Gay marriage/adoption revisited...

On the heels of the First Presidency’s statement on gay marriage (read it here if you haven’t already…):

There are many reasons why you could choose not to support gay marriage:
(1) you don’t think it’s an equal rights issue.
(2) you think implementing it would make existing marriage/divorce laws and the court system much more needlessly complicated
(3) you’re skeptical making gay marriage legal will actually do much to reduce promiscuity among gays as touted.
(3) you don’t feel gay relationships are exactly equivalent to male/female pairings in terms of societal purpose and benefit, and thus don’t deserve completely equal treatment.

...and so on. (I’ve already discussed them in more detail here...but, of course, as faithful readers you already knew that.)

The problem is: those reasons (while true) are fairly minor. While they can provide the basis for opposing gay marriage on principle in the first place, they’re not really big enough issues to get all worked up and passionate over—they’re closer in significance to discussing the pros and cons of more liberal fishing license laws than a discussion of reinstituting slavery, in other words.

This, of course, is not good enough for those to whom gay marriage is a Major Issue—those who say legalizing gay marriage will bring blood, horror, and chaos to all civilized society. To these people, the reasons given above (while they might agree with them) aren’t nearly serious enough to convince others that their vision of an apocalyptic collapse of society if gay marriage is allowed is real—therefore they must of necessity come up with other, more dramatic and destructive, reasons why gay marriage should (nay, must!) be opposed—things involving, for example, the imminent destruction of existing families, or serious emotional or physical harm to children. It is usually around this point that the logic and reasoning of their arguments tend to evaporate…

Here we have an article which attempts to answer how same-sex marriage hurts marriage, children, and society—that is, actual marriages and children, versus just the abstract notion of “The Family”.

This is not a bad article, nor terribly extreme in any way—in fact, in a nod toward reason, the author states clearly at the end that it’s silly to think that “people [having] sex with their same-gender partner will cause my husband and I to divorce or destroy our marriage. Nobody ever claimed it would.” (Um…well, lots of people claim it would, actually…but point taken.)

While certainly more reasonable than some of the ‘extremist’ attacks you will hear on the subject, do Sister Slater’s arguments stand up in the end, though? Let’s see…

Point 1: Expanding the definition of marriage denigrates existing marriage contracts by diluting their meaning. Here’s the key analogy:

Suppose you decided to become a doctor and you qualify and are awarded a license to practice medicine. Then suppose a special interest group of beauticians cry discrimination and pressure lawmakers to allow them to receive a medical license upon completion of beauty school. Would a simple medical license qualify a beautician to practice medicine? Would you want to receive medical treatment from such a beautician? I certainly wouldn’t. A license alone, though necessary, does not qualify someone to competently practice medicine. It is their capacity to be a doctor that does. Simply issuing a license without demanding that the applicants meet the basic qualifications does not make for quality medical care.
So it is with marriage.

Sounds nice, but is the analogy apt? What’s the comparitive equivalent of ‘practicing medicine’ in terms of husbands and wives? Who are the ‘customers’—i.e. who is it that is shopping around for ‘proper’ marriages, and could potentially be deceived and hurt by accepting the service of ‘unqualified practitioners’? I can only assume the analogy is pointing toward children being the ‘customers’ of marriages, but since when is there a free market going for children to shop around for parents? Children pretty much are stuck with whatever parents they have given to them, and if they’re in a family that’s not ‘qualified’ to be parents for whatever reason—then, well, that’s just how it is. Only in rare circumstances (and ‘being gay’ is not one of them...) would governmental authorities take children away from their birth families and give them to someone ‘better’. I’m afraid this analogy just doesn’t fit in regards to ‘qualified’ and ‘unqualified’ marriages.

Going on…

[L]egalizing same-sex marriage…will also undermine my ability to teach the meaning and importance of marriage to my children. I teach my children that marriage is a sacred relationship between a man and woman sanctioned by society as the best way to organize families and rear children. They will be told by society that this is not so. Our laws, and thus our schools, will undermine my teachings to my children, telling them that there is nothing special about my marriage to their father and that the sex of my husband is irrelevant to the role he plays as my husband and their father.

A common argument...yet by its nature it implies that today’s modern society without legalized gay marriage is somehow supportive of parents’ teaching of the value and meaning of marriage to their children. Last I checked (and I doubt Sister Slater would disagree) society already preaches entirely the wrong message about family and commitment, including (but not limited to) casual sex, drug use, and general self-gratification. Saying that the addition of gay marriage to society would somehow ‘tip the scales’ in teaching children good values is an overexaggeration at best. Good parents have already taught their children important values in spite of--not because of--what society professes, and adding gay marriage to the mix would in fact have little to no impact on those whom (presumably) are already taught to view the morals and ethics of modern society with a very skeptical eye. Anyone who argues that legalized gay marriage somehow represents a sudden 180-degree turn in society’s morals hasn’t really been paying attention. The current state of society’s morals isn’t reason to support gay marriage, of course, but shows if children are being properly educated at home, society’s accepting or rejecting of gay marriage will make no difference in the end.

