GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

My longtime gay friend Tom Chatt recently posted a really good criticism of my “Same-sex marriages can do harm” piece. Because I was in a rush to get a piece to newspapers that could run on Tuesday, and because I only had 800 words, my point about same-sex kissing being a reason to oppose gay marriage appears as a total non-sequitur. Since I now have the leisure to more fully explain what I mean, and because blogging gives me an unlimited word length, I will now try to elucidate exactly what I was trying to say. The basic point relates to my belief that given the uncompromising attitudes of “marriage equality” advocates, a world without gay marriage will have more freedom for more people than a world with gay marriage. More on that below.

First off, to clarify, I think gays should be allowed to kiss in ballparks, but I think they shouldn’t. I think Hare Krishna people should be allowed to try to convert people in airports, but I think they shouldn’t. I think racists should be allowed to teach their children that blacks are inferior, but I think they shouldn’t. I think lesbians should be allowed to make a brand-new baby without a father, but I think they shouldn’t.

Based on my long history of involvement with the gay community, my Internet surfing and my many conversations at this blog and others, I have come to believe that at least 90% of gay and lesbian people have a set of attitudes I’ll call GayThink. One of the most important tenets of GayThink is that believing that gay sex is immoral and that man-woman marriage is better than same-sex relationships and that it’s best for children to have both a mother and a father is by definition bigotry. According to GayThink, it is as offensive to hold such beliefs as it is to believe that interracial sex is immoral and that people should marry their own race.

If LGBT readers of this blog do not in fact hold the beliefs of what I’m calling GayThink, please correct me. I’m not out to misrepresent anyone.

Now, according to GayThink, my views about sex, marriage, and the family are bigoted. Through most of my life, that hasn’t been a problem. I’ve had my views and LGBT activists have had theirs. But in the last few years, the gay community’s lobbying and especially lawsuits have begun to get more and more goverment units to adopt GayThink. And the more that happens, the more freedoms I lose.

One example is that if I want to start an adoption agency in Massachusetts, I will be shut down if I use my values about what’s best for children instead of GayThink’s values. I have heard from more than 15 gay activists, some of them quite prominent, who think a teacher should be disciplined or fired for using the definition of marriage she believes in with with her students instead of the GayThink definition. Now, a decade ago the gay group GLSEN convinced many public schools to use a curriculum that contained a definition of marriage that made no mention of opposite sexes. I am quite certain no teacher was disciplined or fired for teaching the GayThink definition of marriage, which was purely imaginary and legal nowhere at the time the curriculum was published. Yet under gay marriage, people with my values will find our jobs at risk if we don’t adopt GayThink in the way we perform our tasks.

Now, kissing. GayThink believes that it is bigoted to want to wait until your children get older to teach them about homosexuality but to teach about male-female love when they are quite young – especially if your reason is to be able to teach them when they are mature enough that your family considers gay sex immoral and that they should plan on marrying a member of the opposite sex when they grow up. (LGBT readers, again, tell me if you don’t agree with this tenet of GayThink.)

So LGBT people in Seattle grew quite angry when a mother tried to get lesbians to stop kissing because it was confusing her son. Some gays even proposed the solution of arranging for lots of same-sex couples to make out in front of children at the ballpark. That is a reasonable strategy in GayThink because any parent who would object is a bigot, and for the sake of her children – especially if someday they grow up to be gay – they should be exposed to homosexuality right away, rather than when the parents desire it.

If gay “marriage” becomes permanent in California, I am quite certain that the folks at GLSEN and the gay caucus of the National Education Association will start looking for ways to teach younger and younger children that when they grow up they can marry a man, or a woman – it’s up to them. (I will withdraw this statement if those groups pass a resolution never to support curricula such as I have described.) Parents who want to teach their children that they should only marry an opposite-sex person will have some of their freedom taken away. Now, any time a public school teacher tells her students that homosexuality is immoral or gay relationships are inferior, the gay-education lobby goes ballistic and makes sure the teacher stops saying that, or is even fired. Yet if GayThink becomes part of the law, traditionally religious parents will have no recourse when their children are taught at school that their family’s values are a form of bigotry similar to racism.

So you see, even freedom-loving people who personally see no reason gays shouldn’t get married should vote for the California Marriage Protection Act. If it passes, same-sex couples will lose no rights other than the word “marriage.” Gays and straights will continue to be able to teach, write, run their businesses and raise their children using the definition of marriage they believe in. If it fails, only people who accept the tenets of GayThink (an extreme ideology most Californians don’t agree with) will be able to use their own definition of marriage in running their lives. For anyone who cares about living in a free country, the only possible vote on the CMPA is yes.

When it rains, it pours. For the second day in a row, I have an important op-ed in a major newspaper in a marriage battleground state. The Providence Journal has a piece that grew out of my blogging and discussing the concept of a lesbian father here at GaysDefendMarriage.com. Thanks to everyone who participated in that conversation.

Some excerpts:

I believe that many lesbians make terrific mothers. It’s just that they make lousy fathers. And since I want every child to have both a mother and a father whenever possible, I think that society should privilege male-female relationships.

