THE EUROPEAN FAMILY DEBATE: Maggie replies to Michael Triplett and Jari Koskisuu

Actually, allowing couples to marry but not adopt pretty strongly in itself officially disconnects marriage and childbearing. What is marriage about if a married couple are not considered an appropriate candidate for adoption? Certainly not about creating the right context for having and raising children.

I did not mean my own previous brief remarks to be a comprehensive response to the Kurtz/Badgett debate, which frankly requires a detailed knowledge of European family statistics. Isolating the effects of legal changes using social science methods is difficult. If the mechanism is the cultural meanings of marriage, the consequences are likely to take a generation to uncover and they may be different in different countries. i.e. in cases where marriage and childbearing have already been pretty much legally and culturally severed, SSM may have little additional negative effect. Except of course to institutionalize and therefore make nearly impossible to reverse a destructive set of changes to the marriage idea.

Do people in a country think it is important to marry before you have children? Do they think when they get married they will have children? The out-of-wedlock birth ratio strikes me as the best single indicator of these culture trends, incorporating as it does trends in the likelihood that single people have children and the likelihood that married people don't.

But at a meta-level people who insist SSM has no effect on marriage are making a fundamentally unserious argument. "How can my marriage affect anyone else?" may be a good pop response, but anyone who studies marriage will tell you that ideas about marriage prevalent in a culture have an effect on how people behave. That's what it means to be a social institution or a social norm.

The weakness of our marriage culture makes SSM plausible. Marriage IS being disconnected from childbearing and childraising in a variety of ways. But SSM makes official this new vision of marriage and at a minimum privatizes (and probably stigmatizes) the other, older conception of marriage.

In my opinion, which I will dilate on further at some future point, the very debate about SSM in this country is weakening marriage as a social institution. With the possible exception of Jonathan Rauch, who unfortunately cannot personally determine the meaning of this change or the ongoing nature of the public attacks on the marriage idea, most of the arguments made in favor of SSM are ideas that weaken marriage.

Even Jonathan denies any intrinsic connection to children.

Maggie

P.S. If you don't think you get called a bigot for saying "Children need mothers and fathers and marriage is how you get that for people," you haven't tried, lately.
posted by Eve at 1:27 PM | Link | 0 comments

MARRIAGE IN THE NETHERLANDS AND SCANDINAVIA: Jari Koskisuu replies to Stanley Kurtz

Mr. Kurtz fails again to prove any correlation or causation between gay marriages and parental cohabitation. Because there is none. Not in Netherlands nor in Scandinavia. This is not social science unless you count reading tea leaves social science.

Couple of points: Mr. Kurtz claims that gay marriage and civil unions (registred partnerships) have contributed to the idea that parenting does not require marriage. How on earth could this be the case in Scandinavia where gays and lesbians are not allowed to adopt at all? So gay civil unions have absolutely nothing to do with parenting or being a parent. Also I would like to point out that Finland, where the trends have been similar, legalized registered partnerships as late as 2002.
How on earth did gay marriage affect to straight people's willingness to marry when they didn't even exist? Is it even fathomable to political pundits like Mr. Kurtz that straight couples may not model their lives based on gay people's choices? Actually in Finland the amount of divorce is declining, over two-thirds of children live in two-parent families, teen pregnancies are practically nonexistent, the abortion rate is one of the lowest in EU and the latest polls show that after 2002 the attitudes among teenagers have developed to be more favorable towards marriage. For some reason Mr. Kurtz does not count these phenomena to have anything to do with SSM.

Mr. Kurtz's failed study has been actively used in the area of political and religious debate and I would find it rather refreshing if Mr. Kurtz would admit truthfully that the sole purpose of his "study" was to influence opinion agaist same-sex marriage.

If and when FMA is going to introduced, I think that these right-wing traditionalists and religious pundits should be consistent in their demands. If divorce is bad and children always need two parents, FMA should read that "marriage is unbreakable covenant," outlaw divorce, and should demand the government take custody of all chilren with only one parent and place them in foster homes with a man and a woman as parents. But it is unlikely to happen: we are not talking about marriage as such, we are talking about gay rights. And as usual in every discussion about minority rights the majority is more than willing to restrict minorities' rights and at the same time keep theirs intact.
posted by Eve at 1:18 PM | Link | 0 comments

CORPORATE AMERICA AND "SPOUSAL EQUIVALENT" BENEFITS: From Fortune

When Massachusetts and local governments like the city of San Francisco began offering marriage licenses to gay couples recently, experts predicted legal and taxation nightmares for benefits managers, who would be left to figure out whose marriage is legal and in what jurisdiction. Although Massachusetts recognizes gay unions, the federal Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, does not. But for many companies in Massachusetts, May 17--the day the Bay State began allowing gay couples to wed--wasn't exactly a watershed moment. That's because this is one issue in which corporate America has been ahead of the curve. At Boston-based Gillette Corp., "We had already been treating gay partners as spousal equivalents," says spokesman Eric Kraus. At Fidelity Investments, HR officials notified employees that all domestic partners would receive the same benefits as married spouses. Crisis averted. ...

But make no mistake: There's no socially progressive agenda at work here. Most companies that offer partner benefits simply think it gives them a competitive edge in recruiting and retaining workers. ...Indeed, the plans engender good will at a relatively low cost since, on average, only about 1% to 2% of employees enroll.

Though many business leaders are loath to say it, they are dreading the possible passage of President Bush's proposed Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. It could mean, for instance, that existing benefits plans for same-sex couples could be legally challenged as unconstitutional. Says Gail Morse, a corporate tax lawyer who's with Chicago's Jenner & Block: "Companies don't want to be put in the position of being a referee. They want simplicity. Just check the box. Do you have a committed partner or not?"

