SSM AND FATHERHOOD: Michael Sellitto

Regarding this:

Kathleen Parker makes two flawed assertions in her article. First, she argues that same-sex marriage does damage to the fathers' movement by "reinforcing the idea that one parent is disposable."

However, wasn't a major reason the "fathers' rights" movement came about that fathers were being treated as incapable of being good parents and always inferior to mothers in that respect? Being a male was a prima facie case for being an inferior parent.

Successful same-sex parenting by two men, rather than demonstrating that fathers aren't important, demonstrates that men are equally capable of raising healthy children as women are. In other words, men and women should be treated equally as parents. Is that not the goal of the fathers' rights movement?Parker also asserts and assumes that the correlation between single mothers and unhealthy children applies to children with same-sex parents. No evidence or argument is provided to substantiate this assumption.

It is unreasonable to assume, as Parker does, that having a single parent is the same as having two parents of the same sex. Practically speaking, two people have more total time to spend with their children, read to them, help them with their homework, take them to soccer practice, and so on--probably the major distinction between single-parent and double-parent children.

Furthermore, there is no evidence to support the claim that children of same-sex parents will be disadvantaged over children with opposite-sex parents. Rather, the evidence that is available, albeit limited, shows that children with same- and op-sex parents do equally well.

And, of course, we need only look to the long historical tradition of sending boys off to boarding school where they were taught by men and lived with boys--having few interactions with women. It worked for the founding fathers.

posted by Eve at 7:49 PM VOTE

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