If I were hit by a bus today and killed, my wife would eventually worry about the children not having a male role model in our children’s lives. She would see that my son needed a man to emulate, someone to share with in the physical way that men have. She would come to understand that my girls would surely lack a steadying male presence in their lives.
Forget all the talking heads about gay marriage. Forget all the talk about rights for a second. Forget all the studies which attempt to show that children raised by homosexuals are doing as well or better than children raised by a mother and a father. Here’s the thing — we know in our hearts that children do best when raised by a mother and a father. Men and women are complimentary. We are not the same. Gay marriage, is not so much about sexuality, as it is about gender.
Codifying and promoting gay marriage as equal to the marriage of a man and a woman says there is no gender difference. Of course there is and we all know that there is. But having the government not only codifying gay marriage but promoting it (which legalization does) goes against what we know is best for children. Children need a mother and a father.
That’s the thing. Maybe we’ve forgotten that marriage isn’t just about us. It’s about us but not just about us. Family is the building block of our society. To have a child, nature says you need a man and a woman. But now, we seem to be saying that we know better than nature. Sure, you need a man and a woman to have a child but not to raise a child?
It’s obvious that a man and a man CAN raise a child. But is it healthy for society to promote that as equal when we know that it’s not? That’s what it comes down to. By legalizing gay marriage we’re essentially saying, once again, that our rights trump our children’s rights.
We have made everything about US. Marriage is about ME. It’s about my right to marry whomever I choose but it completely ignores if it’s good for society. When considering gay marriage, ask yourself if it’s good for children. Ask yourself if you believe that it’s an equal good for a child to be raised by a man and a woman or two women or two men. Ask yourself if you believe gender is irrelevant and interchangeable. When you ask yourself if you’re for gay marriage, ask yourself if it’s good for the children.
April 11, 2013 at 11:45 am
This is an article against same-sex parenting, not gay marriage.
Gay couples are adopting and reproducing without marriage; even legally married gay couples cannot reproduce without help.
Legal marriage is NOT about parenting or reproduction.
April 11, 2013 at 12:14 pm
But it is.
April 11, 2013 at 12:28 pm
Marriage necessarily requires one man and one woman with an openness to any child that might come of their union.
April 11, 2013 at 1:47 pm
Openness to children is not part of any civil marriage law.
April 12, 2013 at 5:09 pm
It is implied where the civil law recognises natural marriages or marriages solemnised by the Catholic Church and others as marriage. This was always the understanding of the necessity of consummation for marriage to come into effect.
April 11, 2013 at 1:48 pm
You may want to put a comma in the first sentence so that it does not sound like you both involved in an accident and committed murder. 🙂 ~MattK
April 11, 2013 at 1:49 pm
*were both 🙂 MattK
April 11, 2013 at 2:08 pm
Good suggestion. Thanks.
April 11, 2013 at 2:35 pm
The entire reason the government is in the marriage business to begin with is to protect the rights of the children born to the man and woman who are married. And in previous times it was also about securing rights for the woman, who had less status in society than men. So to say that procreation and child rearing have nothing to do with legal marriage is silly. If it is not about that, then tell me what is it about? Certainly the government has no legitimate interest in certifying that two people have strong feelings for each other. It is the procreative potential and the need to support a stable existence for the children born to a couple that provides the government an interest in certifying a marriage.
April 11, 2013 at 2:40 pm
The three lies of 'progressivism':
You can have sex without consequences.
Gender doesn't matter.
Marriage exists to satisfy the desires of adults.
April 11, 2013 at 3:51 pm
The real problem is that people don't know in their hearts anymore.
We've compromised with the state and now the state transmogrifies marriage not to include homosexuals, but to take advantage of them. Many of them are wealthy. The marriage license does not license us, but licenses lawyers and the entire divorce industry to prey upon us. It isn't like you can hold an errant spouse liable for breach of contract. They've already taught everybody for like two generations that gender is a social construct, so the door is open and they will push this through sooner or later. We should set ourselves apart from this secular world and marry without regard to the state, but I suspect multiple U.S. bishops would have to reside in jail before they started contemplating that. Everybody seemed just peachy with socialized medicine and questionable mandates that fell on Catholic business owners- it wasn't until the Obamacare mandate fell on their own backyard that they started making any noise. We need a St. Valentine.