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posted by Eve at 12:40 PM | Link | 0 comments

RELIGIOUS LEADERS ASSAIL FMA: From the New York Times

Officials of several religious organizations, including the Presbyterian, Lutheran and Episcopal churches, sent an open letter to Congress yesterday opposing the proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

"Although we have differing opinions on rights for same-sex couples, we believe the Federal Marriage Amendment reflects a fundamental disregard for individual civil rights and ignores differences among our nation's many religious traditions," the letter said. The United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association, which recognize same-sex marriages, also signed the letter. So did representatives of the Anti-Defamation League, the Union for Reform Judaism, the liberal Alliance of Baptists and the Quakers.

The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, helped orchestrate the letter. As United Church of Christ minister, he said, "I am disturbed that even though I can perform a religious ritual to unite a same-gender couple, the state won't recognize it because some different religious group thinks I am theologically wrong."

But Diane L. Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a group that seeks to push the liberal Protestant denominations in a more conservative direction, called the letter "a blatant attempt by left-leaning religious leaders to undercut and intimidate other religious voices." She said the amendment would define marriage in civil law, not religious ritual.

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posted by Eve at 12:40 PM | Link | 0 comments

COURT HALTS SSM REGISTRATION IN OREGON: From The Oregonian

The Oregon Court of Appeals has temporarily halted a judge's order requiring state officials to register the licenses of more than 3,000 same-sex couples who got married in Multnomah County in March and April.

The court made its decision days before the deadline for the state to begin processing same-sex marriage licenses, but before gay-rights advocates could respond.

A lawyer for the same-sex couples who sued the state over the right to marry said Wednesday that she would oppose the state's attempt to avoid registering same-sex marriage licenses while the case is on appeal.

In April, Multnomah County Circuit Judge Frank L. Bearden ruled that Oregon's marriage laws violated the state constitutional rights of gay and lesbian couples.

In his ruling, Bearden said he would allow the Oregon Legislature to try to solve the problem. Observers said Bearden's ruling, if upheld, probably would require the Legislature either to redefine marriage or to adopt a civil union system, which would give gays and lesbians the same legal rights as heterosexual married couples. ...

Multnomah County officials in March began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the county attorney concluded that Oregon's marriage laws violated the state constitution. ...

Meanwhile, opponents of same-sex marriage are circulating petitions for a ballot initiative that would amend the state constitution to say that marriage is between a man and a woman.

The deadline for submitting signatures is July 2. Supporters need to turn in 100,840 valid signatures to qualify the measure for the November ballot.

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posted by Eve at 8:29 PM | Link | 0 comments

CLERK IN N.M. SSM LOSES ELECTION: From the Associated Press

The county clerk who issued marriage licenses to dozens of gay couples in February overwhelmingly lost her bid for a county commission seat.

With all ballots counted, unofficial results Wednesday showed Victoria Dunlap with 76 votes to 199 for Chris Espinosa, Sandoval County election officials said. The results will be not be official until state election officials certify the votes in about three weeks.

She did not immediately respond to calls to her home and office seeking comment Wednesday.

Dunlap granted 66 same-sex marriage licenses eight days after San Francisco began marrying hundreds of gay couples. Nearly 4,000 couples were married there between Feb. 12 and March 11, when California's Supreme Court halted the weddings.

Dunlap insisted she was simply following the law and argued that New Mexico's marriage law is not gender-specific. She stopped issuing the licenses when she received a warning from Attorney General Patricia Madrid, who said the licenses were "invalid under state law."

Dunlap is the county's first Republican clerk since the early 1960s. Her term ends this year, and she chose to run for the commission instead of seeking re-election.

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posted by Eve at 6:20 PM | Link | 0 comments

MARRIAGE IN THE NETHERLANDS: Stanley Kurtz

Dutch marriage is in trouble. Once noted for their low out-of-wedlock birthrates, and touted by scholars as an alternative to the Scandinavian family model, the Dutch are now experiencing a striking rupture in the relationship between marriage and childbearing, practicing Scandinavian-style parental cohabitation in increasing numbers. The bulk of the change has come in the past seven years--just as Holland adopted registered partnerships, and then full and formal same-sex marriage.

Coincidence? Advocates of same-sex marriage would like us to believe so. But a serious look at the evidence suggests otherwise. In "Going Dutch," I point out how the decade-long campaign for same-sex marriage in the Netherlands helped break apart the relationship between marriage and parenthood. Advocacy of same-sex marriage encouraged erstwhile Dutch traditionalists to reconsider the idea that marriage has anything intrinsic to do with raising children. Not surprisingly, this "family diversity" ideal took hold. Dutch parents have begun to cohabit in ever-increasing numbers, leading to a dramatic rise in out-of-wedlock births. Since cohabiting parents break up at two to three times the rate of married parents, we can expect a significant increase in children living with solo mothers in fatherless homes. ...

In the past seven years, however, the Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrate has been moving up at the strikingly high rate of two-percentage points per year. It needs to be emphasized that it is comparatively rare (although not unheard of) for a Western country's out-of-wedlock birthrate to sustain a 2-percentage-point-per-year increase for seven consecutive years. Every year the Dutch out-of-wedlock birthrate continues to rise at a two-percent rate is a surprise. In the '90s, only two European countries--Finland and Ireland--even approached such a rise (without achieving it). The rapid shift in Holland's out-of-wedlock birthrate is therefore a significant turning point, and requires explanation. ...

Many explanations for increases in cohabiting couples with children have been proposed over the years, including contraception, abortion, women in the workforce, individualism, secularism, and the welfare state. How well do these alternative explanations account for the Dutch experience? Not very well, as we can see by looking at these hypotheses, one by one. ...

We've considered the alternative explanations for rising rates of parental cohabitation and found them incomplete or wanting. Scholars face the same dilemma. I contacted senior Dutch demographer, Joop Garssen, to find out if sociologists and demographers had been able to account for Holland's rising rates of out-of-wedlock birth. In various publications, Garssen has argued persuasively that historically low out-of-wedlock birthrates in the Netherlands are rooted in traditionalism. Together with British demographer David Coleman, Garssen has suggested that continued low out-of-wedlock births in the Netherlands could mark out the Dutch system as a moderately traditionalist alternative to the Swedish model. Yet the record of the past seven years calls that into serious question. So how do Garssen and his colleagues explain the recent surge in parental cohabitation? They don't: Garssen has canvassed the experts, and they're stumped. None of the conventional explanations for increased births outside of marriage works.

