Children Raised by Gay Parents WORSE OFF Than Other Kids, New Major Study Shows.

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From Mercator.net via the British Journal of Education, Society and Behavioral Science.

Image via Shutterstock. Used with permission.

Image via Shutterstock. Used with permission.

Fresh research has just tossed a grenade into the incendiary issue of same-sex parenting. Writing in the British Journal of Education, Society & Behavioural Science, a peer-reviewed journal, American sociologist Paul Sullins concludes that children’s “Emotional problems [are] over twice as prevalent for children with same-sex parents than for children with opposite-sex parents”.

He says confidently: “it is no longer accurate to claim that no study has found children in same-sex families to be disadvantaged relative to those in opposite-sex families.”

This defiant rebuttal of the “no difference” hypothesis is sure to stir up a hornet’s next as the Supreme Court prepares to trawl through arguments for and against same-sex marriage. It will be impossible for critics to ignore it, as it is based on more data than any previous study — 512 children with same-sex parents drawn from the US National Health Interview Survey. The emotional problems included misbehaviour, worrying, depression, poor relationships with peers and inability to concentrate.

After crunching the numbers, Sullins found opposite-sex parents provided a better environment. “Biological parentage uniquely and powerfully distinguishes child outcomes between children with opposite-sex parents and those with same-sex parents,” he writes.  READ MORE

 

Emily Litella Says, “There’s NO WAY Gay Marriage Will Lead to Polyamory/Polygamy!”

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So, just last May 2012, gay advocate, Jonathan Rauch argued on NPR that the thought that same-sex marriage could possibly lead to mainstream acceptance of polyamory/polygamy was ridiculous.

Rauch:  Same sex marriage leads away from polygamy, not for it. It’s odd to argue that because children need parents, you should be against polygamy. That’s one of the arguments polygamists make – that, you know, you have more moms and a dad. Isn’t that great? In fact, the problem with polygamy is exactly what’s good about same-sex marriage, which is that everyone should have the opportunity to marry.

We are not asking, gay marriage advocates, for the right to marry everybody or anybody, just to marry somebody. We’re asking to have that opportunity. The problem with polygamy, historically, and there’s tons of literature about this, Michel – polygamy is the oldest form of marriage and the most predominant form of marriage in human society – the problem with it is that it almost invariably means one man, multiple wives, and when one man takes two wives, some other man gets no wife.

So a lot of people lose the opportunity to marry and you get societies where you’ve got a lot of unmarried young males who are very unhappy, a lot of social disruption, a lot of violence. And there’s a whole academic literature on this. Gay marriage changes none of that. In fact, gay marriage leads us away from that to a society where everyone can marry.

This weekend, CNN pulled an Emily Litella and said, “Never mind.”

It’s not just a fling or a phase for them. It’s an identity. They want to show that polyamory can be a viable alternative to monogamy, even for middle-class, suburban families with children, jobs and house notes.

“We’re not trying to say that monogamy is bad,” said Billy Holder, a 36-year-old carpenter who works at a university in Atlanta. “We’re trying to promote the fact that everyone has a right to develop a relationship structure that works for them.”

For the Holder-Mullins triad, polyamory is three adults living in the same home about 20 miles south of Atlanta. They share bills, housework and childcare for their 9-year-old daughter. They work at the same place, sharing carpooling duties so someone can see their daughter off to school each day.  MORE

Why Doesn’t the Catholic Church Just Get with the Times?

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Contraception, abortion, women’s ordination, gay marriage.  These represent just a few of the issues the Church is regularly criticized for being on the “wrong side” of.

So, why can’t the Church change?

Today’s episode of More2Life Radio was titled, “Stand Your Ground.”  We looked at the challenge of knowing when we need to draw a line in the sand and when we need to be more flexible.  Part of that discussion involved an interview with Bishop Jeffrey Montforton of Steubenville (former rector of Detroit’s Sacred Heart Seminary) about why the Church can’t just modernize.

The answer to both questions (when do we change and when can the Church change) is really the same.    It all comes down to knowing who you are.  As a Church or as individuals, you can change the things that don’t jeopardize the core of your mission–the heart of your identity–but you can’t change the things that do or you cease to exist in any meaningful way.

