IS SAME-SEX MARRIAGE GOOD FOR KIDS?: Elizabeth Marquardt replies to Jonathan Rauch

[Argh! If you subscribe to the New Republic, you can get Rauch's piece here. I don't, and it's not on Nexis yet, so I will be shuffling off to the ol' newsstand ASAP, and will post excerpts as soon as I can. Sorry --Eve]

...But, as his main point, when he writes about a hypothetical child living in a neighborhood between a married straight couple and a married same-sex couple, as he does here:

If a child sees that Mr and Mrs Smith, the neighbors to the left, are married, and that Mrs and Mrs Jones, the neighbors to the right, are married –- that sends a positive and reassuring message to children about the importance of marriage...

I have to beg to disagree.

The marriage of Mr and Mrs Smith tells the child that it's important for a mom and a dad to stick together when they have a child (and yes, a stepfamily created by remarriage weakens that message, but it does not neutralize it*). By contrast, the marriage of Mrs and Mrs Jones tells the child that fathers are expendable. The state and society affirm that the partnership of two women raising a child is exactly the same as the partnership of a man and a woman –- even though the two women's partnership will always be leaving the child's dad somewhere on the margins (because every same-sex couple, if they do not adopt, must involve or must have involved an opposite-sex person, the child's dad or mom, to conceive a child).

From the hetero-Smith marriage the child learns that when he or she grows up someday it's important to try and marry, and stay married to, the person they have a child with. From the same-sex-Jones marriage the child learns, what? That babies arrive in all sorts of ways. That the adults who conceive the baby might just be paid agents, or might disappear, or might be consigned to the margins, or might stay involved and visit on weekends, or might form any other number of weak, transitory relationships to a child, or might form none at all. ...

Society should not be in the business of actively and forcefully denying those losses. If it does, it will raise a new generation of kids whose attachments to fatherhood and motherhood are even weaker than our own.

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posted by Eve at 10:44 PM VOTE

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