And Garssen explicitly rejects an explanation that might be offered by gay-marriage advocates. In 1996 the Dutch parliament approved a system of "registered partnerships," open to both homosexual and heterosexual couples. Registered partnerships went into effect in 1998, and formal same-sex marriage followed in 2000. So perhaps the recent surge in out-of-wedlock births was caused when registered partnerships drew heterosexual parents into non-marital unions. Yet Garssen notes that the number of registered heterosexual partnerships is too small to explain the surge in the out-of-wedlock birthrate. (The number of heterosexual parents in registered partnerships is inflated, since many couples convert to easily dissolved registered partnership as a way of ending their marriages without a formal divorce hearing.)...

Of course, social-science evidence is seldom definitive. We can and should call for more research, and I hope other family scholars take up the question in a serious way. But at a minimum, we ought to be able to achieve a consensus on what has not happened in the Netherlands: There is no evidence to support the Rauch-Sullivan hypothesis--namely, that gay marriage will help strengthen marriage as a social institution.

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posted by Eve at 2:26 PM | Link | 0 comments

25 ITHACA COUPLES SUE FOR SSM: From the Associated Press

With support pledged from the mayor, 25 same-sex couples calling themselves "The Ithaca 50" have filed lawsuits against the city and state for refusing them marriage licenses.

Following similar cases filed by couples in Nyack and New York City, the couples claim their state constitutional rights to due process and equal protection have been violated, with New York's current statutory framework "drawing impermissible distinctions based on gender and sexual orientation."

"We are able to legally adopt each other's children, but we are not legally able to protect one another as a family," said plaintiff Lisa Bushlow. She and her partner, Nina Panzer, have been together six years and have a 2-year-old son, she said.

The lawsuit was filed in state court.

State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has issued an opinion that New York law doesn't authorize same-sex marriages, but it could be open to a constitutional challenge. With state Health Department advising that state law does not recognize same-sex marriages, municipal clerks around the state have declined to issue licenses, including in Ithaca.

Ithaca Mayor Carolyn Peterson said Wednesday the city will file "a cross claim in support of the stand that the gay couples have taken."

Opponents of legalizing gay marriage in New York include Gov. George Pataki.

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posted by Eve at 2:24 PM | Link | 0 comments

EUROPE AND THE U.S.: Michael Triplett

Will SSM strengthen heterosexual marriage? Probably not. Will it destroy it or harm it further? Probably not. Should people be denied the right to marry just because others have done a poor job maintaining marriage? Definitely not.

After reading Maggie's take on Badgett's argument, I began to wonder if they were reading the same data. Badgett argued, as others have, that divorce has actually declined in parts of Europe since SSM was recognized. Badgett's data argues that most children in Europe are being raised in married, heteroseuxal families; in fact, as high as 90% of some children in Denmark. That doesn't sound like a marriage crisis to me.

What there is, according to Maggie, is a fertility crisis. But if divorces are actually declining after a generational increase--that predates SSM--and most children are being raised by married moms and dads, then how can that fertility crisis be blamed on SSM? Is it possible that fertility declines are connected to living in post-industrialized economies with strong social welfare systems and high literacy rates where people are less dependent on future generations to maintain the economy? People are getting married and remaining married, they just aren't having as many kids. And SSM isn't even a factor.

I also don't know anyone who believes that saying "children need moms and dads" is a form of bigotry or discrimination. It's a fun argument for SSM opponents to make because one gets to beat the "I am not a bigot" horse again, but that doesn't make it a good argument. Understandably, supporters of SSM aren't going to argue "Children need moms and dads and marriage is how you get them for kids" because it is a classic "do you still beat your wife?" argument where there is no real staisfying answer to the loaded question.

Yes, ideally children need moms and dads; and marriage is ideally the best way. If social science data is to believed, one could extend that and say "children need biological moms and dads of the same race in low-conflict marriages free from poverty and discrimination and low-conflict, same-race marriages that are free from poverty and discrimination are the best way to get them." That would be ideal, according to the social science research that is the basis of the "children need moms and dad" theory. It would also leave out lots and lots of heterosexual marriages.
posted by Eve at 3:19 PM | Link | 0 comments

EUROPE AND THE U.S.: Michael Sierk

[Michael Sierk is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia.]

Michael Sellitto says that Scandinavia has lower infant mortality rate than the US, longer average lifespan than the US, fewer abortions per capita, and a higher literacy rate. Does he not think that the fact that the U.S. has a ethnically diverse population of 300 million spread across a whole continent, while Scandinavia has an ethnically and culturally homogenous population of ~25 million spread over a fairly narrow geographic area has any relevance to those statistics? How about the fact that Scandinavia has a huge welfare state that is neither sustainable over the long run nor politically feasible in the U.S. (regardless of whether he wants it to be or not)? Or the fact that the Scandinavian birth rate is below replacement level, and it has low rates of immigration, while the U.S. birth rate is at replacement levels (albeit pulled up by Hispanics), and it has a history of absorbing large numbers of immigrants? I don't think many people argue that the Scandinavians have an enviable lifestyle in many ways--the questions are whether that lifestyle is sustainable, and whether there are tradeoffs to it. One of the key points opponents of SSM marriage make is that similar trends in marriage/cohabitation are likely to have very different sociological effects in Scandinavia and the U.S. The extensive welfare states, ethnic and cultural homogeneity, and low levels of immigration all mitigate the effects of increased parental cohabitation and out-of-wedlock births.
posted by Eve at 3:16 PM | Link | 0 comments

PROPHETS OF DOOM: Maggie Gallagher replies to Max Boot and Cal Thomas

Two prominent conservatives--Max Boot and Cal Thomas--have issued, within days of each other, proclamations: the debate is now over. Huh? A one-judge majority in Massachussetts closes the debate over the future of marriage? When 60 percent of Americans, including a majority of Republicans and Democrats oppose same-sex marriage? And 49 states still have laws defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman?

