This is an article from the
"Imaginative Conservative."
http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/a-non-religious-case-against-same-sex-marriage/#.UbFjZuth1PB
We need to make a stand as Christians and as Americans. We need to not allow the tide of filth coming to wash over our minds and our children and grandchildren's minds. Our argument is based in truth. I recognize that truth is an absolute and must be protected. It is not about religion. It is about standing for what is right and true.
A Non-Religious Case Against Same Sex Marriage
Michael Baumanby Michael Bauman
You might recall the awful option faced
by the title character in “Sophie’s Choice:” Pick one child or the
other. It’s not a choice any mother wants to make. No matter what she
chooses, her loss is unutterable.
Nor would any child want to make the same choice in reverse: “Mommy or Daddy, Sally. Pick one.”
But that is the ugly position into which
same sex marriage plunges children, except that the children themselves
do not get to choose. Someone else chooses for them.
No matter what you might think about
same sex marriage, we know this: Any child raised under a same sex
union faces a tremendous loss — either no Mommy or no Daddy. In a union
where two men or two women are involved, that’s always the outcome.
When Mommy picks a woman or Daddy picks a man as a life partner, the
children always lose something enormously valuable and irreplaceable: a
mother or a father.
That loss often has tragic consequences
for a child. If, for example, you are raised in a home with no father
around, the odds that you will drop out of school, that you will take or
sell drugs, that you will go to prison, that you will be poor, and that
your children will suffer the same fate you did all skyrocket. That
same cycle of hopelessness and crime follows upon the absence of a
mother.
When Mommy has sex with another woman,
it doesn’t make that other woman a Daddy. Having sex with Mommy doesn’t
make you a Daddy any more than drinking milk makes you a calf.
The point here is not remotely homophobic. The point here is not
that Mommy and her lover, or Daddy and his, are to be shunned, much
less hated. The point here is that mothers and fathers are
fundamentally important to the development of children, and therefore to
the future of the nation, which depends upon the development and
maturation of the next generation. That works best when children have
both a father and a mother.
I say so because, according to a recent groundbreaking study by University of Texas scholar Mark Regnerus, we discover this:
Compared to children who were raised in
intact homes with both the biological father and mother present to raise
them, the children of homosexual parents grow up to:
- Be Much more likely to receive welfare
- Have lower educational attainment
- Report more ongoing “negative impact” from their family of origin
- Be more likely to suffer from depression
- Have been arrested more often
- (If they are female) Have had more sexual partners — both male and female
If they were the children of lesbian mothers, they are:
- More likely to be currently cohabiting
- Almost 4 times more likely to be currently on public assistance
- Less likely to be currently employed full-time
- More than 3 times more likely to be unemployed
- Nearly 4 times more likely to identify as something other than entirely heterosexual
- Three times as likely to have had an affair while married or cohabiting
- An astonishing 10 times more likely to have been “touched sexually by a parent or other adult caregiver.”
- Nearly 4 times as likely to have been “physically forced” to have sex against their will
- More likely to have “attachment” problems related to the ability to depend on others
- Use marijuana more frequently
- Smoke more frequently
- Have more often pled guilty to a non-minor offense
None of these dire statistics seem to
have much weight with the same sex marriage crowd. Rather, they argue
that marriage equality is rooted in human equality. But that bogus
argument does not work. It moves illogically from one kind of equality
to another. The equality of all persons does not equal the equality of
all lifestyles or all relationships. For example, the mere fact that
all persons are created equal does not mean that polygamy or incestual
marriage ought therefore to be made legal. You cannot move logically
from the equality of persons to the equality of actions, choices,
lifestyles, or relationships. It simply does not follow.
Same sex marriage advocates also argue
that it is wrong to make value judgment about marriage. Yet they allow
themselves to make value judgments about who should get to marry. Here
again they fail logically. By insisting that same sex unions ought to
be considered marriages on a par with heterosexual marriages, they make a
value judgment about marriages, both their own marriages and those of
others. If they are against making value judgments about marriage, then
they have to stop saying what they say. But of course they won’t.
Rather, they press their judgments on others while, at the same time,
refusing to permit others to make judgments.
Let me clarify a point often
misunderstood: I am not saying that marriages without children are not
marriages. I never once said that or meant that. I am saying
that marriage and family go usually together. I am talking about a
common connection between marriage and family, not a necessary
pre-condition for marriage. Marriage and family are simply the usual
mechanism of creating and nurturing the next generation. But in the
case of a homosexual union, that is naturally impossible. And if you
try to grant them by some other means the children nature denies them,
then the children are statistically more likely to suffer bad
consequences as a result, which is not the case with a heterosexual
marriage. Or, put differently, my wife and I have no children as yet.
I obviously do not argue that we have no marriage. If we had children,
it wouldn’t as likely damage the children involved as would being
raised by two men or two women, a situation that entails the significant
loss of either mommy or daddy. In short, wise governments and wise
citizens do well always to remember that important and basic fact of
life and to avoid making laws that undermine the traditional family and
traditional family roles, which serve us and our offspring best.
Books mentioned in this essay may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore. Essays by Dr. Bauman may be found here.
Dr. Michael Bauman is Professor of
Theology and Culture at Hillsdale College, where he also is Director of
the Christian Studies program. He is Scholar-in-Residence for Summit
Ministries’ Summit Semester Program and co-editor, with David Noebel, of
The Schwarz Report, a monthly conservative watchdog of leftist action and infiltration acros