Catholics have been given a special gift.  God has shared with us, directly, his truth, his vision of what the world was intended to be and is destined to become again.  He has communicated to us what he intended the world to look like from the beginning of time and he has tasked us with the mission of doing whatever we can to make the world fall more in line with that vision.  In other words, it is not the Catholic Church’s mission to look more like the world.  It is the Catholic Church’s job to make the world look more like the Catholic Church–a community of love dedicated to using our time, treasure, talent and selves to work for the good of others and, in the process, become the best version of ourselves.

We can’t fulfill that mission if we accommodate to the culture.   True, we can change things that aren’t at the center of that blueprint for building the Kingdom that God has given us.  We can move some furniture around.  We can change some words here and there as long as we don’t tamper with the meaning behind those words.  But we can’t be a prophetic sign of what the world is supposed to be by allowing ourselves to become what the world already is!

But, of course, there are objections to this.  I can think of two huge ones off-hand.

1.  Oh, Sure!  The world should look just like the Church!?!  You mean we should all be pedophiles?

Answer:  I’m glad you brought that up.  This is a perfect example of how the Church accommodated to the world.  Seriously, what’s more worldly than committing sexual sin and covering it up?  In fact, the reason the world is so angry at the Church for the scandal is because it didn’t behave like Church.  The world WANTS there to be a sign of goodness in the world (the world hates it, but wants it all the same–like kids and rules).  The world NEEDS a sign of grace in the world and for the world to think that the Church isn’t a sign of grace is infuriating to the world.  The relationship between the world and the Church is like the relationship between an abusive husband and his wife; the more the wife tries to accommodate to her abusive husbands expectations, the more the abusive husband comes to hate the woman.  Only when she stands up to his abuse is there any hope.

2.  But Catholicism is just one brand of Christianity.  Lots of other Christians have modernized their teaching.

Answer:  Yes, well, that’s what happens to the branches that fall off the tree.  Jesus Christ created a Church (Matt 16:18) and entrusted to that Church the vision of what the world should look like.  It is the Church’s job to pass that vision–that Tradition (capital T)– from one generation to the next.  Apostolic succession is the means of transmitting that vision.  Those Churches that preserve Apostolic Succession maintain the Tradition, the vision of what the world must become.  Those Christian and Christian-flavored sects that cut themselves off of the apostolic vine lose the Tradition and end up taking their cues more from the world than from Christ’s original vision.  At best, the messages of these various latter-day Christian sects represent  the seeds sown on rocky soil.  Their work sprouts buds that quickly die if they are not transplanted into more fertile soil (Matt 13).  In fact, we see exactly this.  Sociologists of religion show that there is immense turnover in Evangelical mega-churches.  Their gospel-lite message attracts new seekers but their disconnection from the vine causes the new shoots to starve and die.    And that’s the best case scenario.   At worst, these sects sow weeds that threaten to choke out the vision, weeds that will be gathered up with the wheat but then burned on the last day (Matt 13:24-30).

Belief in the Sun-god.

In his encyclical, Lumen Fidei, Pope Francis quotes St. Justin Martyr as saying that “no one ever gave his life because of his belief in the Sun.”   That’s because worship of the sun-god was a secular religion.  It didn’t exist to challenge the culture.  It existed to give people a safe way to vent their spiritual feelings. That vision of church is what most people imagine church to be even today.    That has never been the mission of the Catholic Church. To paraphrase Flannery O’Connor, if that’s all church is then to hell with it.   We exist to hold up the truth.  To be a sign for the Truth and, if necessary, to be willing to die to defend that Truth.

The Church cannot change because if it changes it ceases to be Church and becomes an exercise in what Cardinal Ratzinger once referred to as “spiritual auto-eroticism.” God know, no one needs more of that.

The Right Question

When we encounter some teaching that offends us, annoys us, irritates us; some teaching that the Church stubbornly insists it can’t change and makes us say, “Why doesn’t the Church change that already?”  it is best to recognize that the better question is, “Why is this teaching so central to God’s vision of what the world must become and, having discovered that, how can I get on board and do my part in promoting that vision?”

We do not ask how we can change the Church.  We ask how the Church can change us.