One way to do that is to keep the traditional definition of marriage. We learn how to be a man, and how to be a woman, and how to relate to men, and how to relate to women, from our mothers and our fathers. While many gays and feminists don’t think there is any difference between men and women, virtually every society in history has disagreed.

Even though I generally prefer children to grow up with traditional ideas about sex roles, I support the right of gays and lesbians to adopt children who would otherwise have no parents. But our society should keep its highest place of honor for families that represent the best configuration for the raising of children — families with both a mother and a father.

Seattle is in an uproar over the question of public displays of same-sex affection. The situation raises larger issues important to the same-sex marriage debate. At a May 26 Mariners game, Sirbrina Guerrero and her girlfriend were told by an usher that a mother was complaining that their repeated kissing was confusing her young son. The usher asked them to stop. A Mariners investigation later found (though this is disputed) that the couple had been “making out” and “groping” each other – not just an affectionate peck on the cheek.

The controversy outraged the openly gay editor of Seattle’s alternative weekly The Stranger, Dan Savage. He wrote:

Sorry, mom, but if straight people can kiss on the lips at Safeco, so can we…. You’re going to have to tell your kids about the existence of gays and lesbians sometime—and if you want to avoid that conversation for as long as possible, don’t leave the house, turn off the TV, throw out the radio, and close the blinds.

Savage, who has called me a “self-hating douchebag” for dissenting from the gay community’s attack on man-woman marriage, called for a same-sex “kiss-in” at the ballpark.

Can I suggest that a “kiss-in” is exactly the opposite of an appropriate response to this situation? The gay and lesbian movement, particularly with regard to marriage, has been arguing until it is blue in the face that it only wants to obtain rights for same-sex couples, and poses no threat to any heterosexual family. Well, doesn’t it threaten heterosexual families to prevent them from deciding for themselves when and how to introduce the topic of homosexuality?

I mean, Savage’s suggestion that parents who prefer to teach about gay couples at, say, age eight instead of age three shouldn’t leave the house is hardly a practical suggestion. If anyone should stay in their houses, it should be people who want to express modes of affection that if done in public are likely to interfere with other people’s parenting rights.

Even normally modest and conservative gays have expressed this attitude. A friend of mine who fits that description once complained that when he held his date’s hand in a major Midwestern city, some parents turned their children away. Who is he to determine at what age a father teaches his own daughter about homosexuality? It’s not like the parents called him names or demanded he let go of his date’s hand. They simply made sure their children wouldn’t see his behavior.

I mean, seriously, with all the problems facing gays and lesbians in America, is the freedom to smooch at the ballgame and hold hands in the park really that big of a deal? I don’t think anyone, including me, wants to outlaw same-sex displays of affection. But it sure would be nice if my fellow gays and lesbians would use some tact and discretion in not constantly shoving their sexuality in everyone’s face. You want to kiss your lesbian lover in public? That’s what Gay Pride Day is for. Or you can go to the Castro or West Hollywood. In other times and places, please have some humility and realize that we’re a diverse society and most parents want to make their own decisions about how to introduce their children to the gay subculture.

The militance of gays and lesbians on the subject of public displays of affection suggests that the marriage debate isn’t really about the right of a same-sex partner to inherit custody of children or to visit a loved one in the hospital. If it was, domestic partnerships would be a good solution. This is a much larger battle over what kind of society we’re going to live in. Groups like the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network are already working with gay-friendly teachers in public schools to introduce lessons about homosexuality to children as young as kindergarten. Shouldn’t parents get the right to decide when and how their young children will learn about homosexuality, rather than gay activists?

Some gays and lesbians have been up front about the fact that they’re not just looking to gain rights for themselves. Mark, a GaysDefendMarriage.com reader put it this way: “it’s a zero-sum game – for gay people to achieve full civil rights, traditionally religious people have to lose. I intend for them to lose pretty much totally.” Now, it so happens I am open to finding compromises with marriage-equality advocates that will provide protections for same-sex couples in distress nationwide. But if Mark is right, and I have to choose between no rights for gay couples and a culture in which marriage is redefined and parents have no control over what their young children learn about sexuality, I will regretfully choose “no rights for gay couples.” Given that far more Americans agree with me on what marriage is, and whether parents should be in charge of when children learn about homosexuality, it’s just not smart politics for LGBT people to insist that whoever loses this debate will lose totally.

GaysDefendMarriage.com reader Mark reacted sharply to my comment in the “Will Marriage Change?” post that marriage in California will soon “no longer automatically contain the ideal configuration for raising a child.”

His response was to point to all the data supporting gay and lesbian parenting, which SSM advocates usually do when I make the point that children need both a mother and a father. So I thought I’d deal with this controversy head-on. I have said, repeatedly and loudly, that gay men can be great fathers and lesbians can be great mothers. My life experience, my instincts, and nearly all the research point to that being true.