April 11, 2013 at 3:52 pm
Please, PLEASE give up this wrongheaded and dangerous habit of saying "gender" when the meaning is "sex". It is a complete surrender to queer theorists pushing the demented notion that sexuality is something we get to choose for ourselves. "Gender" is a grammatical term — period. OK? Pope Benedict dealt with this in an address to the Roman curia this past Christmas.
April 11, 2013 at 3:55 pm
Excellent, Matthew. One minor correction here: "Men and women are complimentary."
Should be "complementary".
April 11, 2013 at 4:01 pm
Apparently gay marriage is an opportunity for the State to prosecute you if you disagree…
April 11, 2013 at 4:23 pm
It's about eradicating Christianity.
April 11, 2013 at 5:26 pm
I think mrflibbleisvryx's point is an extremely important one. If marriage isn't about procreation and parenting, then what business does the state have in being involved at all? If the state breaks the marriage-procreation-parenting connection by redefining marriage this way, then it has created a definition of marriage to which the state has no business in granting benefits and privileges.
April 11, 2013 at 6:10 pm
Actually, if marriage has anything to do with procreation and parenting, then that is all the more reason the state shouldn't be involved. The family is the foundation of good governance, and good governance is demonstrably not what we've been getting since the rise of the modern state. The bureaucrat must destroy the family, for the natural order of things means goods and assets will be arranged in order to establish a household and raise children, but the bureaucrat needs those resources to be spent on him. Have you noticed the false 'feminist' identity fed to young women which basically says if she has children she is less of a person? This is no mistake. The education/career track renders most of her goods and services easily harvested by the state, whereas a young woman who gets married, homeschools, and otherwise produces within the home is not easily taxed.
April 11, 2013 at 6:30 pm
@August, that we have a busybody governing class right now does not mean the government does not have any general interest in marriage as a procreative and parenting institution. Parental rights and responsibilities to a child is very much the business of the government if a child is being neglected. The problem we have today is that most people have lost all of their sense, hence we have to have these arguments about where the boundaries of government involvement lie. It should be obvious to anyone with any common sense that parents should be able to raise their children as they see fit (after all, we are legally and morally responsible for them in a way that the neighbor or mayor or kindergarten teacher is not), so long as they're not beating them to a pulp and are adequately providing for their needs. It is when the government goes beyond ensuring general well being that we encounter problems.
April 11, 2013 at 7:15 pm
Except for various shades of melanin and the variety of cultural expression, humanity is homogenous.
Everyone comes into the world the same way. And everyone dies. Everyone bleeds when cut. There are many other similarities that could fill a book. The main difference found in humanity is that of male and female. This difference is physical, biological, biochemical, physiological. And, oh my dare I mention it? Psychological.
The differences between the sexes are complementary, not combative. Same-sex marriage basically denies these differences between male and female exist, and therefore are irrelevant… Uh, yeah.
April 11, 2013 at 8:03 pm
mrflibbleisvryx,
Succesful interventions for the neglect of a child are initiated by family members. Children under the eye of the local child protective services tend to be in more danger, not less, because the extended family has a false sense that the situation is being taken care of, but meanwhile all it tends to represent for the bureaucrat is more paperwork for her to push.
If the Church and local community are robust, governance takes care of itself, without necessarily needing to resort to what we now consider government. That said, I would suppose that in a small monarchy somewhere in Christendom, there would be at least a cursory interest in marriage, because the monarch would know what would keep his own family and his own interests safe. Unfortunately, we live in an age of progressivism and universalism. The monarch had a limited jurisdiction, and, compared to modern politicians, no agenda. He'd be far more interested in making sure young men and women married and became truly productive rather than engaging in the constant scams.
April 11, 2013 at 10:53 pm
I would agree generally that it would be best for the extended family to sort it out, but considering that the two parents have legal rights to their children you do eventually have to involve the government to rectify the situation. You cannot and should not be able to just take a child from his parent. Even if it is as simple as transferring primary custody to another party/relative/etc. and to limit and/or eliminate the involvement of the transgressing parent there must be some proof presented and all that entails some government involvement. Now it should be at the lowest level feasible, obviously. But again, there is a legitimate role for governance there.
I don't disagree that the role of the government should be *limited* but that there is a role.