|
What
message will same-sex marriage send to the next generation?
I got a foretaste recently while taking the shuttle back
home from D.C. The young man sitting next to me was a
college student, headed home for the holidays. Call him
Matthew. We got to talking about the whole SSM thing.
"Why are you against it?" Matthew asked. So
I told him.
Marriage
is the place where we not only tolerate people having
babies and raising children, we positively welcome and
encourage it. Same-sex marriage will be a public and legal
declaration that the state of Massachusetts believes that
children do not need mothers and fathers. Alternative
family forms are not only just as good, they are just
the same as a husband and
wife raising kids together. "Don't you think that
ideally, kids need a mom and a dad?" I asked.
"Not
really," Matthew told me. "I don't think so."
He told me knew some kids at school who were being raised
by a same-sex couple. They seemed OK to him. Besides,
he said, his mom and dad were divorced. His older brother
seemed to have some problems with it, he hinted, but that
was probably just because his brother was older and knew
his dad better before they divorced. "Kids just accept
whatever their family situation is. It doesn't matter,"
Matthew told me. After all, he was raised by a single
mom and doing just fine.
Sure,
he was doing fine, in a lot of ways. But then I pulled
out my big gun: "What about you?" I asked him.
"Do you think you'll matter to your kids?" Matthew
seemed taken aback by the question. Obviously he had never
looked at it from that perspective. He thought for a moment
and then followed his train of thought to the only logical
conclusion - a train wreck: "No," he
said. "Not really."
Abandon
your kids early enough, he implied, and fatherlessness
is all they know. They won't need you. Kids adjust. This
has been, of course, the big message of the family diversity
crowd since the dawn of the sexual revolution: Adults
have awesome intimacy needs that must be met. Family forms,
social norms, household arrangements all must be wound,
unwound and rewound so the adults get what they need.
Kids? Oh, they adjust.
One
of the many ways in which same- and opposite-sex couples
differ is on this thing called babies. Gays and lesbians
can get children only after an enormous amount of effort
and deliberate thought: through adoption, buying a baby
from a woman (a.k.a. "surrogate motherhood")
or artificial insemination. Babies don't just suddenly
appear. By contrast, the things that men and women must
do to make sure they do NOT have children outside of marriage
are difficult - abstain from sex, have a shotgun wedding,
use contraception consistently or have an abortion (in
descending order of moral virtue, in my opinion). People
won't avoid umarried childbearing in a society that says
what same-sex marriage says: Children don't need mothers
and fathers. Alternative family structures are just as
good. Young men who are raised to believe that fathers
don't matter to their children will not become dependable
husbands and fathers themselves.
Marriage
is our most basic social institution for protecting children.
Same-sex marriage amounts to a vast social experiment
on children. Rewriting the basic rules of marriage puts
all children, not just the children in unisex unions,
at risk. Do not expect boys to become good family men
in a society of Matthews who believe, as they have been
taught, that men are optional in family life.Advocates
of gay marriage are trying to persuade us that SSM won't
affect anyone but the handful of gay and lesbian families.
Don't believe it. Listen to Matthew, who has absorbed
the message of SSM very well. Fathers are optional. Children
are resilient. Adults are fragile, and their emotional
needs come first.
(Readers
may reach Maggie Gallagher at maggiecontact@Yahoo.com.)
Copyright
© 2004 Yahoo! Inc.
|
