Gay Marriage: Unintended Consequences  
By Tom Wilson

The gay marriage issue is not really about legal rights for gay people; it appears that no one can specify just what legal rights might be gained by redefining marriage away from its civilizational meaning, which has always been the heterosexual union of potential parents. But gay "marriage" will turn out to be the epitome, the poster boy of "unintended consequences."

It’s pretty adolescent to think that marriage is just about adult desires. "Marriage", in contrast to casual sex, hooking up, prostitution, or concubinage, is a "civilizational" institution, invented some 3900 years ago as the optimum standard for the protection and nurture of children. Back then we discover from the judicial decrees of Lipit Ishtar, regent of Mesopotamia, the first secular historical reference to instituting this protection: "I made the father support his children. I made the child support his father. I made the father stand by his children. I made the child stand by his father" (David Blankenhorn, The Future of Marriage, Encounter Books, 2007, p.48).

Maybe we think we’ve changed since then. But it ought to be obvious from the awful tragedy and failure of post-modern family life that the needs of kids haven’t changed at all. The testimony of modern social science (at least that which is authentic and non-politicized) now unquestionably validates both ancient and modern common sense: children need their biologic moms and dads (G.L. Forward, Alison Sansom-Livolsi, Jordanna McGovern, Girls Need a Dad and Boys Need a Mom; The Journal of Communication and Religion, Nov. 2008, Volume 31, Number 2). The government of France (French National Assembly Report 2832) and the United Nations (The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child) have finally instituted new policy to ensure and promote the universal rights of a child to identification with his/her own biologic parents. With all due respect, our old civilization has known about this for quite some time.

But passing gay marriage will make it "incorrect" to assert this absolutely legitimate claim. It would unavoidably and quickly become "homophobic" to promote the natural standard of biologic parenthood: that children have a right to (and a need for) their own moms and dads. This unintended, but unavoidable, consequence would further alienate children from the very family model which has always promoted and produced their greatest success. Is this what we want?

The question, then, is this: does what little we gain for a few gay citizens (supposed legal rights beyond Civil Unions, which no one seems able to specify) – does this justify what we would lose from the rights of helpless children to be legally and irreducibly connected to their own moms and dads? Must we placate the unspecified desires of the few at the expense of the specific (and increasingly desperate) needs of the many?

It is amazing that "civilizational" issues of such importance have been so shallowly addressed. While gay marriage may have some nebulous gains for gays; it has unavoidable and frightening consequences for children, for how we raise them out into the future, and for how they will raise their own children then, if by then they recognize the need to raise their own children at all.
 

Tom Wilson was a leader in the "Take Back Vermont" Movement.