"THE LIBERAL CASE AGAINST GAY MARRIAGE": Josh Jasper replies to Susan Shell

Same-sex couples with children exist. This is undeniable. Susan Shell's "liberal case against gay marriage" is mislabeled. It isn't a
liberal standpoint to claim that, simply because few same-sex couples have children, all of them fail to meet the test for marriage. It's a conservative standpoint. Although Shell never comes out and says it, the claim is that same-sex couples are not as good, or damaging to children raised by same-sex parents. By "parents," I mean a couple who
acts as caretaker and who nurtures a child and helps him/her grow.
It's a shame this weblog fails to talk about the actuality of gay parents by talking about real cases. Most of what I've seen here fails to spotlight what life is like as a child of same-sex parents. Shell herself proposes a "marriage lite" civil union to somehow make life for same-sex parents into something that considers a child being raised in that environment.

Shell states, "Least of all can gays be guaranteed all of the experiences that stem from the facts of human sexual reproduction and its accompanying penumbra of pleasures and cares." I hate to break it to Shell, but lesbians can bear children, and gay men can father them. Same-sex sexual encounters can't produce children, but members of same-sex couples can. And do. It just requires a deliberate act of will, and someone to somehow provide the opposite sex's role, be it a womb or a sperm. What Shell is arguing is that a couple that cannot physiologically produce a child isn't worthy of the rights of a couple that can when it comes to raising that child, and that same-sex couples who choose not to have children are less morally deserving of the rights of marriage because of a biological function. Again, that's not a liberal argument. That's a conservative argument.

The question still remains over what to do for legal recognition
between same-sex couples who choose to raise children. The conservative view I've seen is that, because homosexuality is a moral wrong, rights should be denied to the couple, and are only granted to the biological parent because of the established tradition of passing those rights on. In several notable cases, conservative judges have decided that homosexuality makes one unfit as a parent. But what to do when same-sex couples decide to raise a child? Remove the child from custody? Some conservatives would argue that that's the best thing, even though there's been no conclusive proof that children of same-sex parents suffer any trauma. If the conclusion is that same-sex couples have the right to raise children, providing the same legal structure for them to do so as heterosexual couples have is the only real moral decision. To do otherwise is to deny those children an equal setting.

Shell's final words are the last bit of evidence that this isn't a liberal viewpoint: "To insist otherwise is not only psychologically and culturally implausible; it imposes a sectarian moral view on fellow citizens who disagree and who may hold moral beliefs that are diametrically opposed to it." A word is not an imposition. Legal recognition is not an imposition. Homosexuals, bisexuals and transgendered people have long experienced actual imposition. Anti-gay discrimination is legal, especially in matters of parenthood. Homosexuals are forced to give up custody, or in the case of same-sex parents, make difficult financial decisions. Without marriage, same-sex parents might lose custody if a partner dies, or leaves (can't have divorce without marriage). The imposition people with differing beliefs about same-sex couples marrying and raising children would experience is simply accepting that they exist as legal equals.
posted by Eve at 5:23 PM | link

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