 

 

The Marriage Debate: What NOT to Do (and What TO do instead)

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There is really no way to put a smiley face on it.  Yesterday’s SCOTUS decisions dealt a serious blow to the marriage movement.  The decision was not as catastrophic as it could have been.  One scenario had SCOTUS pulling a “Roe” and, by judicial fiat, granting a federal right to gay marriage in all 50 states.  As  I noted on the air yesterday, the decisions on DOMA and Prop 8 are the equivalent of having one’s legs cut off instead of one’s head.  Yes, one’s better than the other, but neither is exactly good.  Yes, we fight on, but it’s a little hard to not feel like Monty Python’s Black Knight while we do it.

As of 6/26/13,  thanks to the Supremes, anyone who believes there is something unique about traditional marriage–about a child’s right to have both a mother and a father–has become a bigot and a hate-monger.  There is no way around it.  Gay marriage is now the ideal that people who value progress, justice, and love (or at least the popular understanding of those terms) must support.   In an ironically chilling statement, the President said that he “won’t” force churches to accept the civil redefinition of marriage.   I say it was ironically chilling, because as Deacon Greg noted yesterday, in the President’s half-hearted attempt to reassure those who disagree with the decision, he did not say that he had no power (as the Constitution–for the time being–asserts) to force churches to accept his will  at some point in the future–as he is attempting to do with contraception and the HHS mandate (and BTW, mark my words, if we lose the mandate fight,  gay unions will be the next thing the gov’t tries to force the Church to support).  All he said was that he “won’t” do what he implicitly thinks he ought to be able to do.

In light of all this, it could be difficult for anyone on the side of traditional marriage to avoid getting lost in apocalyptic visions of the coming persecution.   But we really do have to resist this temptation because if we don’t we become the caricature our opponents would like us to be.

DO NOT BE WHAT THEY SAY WE ARE.

We must be careful to NOT become what they say we are.  Yesterday, in their anguish, I saw countless people posting horrible–and frankly, inexcusable–things about homosexuals.  I saw foolish posts on Facebook from prominent, well-known Catholics that featured obscene pictures of homosexual behavior at Gay Pride parades with sarcastic captions like, “Oh, SURE.   They’re JUST like us.”    Comments like this do not help our cause.  They simply turn us into exactly what they say we are.  Haters.  Worse, comments like this obscure the true reason we value traditional marriage.

MARRIAGE:  GETTING THE CONVERSATION RIGHT

I encourage–no, I beg–everyone to immediately get Bill May’s excellent book, Getting the Marriage Conversation Right.  The book is only 82 pages long but it will open your eyes about the real reasons traditional marriage is important and help you–as the title says–get the conversation right.

The short version of the book’s thesis is that support for traditional marriage has NOTHING to do with being against homosexuals and EVERYTHING to do with defending the rights of children.   Marriage is the only institution that exists to defend the rights of children to be united to their mom and dad.  When someone confronts you about traditional marriage, the questions you should be asking them are the following…

  • Do we need an institution that unites kids with their moms and dad? Yes or no?
  • Do children have a right to know and, as far as possible, be cared for by their moms and dads?
  • Does anyone have the right to create children with the intention of depriving them of their mother or father or both?
  • Should we have laws and curricula in schools that promote men and women marrying before having children?

OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE:  CHILDREN DO NOT HAVE GUARANTEED RIGHTS TO A MOTHER AND FATHER

Children have a natural right to be united to their mom and dad.  Marriage exists to protect this right.  This means several things.

1.  A child born, for instance, to a co-habiting couple, or a child who suffers divorce of his parents, or is raised in any other context than in a traditional marriage, cannot count on either his right to know where he comes from or his right be provided for by the people who created him.  When a mother and father are married, a child knows where he comes from and who he can expect to provide for him.  Marriage unites a child to his mom and dad.

2. Even now, almost everyone acknowledges that being deprived of either a mother or father is a bad thing.  For example; we feel sad for the child who never had the opportunity to meet his dad.  Or the child who’s mom died in childbirth.  Or the child of divorce who couldn’t count on one or both parents to be there.  Or the kid raised by his grandparents instead of his parents.  We recognize these things as sad because we all know that a child needs, not just “people” to care for him–or even any two people to care for him–but, ideally,  a mother and a father.  Preferably, his own mother and father.  Other people can do a terrific job of raising kids, but unless they are the child’s own mother and father, the child still feels a loss.  Moms and Dads make different contributions to a child’s development.  These contributions go beyond mere cultural constructs.  There is an essential difference between moms and dads that cannot be made up for by someone playing the role of mother or father.    Mothers and fathers interact with children differently.  They give different psychosocial gifts to their child.  A child raised without a mom or dad can be a good kid, a healthy kid, a well-functioning kid.  But he will never feel as whole as the child raised in an intact family with his own mother and father.

