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diggThe new, improved, disposable father
Britain and Canada are well ahead in the race to make fatherhood completely redundant.
Last fall, I debated same-sex marriage at a university in Florida. I argued that treating same-sex unions identically with marriage would lead to marginalizing fathers from the family even more than they already are. At the time, I viewed that as a long-term prediction. I did not realize I would be proven correct in less than a year.
Fertility clinics in the United Kingdom used to be required to consider the child’s need for a father before they agree to artificial insemination for unmarried women. But recently, that rule was revoked. Parliament did not want to imply that the children of legally married lesbian couples would somehow be at risk.
In the parliamentary debate, Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith said the absence of a father had a “detrimental effect” on a child. Labour MP Geraldine Smith appealed to “common sense” in the need for a “father figure”. These advocates for fathers noted that lesbian couples and single mothers were still able to obtain fertility treatment.
But their opponents claimed that the rights of women take precedence over children’s need for fathers. Labour MP Emily Thornberry flatly stated, “[T]he important point is to give legal rights to lesbian couples and single women.”
So, the government of the UK cannot bring itself to say that children need fathers.
Making same-sex parenting equally acceptable as opposite-sex parenting requires that the public believe that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. A child will do equally well with two mommies, two daddies or one of each. This is the official position of the entire coalition that supports same-sex parenting. By legalizing same-sex unions (which have been legal in the UK since December 2005) the state declares that mothers and fathers are interchangeable. And when mothers and fathers are interchangeable, it is fathers who will be pushed aside.
This is for two reasons. First, the connection between fathers and children is intrinsically more tenuous than the bond between mothers and children. The social purpose of marriage always has been to strengthen the attachment of fathers to their children. Second, our social universe has already marginalized fathers from the family. Feminism teaches that men are unnecessary. Declaring that mothers and fathers are perfect substitutes can only reinforce that belief. The vanishingly small of gay male couples who adopt are not going to interrupt that. No-one will look at a pair of men parenting a child and say to themselves, “You see, it is just as I have always suspected. Children don’t need mothers.” Yet that is exactly the conclusion people draw from a pair of lesbians raising children together.
Public schools in the largest cities in Scotland have demonstrated this asymmetry by refusing this month to allow children to make Father’s Day cards. They didn’t want the students without fathers to feel bad. However, the schools have made no comparable ban on making cards for Mother’s Day.
In Canada, where same sex unions have been legal since 2005, birth certificates reflect this marginalization of fathers. Each birth certificate in British Columbia has a place to mention the biological mother, but the official must check off whether the “other parent” is the “father” or “co-parent”. Likewise, Quebec’s birth certificates have a space for the name of the biological mother, and a space to check off whether “autre parent” is a mother or a father.
The drive for treating same-sex unions as the equivalent of marriage is not simply opening the institution of marriage to a new group of people. Nor does same-sex marriage simply provide public affirmation for those few unfortunate souls who experience same-sex attraction. I believe treating same-sex unions as interchangeable with marriage will change society in far-reaching and unpredictable ways, one of which will be the further marginalization of men from the family and from child-rearing.
Children need to be in relationship with their fathers; social science shows this beyond any shadow of a doubt. Teenage girls in fatherless homes face elevated risk for early sexual activity. Teenage boys are at risk for juvenile delinquency, crime and incarceration. Father involvement decreases the behavior problems of their children.
The movements for marriage, for responsible fatherhood, and for divorce reform are all social movements that seek to benefit children by having more of them spend more of their childhoods with both their parents, married to each other. I am proud to be actively involved in this effort. But all that effort can be undone by the stroke of a legislator’s pen or a judge’s opinion, instituting same-sex marriage.
Make no mistake: treating same sex unions as marriages is the government’s declaration that fathers are disposable. The activists and politicians who foist same-sex marriage on the public will have to answer for the plight of the next generation of fatherless children.
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is the author of Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village, newly re-issued in paperback.
I would wish to approach this debate in a rational realistic manner but judging from many of the points argued that may not be possible.
I would like to state that most races understand and know that homosexual unions whether male/female are contrary to nature and viewed more as a dysfunctional relationship by the majority in that race ( a type of mental health issue ) more than anything else. Just as you would get help for someone who is suffering from alcholism, or at least encourage them to seek help, one should also view homosexual relationships in the same manner. It most certainly should not be condoned with the force of the State and children should never be adopted out into such a dysfunctional and abnormal family enviroment.