Expect to hear more voices making "the argument from despair." It avoids the messy work of having to actually think about whether gay marriage is a good idea or not. If you are Cal Thomas, you can express thundering moral self-righteousness while urging retreat, surrender, despair.

For me, this is nothing new. The assertion that trends towards the disintegration of marriage are irresistible has been the core argument of the family diversity crowd since the beginning (which for me was back in the late 80s). Nothing we can do, might as well stop thinking about it.

But for Americans who care to think, this is a distraction from the really important question: Is same-sex marriage a good idea? Will it strengthen or weaken marriage as a social institution? Is marriage worth the fight?

I think so. I can respect those who disagree with me about any or all of the above. But not people who simply announce the time for thinking is past.
posted by Eve at 3:11 PM | Link | 0 comments

THE RIGHT CAN'T WIN THIS FIGHT: Max Boot

For decades, social conservatives have been fighting and losing culture wars. Contraception and abortion--once taboo topics--have been enshrined into law. The rates of premarital sex, out-of-wedlock births and divorce have soared since the 1950s (though lately most of these indexes have leveled off or declined slightly). In school, prayer is out; sex education is in. On TV, characters used to say "gee whiz" and sleep in twin beds; now they curse as if they had Tourette's syndrome and flash skin as if they were Gypsy Rose Lee.

This doesn't mean that America is in cultural decline; no one who saw the response to 9/11 can think we are soft or decadent. It does mean there is little mystery about how the latest culture war--over gay marriage--will turn out. Opponents of same-sex marriages may have most of the public on their side for now, but they've already all but lost this battle.

How do I know? Simply by looking at the arguments being advanced by both sides. Advocates of same-sex marriage speak in the powerful language of civil rights and liken their cause to that of African Americans fighting anti-miscegenation laws in years past. And what do opponents say in response? Once upon a time, the case would have been open and shut: Sodomy is a sin, period. Many people may still believe that, but that's no longer a tenable argument in our secularized politics.

The U.S. Supreme Court struck down anti-sodomy laws last year. The Episcopal Church has appointed an openly gay bishop. Many newspapers carry the equivalent of wedding announcements for gays. Same-sex kisses, once shockingly daring, are now almost as common on TV as commercials for Levitra or Prozac. Given this seismic cultural shift, anyone who makes avowedly moral arguments against homosexuality now gets treated the same way homosexuals were treated only a few years ago--as a sex-mad pervert.

Traditionalists have tried to put forward various nonmoral arguments against gay marriage, but none is particularly convincing. They argue, first, that we shouldn't tamper with thousands of years of tradition that holds that marriage is between a man and a woman. But 141 years ago we tampered with an equally old tradition: slavery. Their second argument is the slippery slope--first gay marriage gets legalized, then polygamy, pederasty, incest and who knows what. But this kind of reductio ad absurdum can be applied to just about anything. If liquor is legal for adults, why not for children? Society always draws the line somewhere. ...

The good news, from the conservative point of view, is that it's hard to imagine that legalizing gay marriage will make much difference in the lives of most people. Certainly it will have considerably less corrosive effect on society than the prevalence of divorce and out-of-wedlock childbearing.

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posted by Eve at 3:08 PM | Link | 0 comments

IN DEFENSE OF JONATHAN RAUCH: Maggie Gallagher

Jonathan argues that gay marriage will undercut the development of domestic partnerships and similar legal arrangements. You are beginning to see some evidence of this in Massachusetts, as in this AP story: "Mass. town rescinds partner benefits." On the other hand, the story notes the fierce objections of gay and lesbian advocates in Massachusetts.

Will this dynamic--employers cutting off DP benefits--undercut gay support for SSM?

Stay tuned.
posted by Eve at 3:05 PM | Link | 0 comments

BOSTON GLOBE PROFILES SON OF WOMEN IN FIRST MASS. SSM

Having lived together for 27 years and having been the first gay couple to obtain a license to marry in Massachusetts, Marcia Hams and Susan Shepherd were standing in front of a minister at the First Church in Cambridge May 23, and, at long last, they were declaring in public the love they had been told cannot exist.

Alongside them was their son, Peter, who is 24, a senior at Merrimack College, and after all the years of political posturing and the months of wrangling about the Supreme Judicial Court decision, the ceremony seemed blissfully spiritual.

A day later, sitting at the kitchen table of the home in Cambridge where he's now living with his mothers, he described what it was like to grow from boyhood to manhood as the son of lesbians and to attend the wedding of his mothers. With gay marriage in its third week here, some attention has been focused on the impact on children and on the subtleties and complexities in the unusual family model that Peter Hams has lived with since infancy.

"It felt cool to be reminded how much they love each other," he said about the wedding of his mothers, "but at the same time, I was troubled, too, because I wondered: In a world with so many problems, why is everybody making a damn fuss because two people love each other? My mothers are not giving guns to terrorists, and they're not selling drugs to kids, and they're certainly not destroying the sanctity of anything, and so the thought occurred to me -- what the hell is wrong with people?" ...

Peter's playmates, too young to be taught to hate, were indifferent to his family's dissimilitude, and so was Peter.

"I never questioned it. I had two moms who loved me, and because my friends thought it was fine and my parents thought it was fine, then I thought it was fine. It wasn't a problem."

That would change. Before Peter left for his first day at kindergarten, Marcia and Sue felt obliged to acquaint him with bigotry.

"He'd been living in a loving family," says Marcia, "a happy kid who hadn't seen hostility. We couldn't send him off naive, and so we had to introduce the idea that he might come across people who would think we were not a good family."

"OK, so we tell him other people have moms and dads," says Sue, "and suddenly you're into the birds-and-bees thing. So, where does he come from? Other kids are told, oh, mom and dad got married and had a baby, but we had to tell him, that's not the way it worked here, buddy."

