ANTI-DISCRIMINATION AND EQUALITY: Elizabeth Marquardt replies to Tom Sylvester

Tom's post on anti-discrimination and equality raises a very good point. Of course if we find that biracial young people do worse on child outcomes that doesn't mean we should prohibit interracial marriages. But the problem with the SSM debate in contained within Tom's post. At the beginning he notes what I see as the major problem, that the cheerleading advocates for SSM continually say that children of SS couples do great, just great, on every outcome, and this has been shown by countless studies. They're wrong. The studies are limited, almost none of them are representative, and most of them focus on very specific questions such as whether these children are more likely to become gay and lesbian themselves. The question of how growing up in a SS couple family might shape their identity formation overall isn't even entertained.

So, at the moment we're willing to say that biracial children have a more complicated identity formation process. My own forthcoming book will argue similarly that children of divorce have a more complicated identity formation process. But who's willing to ask the questions, fund the large-scale projects, conduct the research and, if the data bears it out, make the case widely that children of SS couples have a more complicated identity quest?

OK, so what if all that happens and at some point our society is miraculously willing to acknowledge the possibility that SS couple kids have a rougher time? What do we do then? One radio host suggested to me recently that maybe we could just marshal resources to help those kids -- if we understand them better then we can get the psychologists on board to help out. But I find that depressing and insufficient. All we've done then is further supported the encroachment of the therapeutic culture into childhood. That's our society's answer to every childhood problem nowadays. Don't bother looking at how adult choices are impacting children's lives. Just bring in the school counselor, some self-help books, and a bunch of Prozac.

Is this a powerful argument against SSM? Maybe not. But I've said all along that I'd like this debate a lot better if advocates for SSM would be even willing to acknowledge the possibilty that growing up the kid of a SS couple could be hard -- and hard not just because of social stigma but for reasons internal to the family structure as well. Moreover, the experience of SS couple kids is only the small part of my argument. The big part is that legally redefining marriage, making it gender neutral, makes us unable to say that children need their *mother* and their *father*. The active public silencing of the importance of mothers and fathers that will be necessary to sustain legal and normative SSM will impact many, many kids of straights in negative ways, all in order to satisfy the desires of that minority of the gay and lesbian community who want to marry, who themselves are a very small minority of the population. Civil unions can accord legal rights and obligations to their relationships and give that apparently all important mark of social approval. Why redefine marriage?

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posted by Eve at 11:07 PM VOTE

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