The article has brought out some important points and that being the inclussion of homosexual unions into the protected classes against discriminatiion. This inclusion has been a monumental disaster upon society and we can see that it was the natural devolution of feminism. Feminism was promoted as an empowering of women but in reality all it did was put them into the workplace away from the kids, an attack on the traditional family.
Now we see the mad scientists stepping up there efforts with the promotion of the homosexual unions being sanctioned by the state. This can only cause a further disastorous effect upon the traditional family and we can all see that at least in the western/industrialized nations we can not afford it with the wreckage and carnage of ruined families abounding everywhere.
Its time to make the Traditional family a protected class group or at the minimum allow the consensus of the democractic majority have a voice.
This is what I have been saying all along. As soon as “society” (special interest liberal politics) elevated the rights of homosexuals, there was a removal of the rights of children to have both parents in their lives. Children’s rights were taken away without essentially any debate. Of course, abortion also elevates women’s rights over the rights of children. Despite all the grand talk about needing to protect children, the liberal leftist shema view children as objects and accessories.
Dr. M. McKay
Sad state of affairs! If we do not step up to the plate, this trend will continues and the following will result:
1) Lesbianism will be legislated as being the only acceptable way of life. Normal heterosexual, mixed-marriage or Gay (male-male) marriage will be punishable by either castration or death.
2) A whole new industry will sprout - factories that produce Test tube babies will boom.
3) All societal problems will be attributed to males.
4) Ethnic-cleansing will be carried out quietly so no one will ever know what is going on. Concentration camps will be built secretly somewhere, where train loads of men will be delivered at one end and ashes to make asphalt will be produced at the other end.
5) Much like in China, where girl/female fetuses were unwanted and terminated, in the west, boy/male fetuses will be terminated.
Any one have problems seeing the trend?
David, Alcatraz will be chocka with family court judges and lawyers, triple-bunked most likely. Do you belong to either group?
Amfortas said: “Would I go as far as Jim, above with his ‘Unadulterated nonsense’ ? I just might sing in harmony with him.”
Amfortas, you do sing in harmony with him.
Amfortas, should I worry when you re-open Alcatraz?
So, David Page - “Examined alone, gay parents do as well as straight parents. Lesbian parents do a little bit better than either straight parents or gay male parents. But for all intents and purposes they are all equal.”
Assertion. Only. Do as well at what, one wonders. Finger painting? Pouring milk on Shredded Wheat?
Why not add that the world is supported by a Turtle? And it is gay.
Would I go as far as Jim, above with his ‘Unadulterated nonsense’ ? I just might sing in harmony with him.
re Brians` post: It`s a simple biological fact of human existence that the male will always to some degree and on one level or another “dominate”. Seriously, if there were an actual world-wide “war of the sexes”, fisticuffs and all, you know who would win. In case you don`t; the males.
Women are females; females are the members of species that reproduce sexually that bear and give birth to offspring. Who else but the male, whose seed fertilized the egg, should care for and protect females when they are in this delicate condition and possess this sacred (yes,sacred) abliity.
Hello David Page(again), If we were to have “sameness” before the law” as you would have it, we would have to legally ignore all differences between the two(yes,just two)
sexes; not a good deal for women.
We have never drafted women, we have never put women on the front lines of combat. It wouldn`t work too well. We simply cannot ignore, legally or otherwise, the physical difference,
especially in warfare, where the difference would be painfully obvious.
As for ancient “homosexual” warriors, thier “homosexuality” was of the prison variety, based on dominance of younger cohorts and demoralization of the enemy.I have no doubt they were vicious warriors however. As for Isreali “gay” soldiers, I don`t know if they`re “out” or not, I think sexual interest can be put aside when men deal with men as comrades in arms, teamates, partners(in the original sense);in other words they relate to one another as they should.
50% of women in the US armed services are lesbians, you say? Sadly, that may be.
The opposition to interracial marriage is not limited to
the USA or western societies. Opposition to any “mixed” marriage is not limited to race.
All societies, religions and thier various sects, tribes have had probitions of some level against “mixed” marriage.
It`s a human failing; “he/she is “from the wrong side of the tracks”, “high society” vs. “hicks”, India had the caste system, ye olde England had(has) royalty vs. commoners and on and on.
