay”.
Be reassured that your gaycentric identity politics can still rant and rail against religious beliefs and against the core meaning of marriage.
Your complaint is about a public license and accorded status, and yet your remark is about privacy and pushing government out of it.
If you can’t provide the speical reason for special status — and make that mandatory — then, it is over for SSM argumentation.
I bet you will stomp your foot, plant it in one place, and pivot around it while you chant, bigot, bigot, bigot. You have nothing else.
* * *
People can disagree in good faith, however, if you are going to base you complaint against the marriage law and against the core meaning of marriage, then, you need to step up and plainly state the core meaning of SSM as a type of relationship and show how special status for that solves a realworld problem.
Make ‘gay marriage’ stand on its own two feet instead of riding on the back of marriage. Then we can compare the two different things for similarities and contradictions.
posted by Amicus on
True that. False application of ideal.
Their message so emotional an appeal that doesn’t need to be consistent. Our message, ‘marriage is good for gay couples with kids’ – is it strong enough? It’s been played, so what do we know about that? What do the focus groups say?
Stronger messaging of our own may be possible.
It’s a race. Even if we debunk this round, their next round will likely be some statistic about gay couples with kids, however slightly unfavorable.
posted by Jorge on
You are not making much sense yourself, Chairm.
Negating the opposite-sexed sexual basis for the marital presumption of paternity
The WHAT? Marital presumption of paternity? Didn’t you read? Stepfathers abuse kids! Marital presumption of paternity isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, whether it’s opposite-sexed or same-sexed. The studies cited here are not relevant to the well-established finding that children raised by gay parents turn out just as well socially as children raised by straight parents. Therefore, yes. Replace mother and stepfather is optimal with father and father is optimal. Please don’t use nonsensical sentences to justify ridiculous arguments.
1. The solidarity of fatherhood and motherhood.
In the post-feminist era society recognizes the weaknesses inherant in the fatherhood/motherhood unit, in which many families
replicate the gendered norms of inequality and abuse that exist in society.
2. The unity and integration of the sexes.
This can be modeled in any dual parent arraingment. There are obvious modeling benefits for boys and girls in a family in which the mother and father are equal. However, equality between the sexes also depends on the realization that each person within a sex is an individual, destined for one of infinite worthy possibilities and paths, not just those that conform best to the narrow views of masculinity and femininity. It’s an important lesson both about your own sex and about the opposite sex, and is one that can be better taught in model families in which the parents are the same sex: two different men are equally men, two different women are equally women.
The goal of strengthening and fostering “unity and integration of the sexes”, as you put it, is just a broader restatement of your first point and is not separate from the solidarity between a father and a mother, which is why your argument falls apart.
Based on societal concerns for responsible procreation and sex integration, we do have lines of eligibility which are drawn against…
Societal concerns for responsible procreation have lead almost directly to legalized abortion, and are certainly responsible for keeping it in place, which I’m sure most conservatives who oppose gay marriage are against. So you might want to avoid that argument.
By sex integration, I assume you mean the raising of boys to act like responsible men and girls to act like responsible women. Again, you’ve got a thousand bigger fish to fry on that, not the least of which is single motherhood.
A) some related people, but not all related people;
B) some immature people, but not all immature people;
C) some previously married people, but all previously married people;
D) some consenting people, but not all consenting people.
At this point it is impossible for me to understand what you are trying to say without you giving examples.
Step-parent adoption is an example where an exception is treated as an exception rather than as the basis for a new rule that abolishes the optimal: Society may legitimately prioritize adoption based on marital status.
Maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe we should make it more difficult for stepfathers to abuse kids. We certainly should make it just as easy to build safe, healthy families as it is to build second-best families.
Society does not treat the lone unwed parent as a married duo. We don’t treat the grandmom-mom duo as married even if they are raising children together in a mutally loving relationship. Society withholds marital status from polygamous and group scenarios in no small part due to the societal concerns about sex integration and responsible procreation — and, yes, ‘blended families’.
Some of these arrangements are not only ineligible as marriage, they are criminalized. They are illegal and outlawed.
None of these arraingments are criminalized in every state, and in states in which de facto polygamous marriages are criminalized, they don’t enforce the law unless there is child sex abuse (which is, in fact, one of the reasons it is criminalized).
posted by Amicus on
What is the special reason for the special status of the social institution?
Trick question? Civil marriages are perfectly dissoluble and completely voluntary. Therefore, they cannot be ‘regulatory’. So, you tell me.
There is nothing about same-sexed sexual behavior that attaches it to the well-being of children.