3.   Gay marriage cannot be equivalent to marriage because–if the above is true–no matter how much two men or two women  love each other, and no matter how technically skilled they may be at parenting, they cannot give a child a mother and a father.  As I pointed out above, in every other context in which a child is deprived of a mother or father, that is recognized as a tragedy.  Gay marriage is the only context where intentionally denying a child a mother or father is seen as a good thing.  This does serious violence to a child.

For instance, if a child of divorce who doesn’t know his father says he is sad about it, or goes to therapy, he would be allowed to grieve that absence.  But would a child raised by two lesbians be encouraged to tell his moms if he ached to have a dad?  Would he be allowed to grieve never having known his father or to feel frustrated about never being able to have a relationship with the sperm donor who helped his two “moms” conceive him?   Would a therapist be forced–because of so-called marriage “equality”–to tell this child that he has nothing to be sad about because his family was just as good as any other family even though his gut says differently?  In what other context is denying someone’s feelings a good thing?  Saying that gay marriage is equal to traditional marriage effectively says that children raised without a mother or a father have no right to feel the absence of the missing parent.  After all, things are equal, aren’t they?  Anyone who says otherwise is guilty of bigotry–including the child’s own feelings.  People who are shamed for the hurt they feel cannot heal the hurt they feel.  Gay marriage effectively necessitates the shaming of anyone–not just children of gay parents–who feels the absence of a mother or father.

4. If gay marriage is equivalent to marriage, then gay couples must be allowed–and even encouraged–to have access to whatever means they need to acquire the other thing that traditional married couples have; namely, children.  That means an exponential expansion of donor-conceived children, and surrogacy.  Click here to read about the research that describes the unique struggles of donor-conceived children.  Click here to read about the struggles in their own words.

5.  Yes, all of the above logic also applies to the similar abuses heterosexual couples perpetrate against children.  That said, at least with heterosexual couples, there is still a chance that these injustices can be addressed. With gay marriage, all the things that are at least arguably unjust when heterosexuals do them to children (surrogacy, donor-conception, depriving a child of a mother or father through various means) become irrevocably just when homosexuals do them.   When same-sex couples are seen as equivalent to heterosexual couples, the necessity of a father and mother for a child disappears.  There is no reason to solve the problems that come with the absence of a father or mother.  We just close our eyes to the possibility that there could possibly be any problems.

 WE ARE NOT AGAINST “GAY MARRIAGE.”

The upshot is that we are not against gay marriage.   We are for defending the institution that protects the rights of children to be united to their own mom and dad.  We recognize that this isn’t always possible, but we recognize that when it isn’t possible, that is a sad thing that must be dealt with compassionately–not denied as an inconvenient truth.

Homosexual persons have a right to be treated with dignity.  They have the right to be given whatever protections they need to live full, dignified, healthy lives free from persecution and prejudice.  But they do not have the right to pursue these goals by taking away the very few rights children have to be united to their mom and dad and, to the degree that it is possible, to be raised by their own mom and dad.  THAT is the problem with gay marriage.  Nothing else.

So, don’t become the bitter, hateful, homophobic caricature our opponents want us to be.   Get the marriage conversation right.   Please.

The future.  Our future.  Our children’s future depends on it.

So, wait. Defense of marriage is a life issue?

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As I mentioned in my post on gender from the other day, I have a dear friend from childhood who is, now, a professor of queer studies.   Over the years we’ve managed to build a deep mutual respect despite our deep differences.  That respect has enabled us to have some frighteningly direct conversations with each other.

This past weekend we had the opportunity to spend a fair amount of time together as he was in town visiting family.  He surprised me by bringing up the topic of marriage equality (I’m usually the one who can’t help himself).

