Ruth Institute Blog

I was talking to Dr. Morse yesterday, and asked her to think back to when she was a young girl in school. “How many kids were from divorced families?” I asked her. She said she could think of one. The rest lived with their married biological parents. Before the Sexual Revolution, there used to be an important and unrecognized equality among children: nearly every child lived with his/her married parents.

Let’s think for a moment about what the Sexual Revolution has done to equality from the child’s point of view. In the name of adult sexual liberation, we now have a tremendous amount of family/structural inequality among children. Some kids live with their married parents, and many do not:

• Nearly 40% of births are out of wedlock
• A majority of teens don’t live in intact families
• One in three children live in single parent homes

Read more…

In this story from New Zealand, two male friends (who are not gay, by the way) are about to marry each other.  Part of their motive:

Engineering student Mr. McIntosh, 23, and teacher Mr. McCormick, 24, will tie the knot to win a “The Edge” radio station competition and a trip to the 2015 Rugby World Cup in England.

Also, they really like each other. They have been best buds since they were six years old.  They expect the marriage to last at least 2 years.  Marriage has been an “easy in, easy out” proposition throughout the industrialized world since the advent of no-fault divorce. So why shouldn’t these guys get married for a chance to win a cool prize?

Gay rights groups are offended.

Otago University Students’ Association Queer Support coordinator Neill Ballantyne, of Dunedin, said the wedding was an “insult” because marriage equality was a “hard fought” battle for gay people. “Something like this trivializes what we fought for.”

Sorry Neill. No go. You evidently did not realize that when you changed the law, you changed it for everyone. Two men can get married for any reason they want.  The law does not require them to prove that they are actually “gay,” or that they “love each Read more…

Note: since “equality” is paramount for “marriage equality” supporters, next time you are discussing the marriage issue with them, point out their unequal arguments and also how “marriage equality” is contributing to children’s inequality. See what their response is.

“Marriage equality” relies on unequal arguments. When it comes to “rights,” “marriage equality” supporters make arguments based on gay rights, but they refuse to accept arguments based on children’s rights. When it comes to “outcomes,” they refuse to argue about the outcomes of gay sexual activity, but will argue about the various studies regarding children’s outcomes under various family structures. Not only do they argue unequally, “marriage equality” is contributing to children being treated unequally under the law. Read more…

Over at The Public Discourse, Professor Emeritus Jameson W. Doig of Princeton began a dialogue with Professor Robert George also of Princeton on the proper definition of marriage today. Professor Doig’s point appears to be that Professor George has not been consistent in his views. My point is not to defend Professor George: he is a big boy and can take care of himself.

My point is that Professor Doig’s entire article avoids some important questions. How will redefining marriage redefine parenthood? Are we happy with that redefinition? And do we really want to change the relationship between the State and the citizen in the way that this redefinition really entails?

The problem begins with Professor Doig’s very first paragraph.

I want to begin with two Vermonters, Ann and Ellen, who have been together as a couple for more than thirty years. They have three children—Bert, who has graduated from college and is now married (to Maria) and working in a small business in Vermont, and Alison and Beth, who are in high school, both doing well in their academic work and excelling in soccer. One of the three is adopted, and Ann is the birth-mother of the other two.

Do you see who is missing from this equation?  Without knowing anything else about this family, we know that the father of Ann’s biological children has been safely and legally escorted off the stage. The children will never have the opportunity to have a relationship with their father.

Most children have a legally recognized right to know and be cared for by both of their Read more…

Under California law, there are no longer husbands and wives. Only spouses.

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. I have been saying this in debates for some time. A few years ago, I was in a debate at UCLA, with Prof Gary Gates of the Williams Institute. He took offense at the fact that I referred to his partner as well, as “partner.”  “He is not my partner. He is my husband!” Dr. Gates said indignantly.

To which I replied, “Dr. Gates, under the laws you advocate, there will be no husbands or wives. I won’t have a husband. No one will have a husband. Everyone will have generic “spouses.”  (His comment is around 42 minutes. My response is around 52 – 55 minutes. You can’t see his facial expression, but he did seem to be surprised by this news.)

Today it happened: Governor Jerry Brown signed into law, a bill that would remove the gendered terms from the law and replace

them with generic “spouse” terms.

Sex radical Mark Leno, is of course, delighted.

“I am pleased Governor Brown has recognized the importance of this bill, which makes it explicitly clear in state law that every loving couple has the right to marry in California,” Leno said. “This legislation removes outdated and biased language from state codes and recognizes all married spouses equally, regardless of their gender.”

Outdated and biased language. Sorry Gary Gates, you don’t get to have a husband and neither do I.

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.

 

 

Every stage of the Sexual Revolution has produced victims. No-fault divorce produced children scarred in ways no one predicted in 1968.  “Kids are resilient: they will be fine as long as their parents are happy.”  No-fault divorce also produced The Reluctantly Divorced: those millions of unseen and unacknowledged souls who wanted to stay married, but their spouses wanted divorce.  The government takes sides with the partner who wants the marriage the least.

It may not sound plausible, at least not at first. But genderless marriage, that newest edge in the cutting edge of social change, will also produce another whole new batch of victims.  These victims will not be entirely innocent, the way so many victims of divorce were. They are adults, taking steps of their own free will.  But they will be victims just the same: they are being lied to by the culture.

Exhibit A: Sperm Donor Diary.

This New York Times series is an exploration into the personal meaning of being a known sperm donor to a lesbian couple. David Dodge is uncertain what it means to be a bio-dad.

David writes about being on the Cutting Edge of Gay Family Law. Traditionally, (if I may be so bold as to use such a retro term) “presumption of paternity” answered the question “who’s your daddy?” by saying “the mother’s husband.”  The Read more…

Stop treating Brendan Eich as a one-off – gay marriage is inherently illiberal.

Brendan O’Neill

It’s six weeks since Javascript inventor Brendan Eich was hounded out of his job at Mozilla by a virtual mob of intolerant tweeters and campaigners. His crime? Failing to genuflect at the altar of gay marriage, which is now the closest thing our otherwise godless, belief-lite, morally vacuous societies have to a sacred value. For refusing to bow down before this new sainted institution, and for having the temerity to donate money to a campaign group opposed to it, Eich was found guilty by the mob of sacrilege and was hounded out of public life as a modern-day heretic. Read more…