Probably just the wrong question.
Gays exist. Gay is good.
Gay children and gay adults should be afforded equal protection of the laws and access to ‘social institutions’ that bind adults and create families, based on the sexual union that is the province of gays.
Negating the opposite-sexed sexual basis for the marital presumption of paternity means either replacing that basis with something else or leaving a chasm at the center of the social institution.
Clearly, the “ideals” behind these “presumptions” are interfering with a just ordering.
We can’t make good public policy solely based on presumptions.
However, if there is a core set of people who really want to believe that civil marriage is primarily about procreation, then they are accommodated. After all, they will be talking about the 98% of all couplings that will continue to be nongay AND they can excuse the ‘gay part’ as ‘not primary’, as easily as they make excuses for all the other inconsistencies and ‘less primary’ not enforced under their “ideal”.
Indeed, the only way that these are rivals, is if one believes that marriage is ONLY about procreative capacity. That is just ridiculous, but you are welcome to that opinion, as much as Scientologists are welcome to believe that their marriages are real marriages before God and that the spaceship is coming.
posted by Bobby on
“There is nothing about same-sexed sexual behavior that attaches it to the well-being of children.”
—Really? What about artistic children, effeminate children, gay children? Sure, some straight parents are open minded, yet you make a blatant generalization that there’s absolutely no benefit of same-sex relationships when it comes to raising kids.
Furthermore, there are plenty of benefits of growing up in a non-traditional home. For example, a child who wants to be an actor, dancer, or any “shameful” profession that doesn’t necessarily involve a college education will find a more supportive environment if he or she is raised by non-traditional parents. My cousin is a great example, she was great at sports, she could have become the next Jennifer Capriati but what did her parents do? They convinced her to concentrate more on her education, so she gave up competitive sports and became a dentist. So instead of being a tennis millionaire, she’s just another dentist. That’s what you get from traditional parents. Why? Because they have no vision, no ability to see beyond traditional societal roles.
“In the real world society does draw lines based on the the core of marriage or, as you might put it, the optimal.”
—Society should focus on human realities rather than outdated ideals. Sure, it’s great when a kid can have a mother and a father, but even Bill O’Reilly admits that a kid is better off adopted in a gay home than left to fester as a ward of the state.
“1. The solidarity of fatherhood and motherhood.”
—Assuming the married couple chooses to have children, which they don’t always and even when they have children there are plenty of cases of absent parents. You know the Columbine killers? Their parents didn’t know the kids had guns in their room.
“2. The unity and integration of the sexes.”
—The father who comes home drunk and beats the wife in front of the kids. You know, both Jeffrey Dahmer and the famous mafia hitman Kuklinski came from traditional environments.
“3. These combined as a coherent whole (i.e. as a foundational social institution of civil society).”
—That’s a very scientific way of looking at life. You assume that if society does X they get Y result. What about the thousands of variables that contribute to the development of a child and his future success or failure in society? Watch the show “Wife Swap” and you’ll see that there’s more than one type of family.
posted by Craig Young on
Social conservatives tend to have a somewhat romanticised view of the past of the institution.
It’s a shame that the United States had no feudal past, otherwise there’d be ample opportunities to note that heterosexual cohabitation tended to be the reality for the vast majority of rural peasants, given the expense of church weddings, the only legally recognised form; that bigamy and desertion were commonplace; as was spousal violence, maternal mortality and infant mortality; and women couldn’t even get divorced if their partners were vile, sadistic brutes. When women won the franchise, gained increased employment access, contraception access and liberalised divorce,
no wonder the institution started
to totter.
I hate to say this, but many of the fundamentalist and sock con verities about marriage are largely artefactual- the United States lags behind comparable liberal democracies when it comes to unmarried cohabitant rights.
Don’t get me wrong. I support same-sex marriage proper, but let’s be realistic. It should be seen as a purely formal order of service, and substantive spousal rights and obligations should be strategically seperated from it. That’s the way we did things down here over civil unions. As a result, we’ve had access to them for the last five years, without any backlash from the local Christian Right (apart from their ill-fated attempt to pre-emptively ban prospective SSMP down here, which failed in December 2005, since which time they haven’t revisited the issue…)
Craig Young
Wellington, NZ
posted by Jorge on
Your post is very interesting but I don’t favor giving cohabitating couples too many privileges. Why make it easier? Marriage is better. The whole purpose of seeking same sex marriage rights is to recognize gay married relationships as a good thing and make them easier.
