GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

1. You obviously feel that gender matters, or else lesbians could be attracted to men and gay men could be attracted to women; both genders have hands and faces and hearts and can kiss and hug and be aroused and love. If gender didn’t matter, we’d all be bisexual, right? So if gender matters in selecting a partner, shouldn’t it matter in parenting, too?

2. If a child’s parents died, all else being equal, would you rather she was raised by an aunt and an uncle or two aunts (sisters)? Would it matter? Why or why not?

In all these studies of gay parenting, it seems that nobody has asked the children what kind of family structure they want. I would be interested in a survey of orphans asking them if they want a mother and a father, two moms, two dads, a single mom, a single dad, or it doesn’t matter. My hunch is most orphans want both a mother and a father.

Do we really think they don’t know what they’re talking about, and we will “re-educate” them to accept the two Dads they’re getting even if they really want a mother’s touch?

I’d like to ask the children what they want, at try to respect that in placing them in homes.

(This post obviously does not refer to infant adoption.)

Fannie of Fannie’s Room posted some good questions about my statement that lesbians can be good mothers, but not good fathers. Her incisive attempt at creating greater clarity on this important issue is impressive. I thought I’d respond to her here:

I’ve heard this argument before,

Damn, I thought I coined that phrase myself. Oh, well.

but in my humble opinion it’s never been explained adequately. Maybe you can do better than others who’ve tried. First off, where is your scientific evidence demonstrating this?

Well, here is the first part of our crossed-wires problem. I mean my statement primarily ideologically, and so I don’t need to prove it with research and studies. My statement reflects deep moral and social beliefs that don’t need to be defended with studies anymore than my belief that democracy is the best political system. On the other hand, when an LGBT person says “Lesbians can be as good parents as heterosexual couples,” they are perhaps making an ideological statement about their beliefs, but in my experience they often point to the research, which means they are making an academic/scientific point as well. So for your side to “prove your point” you may have to defend your science and your ideology, whereas I (believe that I) only have to defend my ideology.

Specifically, I’m wondering what are the specific characteristics of “fatherhood” that a woman could not possibly perform? And, what are the specific characteristics of “motherhood” that a man could not perform?

Great question, and one that isn’t easy to answer. I believe there ineffable aspects of malehood and femalehood that we learn best from our mothers and our fathers. For example, a father is often best placed to teach his daughter about men, particularly as she begins to date. Sure, a father could teach his daughter about her period, but that conversation is often a unique bonding moment between mother and daughter that I believe is just not replicated by an eleven-year-old girl sitting down with her two Dads and a diagram. Those are just two examples.

Your claim seems to rest upon very rigid and inflexible notions of gender roles that, in my experience, do not exist. Rather, there is great overlap between male/female and scientists have as of yet been hardpressed to identify strictly male or strictly female characteristics.

Again, your comments tend toward clarity on both sides, and I appreciate that. I believe in traditional, but not inflexible, gender roles. Your comments suggest that if scientists find something is “natural” for one sex, then that is a “male” or “female” characteristic - and since science aren’t finding such characteristic, everybody should express only those behaviors that they happen to like. I don’t agree. I think it’s good for parents to encourage their boys to be strong and their girls to be nurturing, for example, all the while being generally accepting of children who also express traits usually associated with the other sex. I hope you can see that I’m not just being ignorant, I’m expressing my values when I choose to raise my kids (if any) with traditional sex roles, and when I hope society rewards families that have what I consider to be the ideal arrangement for raising children with the kinds of roles our society has valued (with some variations) for centuries.

I am well aware that your religion teaches that men and women have certain roles, but I see those roles as creations of your religion, rather than as an accurate observation of reality.

What about the roles of children and adults? Are those a creation of our society or an accurate observation of reality? A post-pubescent 15-year-old “naturally” should have all the rights of an adult, yet our society, and our families, restrict him or her in various ways. You might argue, but those restrictions aren’t arbitrary. I would argue that gender roles aren’t arbitrary either, especially when it comes to childbearing, which only a woman can do.

I am willing to concede that we don’t know whether a woman could be “as good a father” as a man could be.  Taking your statement to its logical conclusion, are you willing to concede that, given the lack of info, a woman could actually be “as good a father” as a man could be? 

Yes. If I saw a fair, impartial, replicated study (perhaps one that both liberals and conservatives helped design) that showed that on gender-related identity and role issues (especially) women parents do (not could) perform just as effectively as fathers do, for both boys and girls, I would have to admit I am wrong on this issue, and I would have to find a different reason to base my (secular) opposition to same-sex marriage. I doubt that would happen, but yes, I would drop this argument in that case.

In survey after survey, younger voters tend to favor gay marriage at higher rates than older voters. After a survey last May which showed such a trend, Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo said the results displayed a “generational replacement,” with older voters being replaced by younger voters who supported same-sex marriage.

But what if this isn’t a generational issue, but rather an age issue? Young voters tend not to be married, a fact that could be significant in terms of attitudes toward this issue. As today’s young voters get older and marry and have children, could they come to appreciate that mothers and fathers make different kinds of contributions to the raising of a child? It certainly is possible.

Imagine it is 1865. The 13th Amendment has just banned slavery in the United States. Yet the Attorney General announces that the 13th Amendment is not retroactive, and that anyone who had been a slave before 1865 is still be a slave; the 13th Amendment bans only new slaves.

Sound preposterous? Well, that’s precisely what California Attorney General Jerry Brown and his allies are trying to do with Proposition 8. That constitutional amendment, passed by voters in November, states that “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” The constitution supersedes all laws; it sets the rules. Just like the abolition of slavery was retroactive, the definition of marriage as man-woman must be retroactive.