Where's my dad?
At 6, when Peter asked about his father, he was told his father was a good man but lived far away.

That was not the truth, and it didn't satisfy Peter.

"It was not that I didn't like my family, but my friends had fathers in normal families, and I wondered where mine was."

Again, Marcia and Sue sat down with Peter, and this time they told him that his biological father was a friend of the family who worked at GE and was well known to Peter.

"It was a relief. I'd hung out at his house and he was awesome, so it was, well, OK, sure, cool, you know, like not a big deal, whatever.

"At first, I thought maybe he'd be a huge part of my life, but I realized that my two moms and me, that had always been my family, and that would continue to be my family. Marcia's my biological mother, and that bond is unbelievable, and Sue has been there my whole life and has raised me as much as my mom did. When my mom was at work, Sue was with me, and when Sue was at work, Mom was with me. So, I was lucky, because a lot of kids don't have two parents who love them."

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posted by Eve at 2:32 PM | Link | 0 comments

I DO?: Kay S. Hymowitz reviews Jonathan Rauch's Gay Marriage

...Rauch opens by asking, "What is marriage for?" Perhaps surprisingly, he rejects the view, widely held by other supporters of same-sex unions, that marriage can be defined simply as a committed love relationship, since "married couples are married whether they love each other or not." Nor, he argues, are children the sine qua non, since society still recognizes an infertile couple as married. Marriage, he concludes, has two central social purposes: "settling the young, particularly young men, and providing reliable caregivers." ...

...In this connection he recounts a number of anecdotes testifying to the wrongs suffered by gays in devoted relationships: women who cannot get family leave to help their incapacitated partners, dying men forbidden to see their partners in their final hours. These stories do more than shout injustice, in Rauch's view; they demonstrate how the present system discourages the caregiving impulses that society ought to shore up, while subtly reinforcing the "moral laziness" of Americans when it comes to thinking about the lives of their fellow citizens.

Rauch disputes most of the scenarios that social conservatives--the "Chicken Little crowd"--have warned would follow the legalization of gay marriage. He dismisses the boys-will-be-boys claim: that gay men would corrupt the ideal of marital fidelity. Though he expects that marriage would indeed go some way toward reducing gay promiscuity, he also points out that, historically, societies have tolerated a certain amount of male adultery without causing the institution to collapse. Nor does he think that gay marriage would open the door to other unconventional sorts of marital arrangements. For Rauch, it is not gay marriage but rather marriage "lite" that would extend the welcome mat to incest and polygamy. Lacking any cultural history, arrangements like civil unions and domestic partnerships risk being hijacked. Gay marriage, on the other hand, affirms the traditional principle of "one person, one spouse."

As for the "sex-centered view" that gay marriage would threaten the traditional family--that is, one consisting of a man, a woman, and their children--Rauch sees this as especially insulting to gays. "There is one thing no homosexual couple can do," he bristles, "and that is to procreate." Marriage may be "uniquely good for children," he writes, but that does not mean that procreation is the reason for marriage. In fact, the well-being of children is just one more reason to extend marriage to gays, since there are thousands, perhaps even millions, of children living with unwed gay parents. ...

But Rauch's sociological acumen fails him on one crucial issue: the connection between marriage and children. Here he resorts to caricature, presenting concerns about maintaining the traditional family as a creepy obsession of the religious Right or as a mere prejudice in favor of "penile-vaginal intercourse." This is hardly serious.

What unites the various forms of marriage over the course of human history is their shared concern to solidify and extend the biological bonds connecting a man, a woman, and their offspring. Marriage is, above all, culture's way to make such families work. By contrast, Rauch's own definition of marriage--"two people's lifelong commitment, recognized by law and by society, to care for each other"--is a thin, highly parochial depiction, one that would be unrecognizable to most people who have ever exchanged vows. To marry is not simply to acquire a devoted lifelong partner; if it were, polygamy would be unknown, and history would have already yielded as many gay marriages as it has grains of thrown wedding rice (a fertility symbol, by the way). The procreative imperative is the only reason we are talking about marriage in the first place.

Rauch suggests two related objections to this line of thinking. First, that marriage is an evolving institution that has changed to meet shifting social realities; as he puts it, our definition of marriage should reflect how "it is practiced today." Second, that since many married couples do not procreate, the primary focus of marriage is clearly not children.

There is no denying that the institution of marriage has evolved over the centuries and that it has come to satisfy a range of human needs: it creates bonds of kinship, simplifies the division of labor, domesticates young men, and provides sentimental companionship. Unfortunately, over the past several generations, this evolutionary process has gone into such overdrive that the original purpose of marriage--procreation and childrearing--has nearly faded from the collective consciousness. Today, a third of all babies in the U.S. are born to unmarried mothers, and increasing percentages of Americans disagree with the statement that "the purpose of marriage is having children." Defining marriage in terms of how "it is practiced today," as Rauch would have it, is like determining normal by taking the temperature of someone who has a fever.

Rauch is keenly aware of the results of this shift in our cultural mores. As he recently told an interviewer, his interest in marriage arose in part from his realization that the "problems of poverty and crime . . . are really offshoots of the collapse in the family." By just about every measure, the growing disjunction between marriage and childrearing has been bad news for children, for the social order, and for our ideals of equality. Marriage has evolved, all right, but evolution is not the same thing as progress.

Would gay marriage help to cure the institution, as Rauch argues? It is hard to see how. Like Andrew Sullivan, the other major gay conservative voice in support of same-sex unions, Rauch insists that the core meaning of the institution lies in adult mutuality. Children are at best a distant consideration. By defining them out of marriage, Rauch would pull us even farther from its original meaning.

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posted by Eve at 5:54 PM | Link | 0 comments

DOES SSM STRENGTHEN MARRIAGE IN EUROPE? Maggie Gallagher

To me, the most persuasive part of Stanley Kurtz's argument is this: If you go around telling people that marriage has nothing in particular to do with making and raising children, people just might believe you.