Continuing on the topic of children (emphasis in the quote added by me):

Once we abandon marriage to the whims and desires of adults seeking validation of their sexual lifestyles, we denigrate children and their needs – legally validating relationships that would deliberately leave them motherless or fatherless.

Now, there’s no question children are best raised by a mother and a father who love them as well as love each other. Let’s focus in, though, on a few key words from the article—gay marriage “deliberately leaving” children without a mother or a father. On its surface, this makes it sound like legalizing gay marriage is actually the cause of these children being without a mother or father—instead of the more obvious truth that these children were without a mom or dad from the onset, and would still be even without gay marriage. One of the ‘extremist’ attacks on gay marriage is that legalizing it will somehow result in children being taken away from healthy mother/father households and given to gay couples, when in fact the majority of children who would be raised by gay spouses under new gay marriage laws...are and would still be raised by that same gay couple now.

As mentioned earlier, children are pretty much stuck with whatever parent(s) they’re born with, and since most of the children being raised by gay parent(s) today (unless someone wants to present numbers to the contrary...) are actually the biological child of one of the gay partners (which raises ‘hard-wiring’ questions...but that’s another article), how exactly will rejecting gay marriage change that? Those children would still have the same parent/guardian regardless of that parent/guardian’s marital status. Would it be nice if each of those children had both a mother and a father, and an environment to learn righteous morals and behavior? Sure it would... But many children due to their lot in life do not have that opportunity now, and legalizing gay marriage doesn't change anything. (Again, this is not a reason to support gay marriage because a legal relationship between their dads or moms does not improve their situation, but it's hard to argue that it makes it worse either...)

In conclusion, the article has some good points, but in the end tends to depend on illogical arguments and conclusions in order to demonstrate why gay marriage is harmful to families and society. While there are real and legitimate reasons to oppose gay marriage, most of the disadvantages mentioned—while real—are not, in fact, related to the gay marriage issue at all, and would still exist even if gay marriage is unanimously rejected.

Finally, let’s break from the article now and discuss gay adoption—another key issue in the gay marriage debate. Should gay couples be allowed to adopt children? Many would say no—and not only no, but “H&@!, no”, in fact. But again, it’s silly and illogical to think allowing gay adoptions means children are going to be taken away from healthy mother/father households and given to gay couples instead. (If you can think of a situation where this would be the case, you’re welcome to write in and explain it...) Gay marriage/adoption opponents seem to presume that each and every adoptable child will have the chance to join a healthy mother/father family, and we shouldn’t allow gay couples to come in and ‘steal them away’—when, in reality, the majority of those kids will not have the opportunity to be raised in a normal mother/father household and have the choice of:
(1) being raised by a gay parent or couple
or
(2) remaining at the orphanage with NO parents whatsoever.

How is (2) better for a child than (1)? Would you like that child to be raised in an environment that teaches proper respect for sexual purity and gospel principles? Sounds great, but what makes you think they’d get that education alone at the orphanage with no parental involvement whatsoever? Futhermore, the still prevalent idea that living in a gay household makes one more likely to be gay yourself—that’s just silly. The worst natural consequence is the child grows up thinking homosexual behavior is acceptable—which, again, is (1) not a serious enough consequence to consider banning gay adoptions altogether, and (2) not likely to be any different living alone at an orphanage anyway.

Even if every married couple were free to adopt as many children as they wanted, AND every gay couple were also free to adopt as many children as they wanted, there would still be children left over—that’s the fact of the matter. Saying gays shouldn’t be allowed to adopt means you think children are better off living alone and parentless in an orphanage instead...and I have to ask: are you really thinking of the best interests of the child? Can you really say a child having a life in a somewhat stable household with a parent or two that genuinely cares for him/her and meets his/her physical needs regardless of their moral standing in the eyes of God is overruled by the fact that that child might not be taught gospel standards growing up? Despite believing whole-heartedly that children are better off in families with a mother and a father, I have no problem with the idea of gay adoption—because I know those adopted kids in reality won’t have a chance to live in an ‘ideal’ household. I, for one, can’t honestly say they’d be better off living a lonely parent-less existence at an orphanage just on the off-chance that someone teaches them gospel principles in the meantime, instead of being somewhere where they are wanted and loved by someone...