After listening to–and largely agreeing with– some of his points about the dignity of the homosexual person, I had the opportunity to share that my opposition to gay marriage had nothing to do with homosexuality. Of course he thought I was trying to play him.  I assured him that I was sincere.   I explained that the point of marriage is to create a social institution that protects children’s rights to know and be provided for by their natural mother and father.  Children born in any other arrangement (cohabitation, surrogacy, donor-conception) do not have any right to find their natural parents (especially if their natural parent’s don’t wish to be found) much less be provided for by them.  That leads to two problems.

First, saying that gay marriage is “equal” to marriage is the same as saying that children raised in households with only one parent or any two parents is, in fact, “equal” to the experience of children raised by a mother and a father and that it is wrong to even suggest that children raised by their natural mother and father have any advantage over children raised in any other context.  Children raised by single parents, or grandparents, or divorced parents or adoptive parents can grow up to be “just fine”, but we recognize that they have had to struggle at least a bit more than their counterparts raised in homes with their natural mother and father because they are missing something; because those home arrangements are not equal to those homes in which a child is being raised by his natural mother and father.   Saying that gay marriage is “equal” to traditional marriage means that a same-sex couple can provide everything that a mother and a father can provide, and that as long as a child has at least two caregivers of one sort or another, that child has no right to feel sad the absence of a natural mother or a father. Currently, there is no other context in which we think it is appropriate to tell a child that he shouldn’t feel sad about not having a connection to his natural mother and father.  Gay marriage would change that.  To say, “you must not feel anything about the absence of the parent we could not provide you with because, after all, we are equal” would be a serious injustice against a child and do violence to the child’s emotional and psychological well-being.

Second, to say that a same-sex couple’s relationship is the same as (literally “equal to”) a marriage between a man and a woman is to say that both couples must have the same rights to try to have children.  Of course, that means that more and more same-sex couples would feel obliged to turn to artificial reproduction so that they could be truly “equal” to straight families.    There is just no way to support gay “marriage” without also supporting the massive expansion of IVF, donor conception, surrogacy and other forms of immoral, assisted reproduction technologies which, in turn, leads to countless more children who would be denied the right to know or be provided for by their natural parents.

It was at that point that my friend, who really does try to be a sincere and faithful Catholic despite his struggles on these issues, had a lightbulb moment.

“So, wait.  You’re saying, that you see this as a life issue?”

I admitted that, yes, I do.

And a remarkable thing happened.  He looked at me, blinked, and said, “Well, you got me there.”  It honestly hadn’t occurred to him before.  Especially as a pro-life Catholic, this argument really stung him.

I don’t pretend that I “won” anything.  I really wasn’t in it to “win.”   I also know that we are still miles apart on a lot of the fundamentals in this debate, but what happened in that moment was both honest and more than a little miraculous, and I wonder if taking this approach wouldn’t be a lot more effective on the whole than much of the other ways people attempt to discuss this issue.

Mandated Infertility “Treatment” for Homosexual Couples

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I have to admit that even I didn’t see this coming.  As you read this, try to remember that homosexual couples aren’t infertile.  It is simply physically impossible for them to procreate.  But if gay marriage is, in fact, equal to marriage, then this is the kind of thing that no one will be able to stop.

Should health insurers be legally required to offer infertility treatment for gay couples? Yes, according to a bill (AB 460) filed in the California legislature by assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco). In fact, refusing to do so should be a crime.

Current California law requires group health plans to offer coverage for infertility treatments with the exception of in vitro fertilization (IVF). If such coverage is purchased, benefits must be paid whenever “a demonstrated condition recognized by a licensed physician and surgeon as a cause for infertility” has been diagnosed—or upon “the inability to conceive a pregnancy or to carry a pregnancy to a live birth after a year of regular sexual relations without contraception.” Thus, under current law, diagnosis of a physical reason for the inability to conceive or sire a child is not required. It is enough that a couple tried to get pregnant for a year and failed.

According to the fact sheet supporting AB 460, the trouble is that some insurance companies “are not complying with current law that prohibits discrimination” based on sexual orientation. Instead, they are denying infertility treatment benefits “based on [the policy holder’s] not having an opposite sex married partner in which to have one year of regular sexual relations without conception.” AB 460 would amend the law to add the following language:

Coverage for the treatment of infertility shall be offered and provided without discrimination on the basis of age, ancestry, color, disability, domestic partner status, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, marital status, national origin, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation.    MORE

So, the next time someone asks you how gay marriage will actually change anything, show them this.