I know of no same-sex marriage advocate, not even Jonathan Rauch (who has the deepest and most profound attachment to mariage as a social institution) who is willing to say "Children need moms and dads and marriage is how you get them for kids."

The core idea of SSM, as many recent posts from its advocates suggest, is that no one family form is any better than another. What kids need is love and stability and commitment, not moms and dads (which BTW you cannot get for children through cohabitation in any reliable way--but that's another argument). SSM represent the institutionalizaiton of the "family diversity" ideal, not the beginning of a marriage renaissance.

To me the most questionable assertion of Prof. Badgett is that "heterosexual" marriage in Europe is doing well (and the corrollary assertion that for Kurtz to pick out-of-wedlock births as a key indicator is tendentious and unreasonable).

Marriage is not in great shape in Europe. Most European countries are experiencing the same problems as America: rapidly accelerating family fragmentation expressed as high out-of-wedlock births and high and/or increasing rates of divorce.

To which can be added a related problem the U.S. does not experience at the same levels: a crisis resulting from low rates of fertility. U.N. demographers define "lowest low fertility" as a birthrate below 1.5 children Europe's total fertility rate in 1995-2000 was 1.42 children per woman.

In 2000, in the developed countries of the world, for the first time in human history there are more old people than children (19 percent versus 18 percent). By 2050 (assuming optimistic rises in fertility levels in Europe back to replacement levels), there will be twice as many elderly people as children (32 percent versus 16 percent). Under the U.N's "medium" projection (which predict birth rates will rise back to replacement levels), the median aged person in Europe will be almost 48 years old.

In Europe marriage is failing to do either of its key tasks: prevent fragmented families or encouraging the creation of the next generation.

Marriage is being separated from childbearing (or family-making) at both ends in Europe. THe fact that Dutch culture could change so dramatically in such a short period of time is indeed a distressing fact that should set off warning bells: The commitment to marriage as a child-making and child-raising institution can disappear quickly if it is not support by law, culture, religion, and society.

The relationship between SSM and the decline of marriage is no doubt complex, because the latter has many causes.

But where is the evidence that SSM strengthens marriage?

If we really cared about strengthening marriages, would we launch this vast, untested social experiment on kids and our society?

If we judge many other things (adult rights, sexual needs and desires to affirmation) so much more important than the health of marriage, how can we expect a stronger marriage culture to arise?

If the idea that "children need moms and dads" is a form of bigotry or discrimination, how can we raise a generation of men to be good family men, or women to think it is important to marry before having children (as opposed to being stable and loving, whatever that means)?
posted by Eve at 4:23 PM | Link | 0 comments

MORE ON VIRGINIA AFFIRMATION OF MARRIAGE LAW: Walter Olson replies to Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru of National Review Online ("The Corner", May 18) has written in defense of the new Virginia statute, much criticized in this space, which declares null and void within the state not only civil unions but also any "partnership contract or other arrangement between persons of the same sex purporting to bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage" (Mar. 19, Apr. 18, Apr. 23, May 12). As I noted two weeks ago, given the unclarity of the law's drafting, a prolonged guessing game about its meaning may be inevitable; but some guesses are more plausible than others.

According to Ponnuru, the law's most plausible reading is a very narrow one under which it would not result in "blocking purely private arrangements" at all and same-sex couples would continue to be secure in availing themselves of a wide range of legal devices such as durable power of attorney, living wills, and so forth, of any sort that could be entered into by two brothers or business partners. (Assuming, that is, that they did it by signing documents in a lawyer's office. If they imagined they could skip those rounds of paperwork because their home was in Vermont and they had a civil union, they might be in for a very rude surprise after their I-95 accident when Virginia treated them as legal strangers for purposes of hospital visitation and the like.)

So if the law isn't really meant to affect private agreements, what is the language purporting to invalidate "partnership contract[s] or other arrangement[s]" doing in there? When controversy first arose, some of the law's backers said their goal was to prohibit recognition of some future equivalent of civil unions which might travel under a different name. Had this been their objective, one would have expected the law to employ language that captured the salient legal features of civil unions as opposed to strictly private arrangements -- for example, that they are solemnized with a license or other public formalization. Given that no such distinction appears in the law's text, it has been widely assumed that the law is meant to reach at least some private contractual arrangements between same-sex couples.

So, again: which private arrangements are void? Ponnuru's answer is agreeably circular: he thinks the law will ban only those arrangements which purport to convey incidents of marriage which cannot be conveyed by contract. In other words, it will ban only those arrangements that are already void. We can all hope he's right, without wishing to bet our own legal affairs on the outcome. But other interpretations will be urged on Virginia courts, sheriffs, and state agencies as well. For example, some persons with interests adverse to the couple (relatives pursuing will disputes, for example) may urge an "intent to evade" standard: even if one or another contractual device might count as innocent taken singly, they will say, in the aggregate the dealings add up to an attempt to "bestow the privileges or obligations of marriage" on a relationship disfavored by the state of Virginia, just as a series of otherwise lawful financial steps when combined with ill intent may amount to money laundering.

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posted by Eve at 4:04 PM | Link | 0 comments

LESBIAN COUPLE'S SPLIT LEADS TO CUSTODY BATTLE: From the Rocky Mountain News

In June 1995, Cheryl Clark and Elsey "Zee" McLeod sent an arrival announcement to family and friends.

Their baby, a girl, had been born in the People's Republic of China and lived for six months in an orphanage there, the card read.

"She now lives with two adoring moms," it said: "Zee and Cheryl, in Denver."

But the moms broke up, and the child, now 9, is at the center of a bitter custody dispute that goes far beyond the fractured family. What is usually a private struggle between parents has since become a key battle in Colorado's culture war.

After years spent in litigation, the fight moves to the Colorado Court of Appeals today. Clark, the legal adoptive parent, is trying to end McLeod's visitation rights, while McLeod is fighting to maintain joint custody.

