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TechnoratiThe 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 But recently, that rule was revoked.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.
Jim said: “David I think that Sherye was talking about Josh, an 11 year old, and the only reason I responded is your apparent refusal to speak to the issue of “gay kids” (I realize you must hate definitions but, for me this means living the lifestyle)”
Jim, you define homosexuality as if it were a crime. You seem to be saying it doesn’t exist until it’s acted on. Therefore, by your way of thinking, there can’t be any such thing as a gay kid below a certain age. Do you believe that all homosexuals who are not celibate are criminals?
David I think that Sherye was talking about Josh, an 11 year old, and the only reason I responded is your apparent refusal to speak to the issue of “gay kids” (I realize you must hate definitions but, for me this means living the lifestyle). We have been over this at greater length in the past and you have refused to come to the point. Instead you put up a smoke screen with all variety of barbs in it. I’m just not up for the bait and/or distractions. I’ll do without your compassion when I’ve seen it inflict such harm. You will hear from me whenever you champion for the “gay lifestyle” as it relates to the myth of “gay kids”.
Brent, your still calling all who disagree with you Parrots or members of a conspiracy. Do you really believe that 40 years ago the CIA was involved in an anti-family conspiracy?
David,
They were supporters of the destruction of the family agenda whether people want to believe it or not.....the proof is in the pudding. But to equate gay rights (an establishment anti-family agenda) with anti-abortion(which is a pro family agenda) and some how to try and say these are civil rights movements on the same side is like calling black, white and good, evil, a deffinate bluring of the lines.
If you just do this unintentionally then you are parroting government propaganda which is mocking bird. Thats of the same propaganda that wishes to clump gays in with race like they are some kind of special nationality. As I said in past posts that is absurd as people in every race understand that homosexuality is a dysfunction.
Anyway I am done with this subject and not trying to marginalize anyone but trying to show how the the marginalization process is being done through policy by the social engineering criminals.
Thanks
Brent, Mocking Bird was a CIA project of the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. I don’t think they were supporters of gay rights. Gay rights is no more a conspiracy than the civil rights movement or the anti-abortion movement. It isn’t helpful to see evil intent in all who disagree with you. Attempting to marginalize others will, in the end, just marginalize you.
david,
Discrimination has been written into the law in both your country and mine. With the amelioration policies to include classes that have supposedly been marginalized(like gays) and force acceptance of these classes.
Truly the social engineers have bypassed the truly marginalized in their enumeration of those that need a helping hand in society. The marginalized would be the whistleblowers, human rights lawyers, and institutional abuse victims.
The thought police you mentioned have been around a longtime trapping people like you to parrot their politically correct propaganda with projects like mocking bird.
Brent, no one is asking you to accept anything. if people like you were not trying to write discrimination into the law then no one would care how you think. I’m talking here about America. In Canada you are awfully close to making thought a crime.
Its not that I don’t have compassion for gays but I am getting tired of hearing the politically correct arguments being parroted on behalf of gays. To say that a confused child who is reaching adolecence and finding that he may have sexual feelings toward a male friend is some kind of proof that he was borne that way is absurd. Unfortunately until one is willing to look at the diabolical external forces that are at work to pervert sexuality we will be unable to solve the discrimination that it brings.
Yes, discrimination against the hetrosexual male for not accepting it is an alternative life style. Why should the hetrosexual male have to accept this lifestyle as not affecting the rest of society. When we have to breakdown what is healthy and normal behaviour in order to accept abnormal behaviour in the name of tolerance and a pluralistic society it’s an afront against ones conscience. I for one will not call it anything else but what I see it as, which is deviant and perverted behaviour. To make me do otherwise in the name of tolerance will build up anger in me....but I would not misplace that anger towards the homosexuals but towards those that are promoting the aceptance of it as normal, for it is not.
Further to this it is also detrimental to the the homosexual if society is to give it its stamp of approval. As like any addiction, denial of the problem is the biggest impediment to change of the destructive behaviour. So don’t ask me to condone it because I will not. Many Police today are being demoted and passed up for advancements because of there lack of approval for this life style of homsexuality. So tell me why should we hetrosexuals be persecuted for not accepting what most people view as abnormal behaviour as normal. That is tyranny in a most ugly and disguised manner that calls itself freedom. Freedom that takes away my freedom.
Jim, the really stunning part about fundamentalism is that it is a religion without compassion, only rules. The stunning thing about your reply is your refusal to talk about gay people, except in the abstract. Everything is personal. Relationship to others, relationship to God (however you envision Him), is personal. In morality there is no abstract, everything is real. You may call that ‘moral relativism’, but it isn’t. Ask Aquinas and Hobbes. Do you think that every gay person who talks about knowing they were different from an early age is lying? Is demonizing gay people the only way you can maintain your argument? I think I’ll choose compassion over ‘rules’, if that’s OK with you.
deja vu
David Page wrote:
“I’ve met gay kids (for me everyone under 40 is a kid) who are terrified of telling their conservative parents that they are gay.”
You have to admire someone who redefines “kid” to make room for their argument. I know we have belabored this point on some other topic. The “gay child” (10 years of age or younger) is at best a myth created in the homosexual community. If not myth then it’s purely a figment of the contemporary liberal mindset.
Sherye said: “In ‘Bi The Way’ Josh states, that he doesn’t know whether he will go for guys or girls. An 11 year old!! Do you think this is influenced because he sees his Dad as this way… I don’t recall any 11 year olds posing that statement.”
Sherye, every family is different. Josh probably said what he said because he wasn’t afraid not to. I don’t know if your a conservative Christian or not. I belong to an organization called PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays). The organization tries to help people who have gay children and are struggling with it. I’ve met gay kids (for me everyone under 40 is a kid) who are terrified of telling their conservative parents that they are gay. I’ve met others who did tell their parents, and were driven from their families. Some of their stories would break your heart. This is a tragedy for both parents and children. If you are a conservative Christian then it’s not surprising you never heard an eleven year old pose that question. Kids get the messages their parents send them. They are helpless and vulnerable and eager to please their parents. Try to imagine the fear and loneliness of a gay child growing up with parents who consider gay children to be either mentally defective or sinful.
David Page according to one of your posts you said that gay parents were no more likely to raise gay children as were straight parents. However, you should check out the documentary “Bi The Way” it tried to determine many issues. One of the people that they follow is Jonathan Caouette’s son Josh. If you don’t know who Coauette is… he directed a documentary in which he starred in called Tarnation. This man is openly gay.. and has an 11 year old son named Josh. In “Bi The Way” Josh states, that he doesn’t know whether he will go for guys or girls. An 11 year old!! Do you think this is influenced because he sees his Dad as this way… I don’t recall any 11 year olds posing that statement.
Eliminating the family is the socialist utopian ideal. Test-tube children will be wards of the state, raised like worker bees.
Unfortunately to many of the social engineering agenda’s hide behind the false justification of “In the best interests of the children” which they seem to believe is having as someone said(The government for the father). It’s time these social engineers understood that you don’t create healthy kids by discriminating and destroying there mothers and fathers.
In the past, psychologists studying the development of children focused almost exclusively on children’s relationships with their mothers. Today, they have come to agree that fathers play a unique and crucial role in nurturing and guiding children’s development. Many experts now believe that fathers can be just as nurturing and sensitive with their babies as mothers. As their children grow, fathers take on added roles of guiding their children’s intellectual and social development. Even when a father is ‘just playing’ with his children, he is nurturing their development. Denying children their father is outright emotion abuse. People make money by keeping the fathers out of the children’s life. THIS IS NOT NATURAL LAW!
http://www.corruptioncentral.com
Ontario Canada
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