In early August, Brown told the San Francisco Chronicle, “I believe that marriages that have been entered into subsequent to the (May 15) Supreme Court opinion will be recognized by the California Supreme Court.” He noted that Prop. 8 is silent about retroactivity.

I would argue that the initiative didn’t have to mention the word “retroactivity.” As much as some people like to twist the language of constitutions to insert their own interpretation, proper constitutional analysis looks at the plain meaning. The initiative said same-sex marriages would not be “valid” - a term that implies such things would be invalid, which sounds like retroactivity to me. It also says “recognized,” which implies they may already exist, but they don’t get recognition. I disagree with Brown that the initiative is silent about retroactivity; I would argue that it loudly endorses retroactivity.

Brown also said, “I would think the court, in looking at the underlying equities, would most probably conclude that upholding the marriages performed in that interval (before the election) would be a just result.”

Even if there are clauses in the Constitution about “equities,” those clauses get just as much weight as Prop. 8, which is equally part of the Constitution. If anything, Prop. 8 should get more weight, since it was consciously amending the Constitution as written. The court must look at the text of the constitutional amendment, and determine whether it is retroactive, just as the antislavery amendment was retroactive. I can think of no other “just result.”

Opponents of retroactivity have argued that ex post facto laws are illegal (but this isn’t a law; it’s a constitutional amendment), and that it would be unfair to strip marital status from couples who really believed they were getting married. The problem with that last argument is that every single same-sex couple who married in California knew there would be a constitutional amendment on the November ballot defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Some “No on 8″ activists even tried to win points with the public by arguing that past gay marriages could be eviscerated if the initiative passed; they can’t expect us to believe them now if they say it’s clear the initiative isn’t retroactive.

If a sizable number of legally married same-sex couples continue to exist in California, many of the problems the Prop. 8 people wanted to avoid in the first place will still exist. Liberal teachers will still be able to tell their students that in California, some men are married to men - and they’ll be right. Business owners who refuse to refer to man’s legal spouse as a “husband” can be sued for discrimination. Same-sex married couples will be able to wave around their marriage licenses and dare anyone to treat them as less than married - a problem Prop. 8 was supposed to solve.

I’ve been told that many Prop. 8 supporters are resigned to losing this battle, and have therefore put little energy into making sure the constitutional amendment is retroactive. I think that’s a big mistake. I believe the law is on our side, and the consequences of a non-retroactive proposition are severe.

1. The “Salt Lake City Plan” is the best way out of the gay-marriage morass. It allows individuals to designate any one person with whom he or she has a mutual commitment to receive benefits. The pair could be a mother and an adult son, two straight male roommates, or lesbian lovers. Because lots of conservatives can support such a system, this plan could provide aid to same-sex and other non-married couples now, at federal, state and local levels. All it leaves out is the ego boost of same-sex couples being told they’re exactly equal - which is little sacrifice, because they’re not.

2. One of the reasons for man-woman marriage is that whenever possible children need both mothers and fathers. That doesn’t mean gays can’t be good parents; they can. A lesbian can be a terrific mother, for example, but she cannot be a good father. Laws restricting gays from adopting should be repealed, but so should laws preventing adoption agencies from taking into account whether a family has both a mother and a father.

3. One reason gay marriage is not a good idea is that gay people, by and large, do not understand marriage the same way straight people do. There is extreme tolerance of open relationships of various sorts, a kind of agreed-upon infidelity. I am not saying that all gay people cheat, or no straight people cheat. I am saying that most gay and lesbian people think “arrangements” can be completely compatible with marriage, and very few straight people agree with them. Thus, gay marriage will change the nature of marriage.

4. The gay community, which once addressed all kinds of issues affecting its members, has become a big PR campaign emphasizing issues, like marriage, that make us look good and seem “just like you.” But gays and lesbians aren’t “just like” straights in every way, and we have special needs that involve LGBT suffering that should be addressed by LGBT organizations and the government. These include lesbian alcoholism, syphilis among gay and bisexual men, and prison rape among gay and bisexual men and especially transgender women. 

5. We need laws guaranteeing that despite whichever protections for gays and lesbians and institutions for same-sex partners exist, they do not trample on the rights of people to perform their jobs, run their businesses, and raise their children consistently with their beliefs about what marriage is and what the ideal way to raise a child is.

6. Democracy is central to our governmental system. Some people, like me, believe same-sex relations and gay marriage are immoral. Some of those, like me, have also identified cogent civic reasons to oppose same-sex marriage that inform their First Amendment expression and their vote. But nobody has to answer to anyone for why they support or oppose anything when it comes to their votes and First Amendment rights. It is not “imposing one’s religion” to support laws that are consistent with one’s values; that’s what both sides do.

7. Despite what they often say, gays and lesbians are not focused on benefits or rights, or else they would not have spent $40 million on a symbolic and semantic change in California which already granted all the rights of marriage to same-sex couples. This battle is primarily about gay and lesbian self-esteem, which is understandably damaged because of many decades of straight hegemony. But no child should have to suffer, or traditionally religious person be forced to violate her conscience, in order to soothe a gay person’s feelings.

Welcome back to GaysDefendMarriage.com, one of the liveliest places to discuss and debate marriage on the World Wide Web. I shut down GDM last July because I did not want to assist the campaign running Prop. 8, which I considered to be unacceptably antisemitic and homophobic. Now that the campaign is over, and same-sex marriage is still in the news, I thought I’d bring back the blog.

Pretty much anything goes here except libel and name-calling. All opinions are welcome here as long as they don’t distract excessively from the main conversation.

Thanks for visiting!

-David Benkof