Assumptions: Marriage Equality Edition

Going back to those stories from 2007 World Congress of Families, a lot of the focus was on the corruption of the world, where corruption mainly equated gay people, and the harmful effects this would have on children.

For some context, this was kind of a critical mass period for marriage equality (which they were primarily calling gay marriage or same-sex marriage at the time). Some countries and some states supported it, but other states and countries were taking specific steps to ban it. Dick Cheney had punted to states. The 2007 congress happened between South Africa legalizing same-sex marriage and California's Supreme Court overturning a ban on gay marriage.

https://gaymarriage.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000030

Sometimes you will see a reaction against change coming. I have been advised that Armand Mauss of WSU has done some work on this and calls it retrenchment theory, though I have not had a chance to look into it. I see some things related to it now that I will refer to later. Part of my seeing a pattern now is because there was a five year period where it feels like conference talks were more about being heterosexual than anything else. The timeline makes sense. Perhaps we should call it a gay panic.

The important thing for today's post is that generally the stated logic for the condemnation of marriage equality was the harm it would wreak on children, who needed both a mother and father. That may have seemed plausible in 2007, but it has been generally well-established that children raised by same-sex couples do equally well.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737.2009.00678.x
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11113-014-9329-6 

Let me point out that some of those studies focus on lesbian couples, I believe because at one point it was more common to find children with lesbian couples than with gay men in long-term relationships. There are some ways in which it is easier for women to get children without a husband.

That leads to a second point worth noting. I remember some research showing that children raised by same-sex couples had better outcomes. That would not have been a slam on heterosexual families, but more likely a reflection of that fact that children don't just happen for gay couples. Straight couples may have accidental pregnancies or give in to societal pressure while their own feelings about having children are ambivalent. I suppose it's possible that gay couples may start to get the same kinds of pressure to have children now, but in general, historically a gay couple that has children has really wanted them and jumped through several hoops for them, allowing for a more thorough preparation for raising children.

I also know that there will be people who mentally recoil that a family with two parents of the same sex could have children that are happier and healthier than a more "traditional" family, because that's the way it was ordained, right? That's how nature says it should be, right?

It's certainly more common; you will get no arguments from me there. Marriage between a man and a woman is no guarantee either. That is very clear.

In the absence of guarantees, we can still look at things that help and hurt, and we should. Helping families isn't a bad goal, but it also won't be served by lying to ourselves.

As it is, the primary difference between children raised by gay couples is that they are less likely to be raised homophobic than the children of straight couples. Yes, society may still give them messages that it is not okay to be gay, but they are less likely to internalize them.

Once again, I know that there are people who will not be happy about that. For gay children who become gay teenagers, I like that they will be less likely to need to run away to the danger of the streets, or waste a lot of time hating themselves (I mean, more than straight ones; adolescence is rough no matter how you cut it). I love that they are less likely to be suicidal. However, straight parents are also capable of getting those results, if they can also not be homophobic.

There have also been some concerns expressed about gay marriage devaluing straight marriage.

There may indeed be some threats to "traditional marriage" out there, and I want to get into that next week. For now, let's talk about different people wanting to get married, especially people to whom it has been denied. That seems to make marriage look valuable.

I suppose the issue goes back to the idea that if you tell people that being gay is okay they will do it, when otherwise they wouldn't. That just isn't how it works. No one should still believe that. Those kids who run away or kill themselves, they have been emphatically told that it is not okay, and somehow they are still gay.

So, if someone in a heterosexual marriage leaves it for someone of the same sex, that was there before. There may have been good things about the marriage, but it was built on a lie, and that tears at people.

In conjunction with thinking about writing this, I have been thinking about couples I know where someone gay pretended to be straight - which would have been the only way for all but the most recent of them to have gotten married. There were moments of happiness in those marriages. There are beloved children from those marriages. They still all broke up.

They often broke up with feelings of betrayal. There was broken trust. Sometimes there was cheating. In the case of one, there was abuse that was at least partially inspired by her perceived failure to cure him. He believed he could conquer being gay, and that sex with a woman would fix that and he had to get married to do that.

Does anyone think this helps?

(I am afraid that it is not a coincidence that the least horrible of the breakups was one where neither was a member of the church.)

It is common for people to want to be married to someone who is attracted to them. There are people who lost significant chunks of their lives because they believed someone who was never going to be able to be attracted to them, but wouldn't tell them.

(No, none of these examples are Josh and Lolly Weed. They were always honest with each other. The terrible thing is that I keep thinking of more couples who went through this.)

You may have complicated feelings about this; I am not going to hold it against you. I am going to suggest that you redirect your efforts. You can still help families. You can even work to help traditional families, but make it more a matter of helping families than fighting gay people.

That will require honesty about what families need and what makes good families. You may have a mental image that is wrong. Maybe it mixes up correlation and causation. It may be wrong enough to keep you from helping.

We can work on that.