Featuring Nick Herbert, MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Conservative Party, United Kingdom; Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish Blog, The Atlantic; and Maggie Gallagher, President, National Organization for Marriage.

Labels: Andrew Sullivan, conservatism, culture, gay marriage, Maggie Gallagher, United Kingdom

posted by Eve at 9:27 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...How does marriage benefit children? The answer is not that marriage confers general respectability or practical benefits. If that were true, then children in remarried families would do better than children with unmarried parents. And they don't, on average.

Marriage benefits children to the extent that it keeps the child's own mother and father in a permanent, not-too-high-conflict union. ...

I do not think same-sex marriage will serve child well-being in any appreciable way, and I don't think there is much sign that that is the goal. The gay community is by and large supporting same-sex marriage as a right, not as a norm at all. Relatively few same-sex couples enter same-sex marriages [PDF] and the dissolution rates (at least in Sweden, where we have hard data) are extraordinarily high (roughly 50 percent higher for gay men, 100 percent higher for lesbian couples [PDF]).

Labels: culture, gay marriage, gay parenting, gay/straight differences, Maggie Gallagher, Marriage

posted by Eve at 12:11 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...What Gallagher and her cohorts are contending is that EVEN IF we were to take the consequentialist arguments off the table, there will still be the problem that same-sex marriage promotes a lie, much like calling a chicken a duck.

Let’s pause to consider a seemingly silly question: apart from consequences, what’s the problem with calling a chicken a duck—or more precisely, with using the word “chicken” to refer to both chickens and ducks?

If I go to the grocer and ask for a chicken and unwittingly come home with a (fattier and less healthful) duck, that’s a problem. But (1) same-sex marriage poses no similar problem: no one worries about walking his bride down the aisle, lifting her veil, and discovering “Damn! You’re a dude!” And (2) such problems are still in the realm of consequences.

If there’s an inherent problem with using the word “chicken” to refer to both chickens and ducks, it’s that doing so would obscure a real difference in nature. Whatever we call them--indeed, whether we name them at all--chickens and ducks are distinct creatures. ...

That might begin to get at what marriage-equality opponents mean when they claim that same sex marriage involves “a lie about human nature” (Gallagher’s words). But if it does, then their argument is weak on at least two counts.

First, one can acknowledge a difference between two things while still adopting a blanket term that covers them both. Both chickens and ducks are fowl; both silver and platinum are precious metals.

So even if same-sex and opposite-sex relationships differ in some fundamental way, there’s nothing to prevent us from using the term “marriage” to cover relationships of both sorts--especially if we have compelling reasons for doing so (for example, that marriage equality would make life better for millions of gay people and wouldn’t take anything away from straight people).

The second and deeper problem is that both the chicken/duck example and the silver/platinum example involve what philosophers call “natural kinds”--categories that “carve nature at the joints,” as it were. By contrast, marriage is quintessentially a social, or artifactual, kind: it’s something that humans create.

Labels: gay marriage, John Corvino, Maggie Gallagher, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 1:53 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

In a recent newsletter, the National Organization for Marriage cites a new government study as evidence that gay marriage will hurt kids, because the research finds that kids suffer less abuse with married biological parents than with a single parent, a parent living with an unmarried partner, or a parent and step-parent.

They got it half right. Having two married biological parents is good for kids, and better than the alternatives the study examined. We here at IGF are all for it. But that doesn't make having, say, an unmarried mom and mom better than having a married mom and mom. As a correspondent points out:

Does NOM never, ever learn? These same figures indicate that for either two-adult family structure (both biological parents, or one biological and one step-parent) the chance of abuse to the child goes down drastically IF THE COUPLE GETS MARRIED. For the first kind of family, the risk drops 80 percent. For the second kind of family, the risk drops nearly 60 percent. Even for single biological parents, the child's risk drops by about 15 percent if that single parent finds and marries someone.

