MARRIAGE, STATE INTEREST, AND KINSHIP: Marty McKeever

"What is the state's interest, if any, in preserving a definition of marriage as involving a man and a woman?"

What is at stake is the importance of biological kinship, vs. legal kinship, to one's own children. In custody cases of all types, biological kinship of a parent carries grave implications in the placement of the child. Same-sex marriage/parenting causes the notions of legal kindship to become exactly equal to that of biological kinship, because in most cases the "other" biological parent has relinquished all of their rights and is practically anonymous.

What is missing though, is the fact that in a traditional family, biological kinship also comes hand in hand with a legal kinship bond. This SHOULD make the bonds TWICE as strong as either one alone (and it has been implicitly interpreted that way in most custody cases). But with same-sex parenting, there can be only one biological parent, and one legal-only parent, forcing custody cases to see the parents as equals (you've seen recent examples of this, I know). BUT -- and this is key -- the biological parent also has the same legal kinship as does the non-bio parent-- so to treat them equally REQUIRES that we discard any preference for biological kinship altogether, and ONLY consider the legal!

Biological kinship is something that is created by God (or whatever name you want to use) and can only be destroyed by God, while legal kinship is only a creation of man, and can always be destroyed by mere men.

Worst case example? Try this: We let the courts take kids away from their biological parents because of child abuse, and place them into foster homes. This is a decision done with serious consideration of the biological link to a child's family, and a last resort. But when biological kinship is removed from this equation, and legal kinship is the only hurdle, then arguably any child can be removed from any family for any reason, so long as the foster family is deemed to be "better" by the courts -- because separating a child from a biological parent requires a MUCH higher standard than it does from a legal guardian.

It seems like a stretch, I know, but we remove the grave deference to biological kinship at our own peril. Same-sex marriage makes a legal precedent for doing just that.

posted by Eve at 5:23 PM VOTE

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