I think it’s a shame that other countries teach and remember a history of marriage being a bad thing. I understand the importance of learning from history, but we need something to aspire to, a purpose to fulfil. Without that we suffer as a society.
posted by Craig Young on
Don’t get me wrong, Jorge, I do support access to same-sex marriage proper.
However, I think we need to sit back and do some demythologising of the institution, so that we don’t buy into the Christian Right’s overblown and ridiculous (and hypocritical)* rhetoric ** about it. That way, we can pave the way for civil unions/partnerships as a neccessary interim step.
Cohabitant rights also tend to produce affirmative responses to civil partnerships/unions when they are eventually debated.
*Anita Bryant, Jim Bakker, Ted Haggard, British antigay politician Iris Robinson (with a nineteen year old man!), NZ antigay activist Graham Capill (a
serial pedophile, currently serving a nine year prison sentence)…
**As opposed to practice. Does the Barna Group’s report on high divorce stats in the Deep South get enough airplay in this context, for instance?
posted by Deb on
Seems to me the proper comparison is straight married couples with fertility problems who conceive children by artificial means, resulting in a child who is not biologically related to both parents, and straight married couples with natural children. If there is no difference in the outcomes of these children, then the children of gay couples should fare fine too. Is NOM against straight couples reproducing by artificial means? Why aren’t they trying to ban straight married couples from artificial procreation?
posted by Chairm on
Deb, less than 1% of children were born of IVF/ARTs with ‘donated’ gametes.
Of the married couples who use these methods, 93% do not use ‘donated’ gametes.
There is evidence that the experience of infertility problems does strain the marital relationship. As does the practice of third party procreation. Also, children, as adults, are coming out with their own reasons to be against the practice. They describe experiences similair, in some key ways, with children of divorce or estranged parents.
On the other hand, every one-sexed scenario must use ‘donated’ gametes. A lone individual. A same-sex twosome, threesome, moresome, or parade of people of the same sex.
Third party procreation comes with at least 3 pre-requisites: 1) going outside the relationship (or ‘soloship’), 2) pre-emptive parental relinquishment, and 3) government intervention to assign a substitute parent (or no second parent).
So the comparison you would like to see is of a nonmarital practice and another nonmarital practice. And that comparison further compared against the benchmark of an intact married mom-dad raising the children of their sexual union.
The subgroups in the population for the first comparison are very small so randomized samples of large samples will always be a challenge — perhaps not something that can be overcome. And longitudinal studies are not likely for another decade or more given that the gay mom-mom or gay dad-dad scenarios are a fairly recent experiment. Most of the children in same-sex households were attained not by third party procreation; maybe just 2% or so overall. Adoption is more common — especially with second-parent adoption were now available — maybe 5%. The old fashioned procreative relationship of mom and dad is whence most children livingin same-sex households came — typically marriages or unwed cohabitations. And gayness is the factor that differentiates these scenarios are only different from other suboptimal scenarios. Not marital status. And those nonstandard scenarios have been well studied and come up short.
posted by Chairm on
Apologies for that typo:
And gayness is the factor that differentiates these scenarios from other suboptimal scenarios similarly structured. Not marital status. And those structurally similiar nonstandard scenarios have been well studied and come up short.
I’d add that the unwed mom-dad scenario falls short also. And as noble as adoption and as heroic as adoptors often are, even that scenario falls short both were the family has an unwed mom-dad and a married mom-dad. But the latter holds up better in terms of outcomes for children, on average. The younger the child at adoption, the better the married mom-dad adoptive scenario.
And, of course, these are outcomes based on structure. People in particular cases can and do rise above the average, of course.
One of the problems nowadays, is that the married scenarios may be declining because the social institution’s influence has been waining across society. Other factors, such as religious beliefs and family histories, appear to have strong influences as well. Likewise formal education.
But eschewing marriage’s core meaning, not just for the nonstandard structures, but for all of society, hardly seems useful for sustaining or raising the standard.
posted by Amicus on
I continue to be baffled by those who claim that we are necessarily eschewing some âcore meaningâ of marriage.
Is a Toyota the same as a Honda? No, but they are both cars.
Marriage for men and women continues to carry with it the expectations of natural law for their sexuality.
Do gays and lesbians have kids? No, but they are still âcarsâ.
And when gay and lesbian couples do have kids, they are among the most planned and desired and loved. Gay and lesbian households have to go through extensive screening. No accidents, no abortions. Yet, all the naysayers can think to say is âdeprivation!â.
As I say, truly baffling. Even worse when you think about the sums of money spent to âprotect kidsâ over this, compared to some of the challenges kids face the world over.