Labels: cohabitation, gay marriage, gay parenting, Jonathan Rauch, Maggie Gallagher, Marriage, NOM, parenting, remarriage, single parenting

posted by Eve at 1:47 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Labels: Evan Wolfson, gay marriage, Maggie Gallagher, Maine

posted by Imapp Staff at 1:10 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

A few years ago a highly visible and influential member of the Christian Right appeared on one of the cable news shows talking about homosexual marriage. He said that homosexuality was harmful to society and to the individuals who practiced it. A week later this same man appeared again on the same topic only this time he said opposition to homosexual marriage was not about condemning homosexuals but about protecting children who need moms and dads, something homosexual couples can never provide. Sometime between his first appearance and his second, he was visited by one of the wisest social analysts in the country, Maggie Gallagher of the National Movement for Marriage.

Labels: gay marriage, Maggie Gallagher, NOM

posted by Imapp Staff at 4:26 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Maggie Gallagher es una conocida periodista norteamericana, que publica su columna sobre temas familiares en más de 30 periódicos norteamericanos -entre los que se encuentra The New York Times, The Weekly Standard, and the Wall Street Journal- y ha escrito tres libros de gran éxito sobre el matrimonio, en los que aboga por lo que ya se conoce como el "Movimiento por un nuevo matrimonio". El más reciente se titula "The Case for Marriage: Why Married People Are Happier, Healthier, and Better-Off Financially". Es conocida su actitud de nunca rechazar una invitación para hablar del matrimonio, lo que le ha llevado a innumerables debates de televisión -entre los que destaca su participación en el programa de Larry King o en los principales programas de la NBC- y de radio, a numerosas universidades y entidades públicas y privadas, así como a intervenir repetidas veces como experta en el Senado de los EE UU y en varias cámaras legislativas estatales. Hace algunos años creó el Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, del que es presidenta y cuya misión es realizar la investigación y la acción educativa necesarias para que la legislación y las políticas públicas protejan y refuercen el matrimonio como institución social.

Con ocasión de su participación en un Encuentro The Family Watch en Madrid, ha respondido a nuestras preguntas. La entrevista también puede verse grabada en vídeo aquí.

Labels: Maggie Gallagher, Marriage

posted by Imapp Staff at 8:32 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

...A wedding is the weak link in the family system -- the extraordinary attempt to make biological strangers into closest kin. For me, every divorce -- not just Jon and Kate's -- prompts questions:

Is being a wife merely a role I've chosen, a thing I enact so long as it benefits me? Or can I do something else with marriage -- import another human being into the essence of my identity -- make being a wife something I am, like being a mother, not merely something I do? Is it possible to really become one flesh?

Labels: culture, divorce, Maggie Gallagher, Marriage

posted by Eve at 11:41 AM EMAIL SHARE PRINT

Five years after same-sex couples first began to enter legal marriages -- recognized by court order -- in Massachusetts, what do voters in the Bay State think about gay marriage?

A new poll commissioned by my organization, the National Organization for Marriage, and the Massachusetts Family Institute indicates that voters remain sharply and surprisingly divided about gay marriage. ...

I have argued that over time gay marriage will weaken support for the idea that marriage really matters because children need a mom and dad.

Massachusetts voters were also asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement, "All things being equal, it is better for children to be raised by their married mother and father." Seventy-six percent of voters agreed (66 percent strongly) while 21 percent disagreed (13 percent strongly).

A similar question was asked in a 2004 poll of Massachusetts residents. In 2004, 84 percent of Massachusetts residents agreed (33 percent strongly) and 16 percent disagreed (2 percent strongly). Thus, in the five years since gay marriage became a reality in Massachusetts, support for the idea that the ideal is a married mother and father dropped from 84 percent to 76 percent. The proportion who disagreed strongly increased nearly sevenfold, from 2 percent in 2004 to 13 percent in 2009.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, Maggie Gallagher, Massachusetts

posted by Eve at 4:06 PM EMAIL SHARE PRINT