The MAIN, OVERWHELMING fear;reason;concern;objection was children of mixed heratige, race etc., thus watering down
one`s culture and such. Even street gangs and mafioso want “purity”.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO such possibility of this happening
with “gay marriage”. The comparison of objection to interracial marriage and “gay marriage” is total nonsense.
No society,group etc., good or bad, has ever approved or promoted homosexual behavior. It was,is and will always be obviously unnatural.
Jim said: “It is also tiring to see you repeatedly conflate race issues and homosexual issues.”
I’m comparing the reaction against gay marriage to the reaction against interracial marriage and it certainly seems the same to me. Gay and interracial marriage don’t have to be the same for me to recognize the striking similarities in the arguments of the people who oppose them. When I hear those arguments, it feels as bad and wrong as the racism which shaded my marriage forty years ago.
Perhaps David Page knows of some unpublished studies. But the evidence in the public domain indicates that, even in the eyes of gay marriage advocates, there are significant differences:
“Even a recent meta-analysis by two gay activists failed to support the “just like other children” myth. In 2004, Judith Stacey and Timothy J. Biblarz,(2) both supporters of gay parenting, published a study entitled, “(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?” In it they re-examined twenty studies of same-sex parenting that had supposedly shown no difference, and charged their authors with ignoring the differences they had indeed found. There were differences: children raised by parents with SSA showed empathy for “social diversity”, were less confined by gender stereotypes, more likely to have confusion about gender identity, more likely to engage in sexual experimentation and promiscuity, and more likely to explore homosexual behaviour. Stacey and Biblarz characterized these as positive differences, suggesting that same-sex parenting may in fact be superior.”
(Findings summarized from Judith Stacey, Timothy J. Biblarz “(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter,” American Sociological Review, April 2004)
Redefining the goals of parenting so that earlier sexual experimentation and promiscuity are deemed as positive outcomes is certainly one strategy in evaluating the results but the results themselves are clear on the differences in the outcomes, even to gay activists.
Jim said: “It is also tiring to see you repeatedly conflate race issues and homosexual issues.”
I’m comparing the reaction against gay marriage to the reaction against interracial marriage and it certainly seems the same to me. Gay and interracial marriage don’t have to be the same for me to recognize the striking similarities in the arguments of the people who oppose them. When I hear those arguments, it feels as bad and wrong as the racism which shaded my marriage forty years ago. Jim, you can use exclamation points until your keyboard breaks but gay rights is the civil rights movement of our time, and we will win.
David Page wrote:
“Examined alone, gay parents do as well as straight parents. Lesbian parents do a little bit better than either straight parents or gay male parents. But for all intents and purposes they are all equal. The people who make these tedious, tortured arguments against same sex parents ignore all the studies that disagree with them.”
Unadulterated nonsense!
..... and deja vu David where might “all the studies that disagree” be? Common sense seems to be ever so much in want in your argument. It is also tiring to see you repeatedly conflate race issues and homosexual issues.
Gay marriage is a nonsense- since marriage has been established everywhere and in all societies, ever since time began to protest the children who are he natural result of heterosexual sex.
The political Gay marriage movement is a big game of let’s pretend, which has usurped the language of rights. And it all revolves around the sex itself.Instead of simply accepting their difference homosexuals have to pretend that their type of sex is the same as natural heterosexual sex. Consequently,using ‘rights talk this complex game of lets pretend insists that homosexual sex and coupledom MUST have the same result - children. hence homosexual couples will go through all sorts of legal and biotec contortions to acquire that result.
On the subject of lesbian couples, there is indeed not much evidence that such relationships harm children and, yes indeed most gays are from normal straight families. However it should be remembered that this experiment has not has much time to take effect , and secondly MOST children of lesbians, like one couple I know, actually have fathers. It is not at all uncommon for lesbian women to have been married.
I mostly agree with Ms Roback Morse and I also find the trend worrisome, at least.
However, it should be noted that Québec has also put in place a very popular Parental leave system (http://www.naissance.info.gouv.qc.ca/en/fiche.asp?sujet=13 of which fathers take advantage at a rate of some 60%.
It constitutes, again at least, an acknowledgement of the importance of the father.
In particular, “Parental leave (up to 52 weeks) may be taken in addition to maternity leave or, in the case of the father, in addition to his five-week paternity leave.”
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