THE END OF MARRIAGE IN SCANDINAVIA? Gabriel Rosenberg replies to Stanley Kurtz

Part one: In his latest column at NRO Kurtz replies to two of the key criticisms of his recent Weekly Standard article on the effect of gay marriage in Scandinavian countries. The first criticism was that he used Scandinavian "registered partnerships" to make the case against same-sex marriage. This was especially disturbing in that he claims his article destroyed the case for SSM as put forth independently by Andrew Sullivan and William Eskridge, Jr. Those two, though, have argued that "marriage-lite" arrangements could have a harmful influence on marriage and that traditionalists should actually favor "marriage" over other imitations. I noted that this was especially true in the case of Eskridge who explicitly compared Vermont civil unions to Scandinavian registered partnerships and said such laws would do more harm than SSM. ...

Part two: ...On the contrary one reason many SSM advocates, myself included, are so adamant about the rights of same-sex couples to marry is that in this country many same-sex couples are adopting and raising children. We feel marriage would help protect those families in the same way they help protect families headed by opposite-sex parents. It is the people that strive to deny these families the protection of marriage that are saying that marriage isn't important for parenting.

Even if same-sex couples never had children, though, Kurtz's causal chain would be seriously flawed. We can today, without SSM, point to marriages without kids. Those marriages do not establish that marriage is unnecessary for parenthood. They establish that parenthood is unnecessary for marriage. ...
posted by Eve at 7:11 PM | link

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