Among the usual, understandable conflicts about health care and holiday time, this case has one more hot button. In an April 2003 ruling, Denver District Judge John Coughlin barred Clark, who has become an evangelical Christian, from teaching her daughter "anything that could be considered homophobic" as part of her religious training.

That has roused several groups to rally round Clark's case, including Rocky Mountain Family Counsel and Liberty Counsel, a national legal group focused on protecting religious freedoms and family values. As a parent, Clark should have the right to condemn homosexuality as contrary to Christian values, they say. ...

Organizations that have rallied to McLeod's side include gay legal groups and the American Civil Liberties Union.

The outcry over Coughlin's order simply covers the "underlying political panic" the critics feel because gay and lesbian parents are being treated equally in some courts, said Julie Tolleson, of Equal Rights Colorado. Custody orders typically say parents mustn't disparage each other in front of the children, she said. ...

As with most couples, Clark and McLeod decided to adopt a child because they wanted a family.

Clark, a psychiatrist, and McLeod, a psychologist, met while working at Fort Logan Mental Health Center, began their relationship and moved in together. The two had a commitment ceremony, a kind of same-sex union recognition that has no legal binding, on July 31, 1993.

After discussing in-vitro fertilization and adoption, the women opted to adopt a girl from China. The adoption agency followed a "don't ask, don't tell" policy, as the Chinese government and Colorado forbid adoptions to gays and lesbians. So Clark became the legal adoptive mother.

The child was brought back to the women's Denver home, a nanny was hired and both women cut back on their work schedules. McLeod's name was legally added to the girl's name, Clark changed her will to designate McLeod as the girl's guardian and the women got a joint-custody order in March 1996.

"All these actions work toward protecting our family integrity and, specifically, your relationship, legally, with (the child)," Clark wrote in a letter to McLeod in September 1997. "(The child) needs two parents that she can turn to for comfort and security." ...

But her mothers began to grow apart, and the relationship was strained by September 1997, according to court records. By February 2001, the two broke up, and the custody battle began when McLeod filed for co-parenting time, a term used instead of "custody" in Colorado law since 1998.

In April 2001, a Denver magistrate ordered the women to share parenting time, with each getting three days on, then three days off, with the girl.

By June of that year, Clark began fighting the co-custody, arguing that she was the child's legal parent and McLeod was, legally, a third party, much like a grandparent or relative. ...

Clark lost in Denver District Court in April 2003, when Coughlin "categorically" rejected Clark's contention that McLeod shouldn't be allowed to be the girl's mother. He kept the 50-50 visitation rights in place and said the women must alternate weeks with the girl.

"The minor child loves both women and the child has been nurtured and loved by both women," Coughlin wrote in his order.

Acknowledging the Troxel decision, Coughlin said he must give "special weight" to Clark, the legal parent. But Coughlin went on to write that he also considered "special factors," such as Clark's earlier request to acknowledge McLeod as a co-parent and her agreement to change the child's name to include McLeod's.

"Dr. Clark has participated in creating these special factors. She may not now ask this court to disregard these factors," Coughlin wrote. "To do so would be, without a doubt, to disregard the best interests of the minor child."

Clark appealed the ruling, and McLeod filed briefs defending her status as a "psychological parent." State courts have used the concept since the mid-1990s, citing the Colorado law that says a person who isn't a blood relative can get parenting rights when the person has had physical custody of a child for at least six months. ...

The psychological-parenting doctrine is not exclusive to Colorado. In what is considered a watershed case for nonbiological gay parents, a New Jersey Supreme Court ruling in April 2000 gave the former partner of a lesbian mother visitation rights to the twins she had helped raise since birth.

The New Jersey high court said psychological parenthood is established when:

• The legal parent consents to the relationship between the nonbiological or nonlegal parent.

• The psychological parent has lived with the child.

• The psychological parent cared for the child.

• The child and the psychological parent have bonded or forged an attachment.

Up until that ruling, courts didn't recognize "de facto parents," said Leslie Cooper, an attorney with the ACLU's Lesbian and Gay Rights Project in New York.

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posted by Eve at 3:48 PM | Link | 0 comments

NYC CUSTODY CASE: From the New York Post

An ugly tug of war is raging over the fate of a 6-year-old boy being raised by a gay couple who won custody of the child in a landmark decision in 2000.

Gays hailed the ruling as a major victory for same-sex couples, but the boy has since become a troubled kid who punches his teachers and repeatedly says he wants to kill himself, according to an expert's report requested by his school.

The report has spurred the mother to fight for increased access to her son, who has lived with the two men since the ruling--the first time a New York court awarded custody to a gay couple over a woman they claimed to be a surrogate.

The mother says she was never a surrogate and that she, the father--once a close friend who worked for her--and his live-in lover intended to raise the child as a parental trio.

"I just hadn't met the right guy yet," said Courtney St. Clement, 52, who had never been identified in the press or spoken out about her experiences.

"They held out that they had a lot of money, and at the time, I felt like I was marrying a doctor. They said, 'We're a family.' We were supposed to all live together, but we didn't get that far." ...

[The son] punches and kicks his teachers, hits and bites himself, curses and says he wants to kill himself as often as twice a month, according to the new report, completed in January by NYU's Child Study Center.

It also says he repeatedly kisses and touches classmates inappropriately and once ran around naked. ...

"His mother and father have always lived apart and have had remarkably significant disputes regarding custody and visitation from very early on," said the report, which recommended that the boy be appointed a law guardian. ...

St. Clement says the family arrangement broke down after the father, part-time substitute teacher Gerald Casale, 47, and his partner, a trusts and estates lawyer, Ernest Londa, 46, stopped her from seeing the 6-month-old infant in April 1998. She then sued for custody.

The partners claimed they struck a deal with St. Clement in which she agreed to carry Casale's child to term, then step back and allow them to be sole parents.