But there is no research I know of that shows lesbians can be good fathers, or gay men can be good mothers. I believe there are things we learn both from our same-sex and our opposite-sex parent about masculinity and femininity, and how to relate to both men and women, that cannot be learned from two mothers or two fathers.

Upwards of 95% percent of the human population throughout history has believed that children need both mothers and fathers. Lesbian couples need to understand when they demand equality in parenting (instead of simply demanding not to be rejected out of hand, like they unfortunately are in Florida), they are saying they think a child does not need a father. That is a radical statement. Many people believe that fatherless families are to blame for many of the nation’s ills. Of course those lesbians have the right to argue that fathers don’t matter, but they must make a much more solid case than they have and they should be sensitive to the fact they are trying undermine deeply held beliefs, instead of shrilly carping about “equal rights.”

There’s a certain kind of feminism that insists that women can do everything men can do, and vice versa. But women can’t do everything men can do. Women can’t be sperm donors, and they can’t be fathers (I first learned the last point in a song from Free to Be You and Me when I was in first grade.) Saying that women can’t be fathers isn’t sexist; it’s a fact of nature and biology. I understand that many LGBT people believe that fathers don’t matter; I just wish they would say that, rather than focusing on “equality” rhetoric that kind of misses the point.

So now a major report endorsed by leading adoption groups recommends that adoption agencies be allowed to discriminate based on race:

The report recommends that the law — the Multiethnic Placement Act, which covers agencies receiving federal dollars and promotes a color-blind approach — be amended to permit agencies to consider race and culture as one of many factors when selecting parents for children from foster care.

The marriage equality crowd is always claiming that race analogies are perfectly legitimate when it comes to same-sex marriage. So it must be fair for me to use a race analogy with adoption – if the expert consensus is that adoption agencies should legitimately be allowed to use race as a factor in placing children, shouldn’t they also be allowed to consider whether a home provides both a mother and a father?

I’ve felt for a long time that the most important secular reason to preserve man-woman marriage is because the ideal environment to raise a child has both a mother and a father. Well, a Providence, Rhode Island, academic and medical expert, Dr. Daniel Harrop, has weighed in on my side of the parenting debate:

Marriage is a core social institution, the only one we have that is dedicated to communicating and reinforcing a unique and vitally important task: bringing together men and women to make and raise the next generation together….

Existing scientific data suggests that the law of marriage protects children to the extent it increases the likelihood that children will be born to and raised by their own mother and father in a harmonious, lasting union….

As a psychiatrist and a clinical assistant professor at Brown, I am well aware that proponents of same-sex marriage will cite the American Psychiatric Association and other professional organizations to justify their view: There is nothing scientific at all about the view that a child needs his mother and father.

The scientific reality is that there are only a handful of studies on same-sex parenting (less than 50 total), and almost none of them are based on nationally representative data, which means we simply do not know how typical or atypical the gay parents and their children studied are.

The point I wish to underscore here is not that gay people cannot be good parents (just as many single mothers and fathers are good parents), but that there is something special and distinctive about sexual unions that can both create life and connect those babies to a mother and father.

Positions on same-sex parenting tend to be extreme. Either “children need parents who love them, no matter the number or gender” or “children must be raised by heterosexual married parents.” But I disagree with both those approaches and have a stance on gay parenting that is much more nuanced. I believe:

1. Whenever possible, a child should be raised with both a mother and a father. Sometimes that can’t happen, which is always a tragedy.

2. There is no evidence that a person’s sexual orientation is correlated with his or her parenting ability.

3. It is better for a child to have two parents of the same sex than no parents at all.

Those three principles lead me to the following conclusions:

A. Laws like Florida’s ban on lesbian and gay adoption are offensive. The fact the gay movement is putting so many more resources into retaining a semantic difference on marriage in California when Florida continues to irrationally stigmatize and reject would-be parents because of their sexual orientation befuddles me.

B. For a same-sex couple to engineer a baby instead of adopting is a selfish act of cruelty to their own offspring – prioritizing passing on their genes over allowing their own child to grow up with both a father’s guidance and a mother’s touch. It’s manufacturing a tragedy. It shouldn’t be illegal, but it makes me sick.

C. Adoption agencies should be allowed to give preference to families with both a mother and a father (of any sexual orientation) when all else is equal. If that means same-sex couples end up with more children of color and special-needs children, I know from experience that LGBT people have the love, the patience, and the perseverence to welcome all kinds of little ones into their homes. But laws like the one in Massachusetts that forbids adoption agencies from preferring families with both a mother and a father may help gay people but they hurt children and they should be repealed.

D. Creative same-sex family structures like that of the smart, affable Jewish lesbian academic Caryn Aviv are particularly admirable. Although I would never form a family like that, she actually has an argument that her daughter gets more love than if she were part of a traditional nuclear family – because she has both a Mom and two Dads to care for her. Caryn’s family is oriented around what’s best for her daughter, as opposed to proving to the world that gays are equal and a selfish notion like “a child doesn’t need a father to be happy.”

So am I homophobic or too accommodating of unfit parents? I’m sure some of you will have each opinion. I think I split this baby just right.