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posted by Eve at 3:45 PM | Link | 0 comments

MARRIAGE IN NOVEMBER: Stanley Kurtz

Do you live in Arkansas, Michigan, Montana, Ohio, or Oregon? If so, you should know that there are efforts in your states to place constitutional amendments defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman on the November ballot. I haven't had time to study either the language of these amendments, or the political situation in these states. But Marriage Watch (well worth checking out if you want to follow this issue) has put up a website containing information on the ballot initiatives in these five states. Go there and decide for yourself whether you want to help put these measures on your state's November ballot.

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posted by Eve at 3:41 PM | Link | 0 comments

BELGIUM RELEASES GAY MARRIAGE STATS: From 365Gay.com

A year after Belgium became the second country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage the government has released statistics on who has been taking advantage of the gay nuptials.

Three-hundred same-sex couples have married, That represents about 1.2 percent of all marriages registered in Belgium over the past 12 months.

The figures show that male couples were about equal to female couples in tying the knot. But, the majority came from the Flanders section of the country, as opposed to Wallonia or the Brussels region.

Of the 300 gay unions celebrated last year, 240 took place in Flanders, 38 in Wallonia and just 22 in the capital and its suburbs.

Under the Belgian law that allows gay couples to marry, adoption is still not permitted. Many lesbian couples have used fertilization clinics, but the biological mother is the only one recognized by the government.

The first country to permit gay marriage was the Netherlands. While it caused a stir internationally at the time, the fact that Holland has always been the world's most gay-positive country made the marriage decision less significant than that of Belgium, home to the European government and considered conservative and stodgy.

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posted by Eve at 3:39 PM | Link | 0 comments

MASS. TOWN ENDS DOMESTIC PARTNER BENEFITS: From the Associated Press

Springfield will soon no longer offer health benefits to unmarried domestic partners of city employees now that same-sex couples are legally allowed to marry in Massachusetts.

Mayor Charles Ryan notified the city clerk on Thursday that he has rescinded all prior executive orders allowing unmarried domestic partners to participate in the city's group health insurance program.

Unmarried domestic partners will not be cut off from access to health insurance immediately. Ryan offered a 90-day grace period to become legally married and retain insurance coverage.

Ryan's predecessor, Michael Albano, had issued an executive order giving unmarried same-sex partners and their dependents insurance coverage, the mayor said.

Ryan's move raised concerns among gay marriage advocates, who said it would force gay couples to get married, or put them at risk to lose benefits they are not currently entitled to under federal laws.

"We feel very strongly that it is grossly inappropriate and terribly unfair for any employer to rescind domestic partner benefits until gay people have complete and total marriage rights, which we don't right now," said Arline Isaacson, co-chair of the Massachusetts Gay and Lesbian Political Caucus.

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posted by Eve at 3:37 PM | Link | 0 comments

STUDENTS RALLY FOR SSM: From the Los Angeles Times

About 100 teenagers--armed with ear-splitting screams and hand-lettered signs--rallied Saturday in Westwood in support of marriage for same-sex couples.

"It's important for everyone to be able to live the way they want to," said Kate Heller, 16, a student at Winward School in West Los Angeles.

Two teens from Winward's new Gay-Straight Alliance, Sarah Freed, 17, and Joe Goldman, 14, organized the Federal Building rally, which drew students, gay and straight, from high schools across Orange, Ventura and Los Angeles counties, along with parents, teachers and a fluffy white poodle.

John Duran, mayor of West Hollywood, where three of five council members are gay, listened to the cacophony of cheering youths and honking car horns and smiled in amazement.

"They are part of changing America," he said.

Polls show that young people are far more likely than their elders to be in favor of legalizing gay marriage. A 2001 study of high school seniors found that 66% favored allowing same-sex couples to marry.

On Saturday, 16-year-old Stephanie Gross compared the push for gay marriage to the struggle against segregation.

"It's part of something a lot bigger than any of us," she said as she helped make posters with phrases such as "Love Is Marriage."

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posted by Eve at 3:34 PM | Link | 0 comments

MORE POLLING: From CBSNews

The American public continues to oppose the idea of same-sex marriage and supports a constitutional amendment to outlaw it. Still, a majority does not think the issue of same-sex marriage should be part of this year’s election campaign and fewer now say the issue would affect their vote than did two months ago.

28% of Americans think gays and lesbians should be allowed to marry --up slightly since March. Another 29% say gay and lesbian couples should be permitted to form civil unions. Overall, 57% of Americans support some type of legal status for same-sex couples. Four in 10, however, think the relationships of same-sex couples ought to have no legal recognition. ...

A Constitutional amendment that would allow marriage only between a man and a woman still has the support of a majority of Americans. 60% favor such an amendment, while 37% oppose such it.

The level of support for such an amendment differs among some groups. While a majority of Republicans and Democrats both support a Constitutional amendment, Independents are divided.

Groups most likely to support same-sex marriage include those under age 30, those living in the Northeast, and college graduates. Democrats and Independents are more likely than Republicans to favor same-sex marriages. Men and women have similar views on the legal recognition of same-sex couples.

56% of voters now say they could vote for someone who disagrees with their position on the issue of same-sex marriage, while 35% say they could NOT vote for such a candidate. In March, voters were more evenly split. Then, 45% said they could vote for someone who disagreed with them on same-sex marriage, but 44% said they could NOT support a candidate who held a different position. With growing concerns about the war, perhaps the attention of voters is now more focused on the situation in Iraq.

Voters who back the Constitutional amendment are now divided as to whether they would vote for a candidate who disagrees with their position on same-sex marriage: 45% say they would vote for a candidate with an opposing view, while 45% say they would not. In March, a majority of these voters--61%--said they could NOT vote for a candidate who disagreed with them on the issue of same-sex marriage.

74% of voters who oppose a Constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage say they would support a candidate with a different position on the issue. Opinions of these voters have changed little since March.

Yet, most voters would prefer the issue of same-sex marriage not be a part of the election campaign. Seven in 10 say the issue should have no part in the campaign. 20% say same-sex marriage should have a minor role in the campaign, and only 9% think it should have a major role.

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posted by Eve at 3:30 PM | Link | 0 comments