Dear Heterosexual Community: Your Kids Are Hurting, Part One
I am pleased to see that the community of natural marriage defenders is taking notice of kids in gay households:
Dear Gay Community: Your Kids Are Hurting
Wonderful! But what if I told you that it’s only a start?
Consider this: kids in gay households are often there due to a prior divorce and later remarriage, or a prior divorce and later cohabitation. These structural issues are not being adequately addressed within the larger context of same-sex marriage, and this has created a logical gap in our arguments.
Filling this gap is our opportunity to reach the younger generation.
Largely, the younger generation favors same-sex marriage. But if we addressed the family structure problems first created by heterosexuals, this may help us persuade the younger generation:
- that we care about their family structure inequalities and the pain caused by them
- that gay marriage adds to the structural inequalities children face
- that we are being fair in our assessments–we’re targeting all adults who are the impetus of structural inequalities for children under their care.
Here is why I am hopeful about this line of thought. The author of the above post retracted her support of same-sex marriage because she realized something important:
By replacing an opposite sex parent with a same sex parent, gay marriage creates a structural inequality for children.
Admittedly, she does not use the phrase “structural inequality,” but this is the thrust of her argument. Read the post and see if you agree.
We can’t just hammer on the gays. That’s not fair and the younger generation knows it. We must paint with a wider brush: we must address the structural inequalities among children that were created by heterosexuals.
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Here are the upcoming installments:
In Part Two, we will address why the gap in our argument exists. Culturally, we have a blind spot here and it’s important to understand why so that we can overcome it. This part may be two posts. I have not decided yet.
In Part Three, we will examine the step-family structure and see how, from the children’s point of view, it is not the same as the intact triad of the natural family, founded on natural marriage. There seems to be a cultural myth that the two types are the same, or if they are not exactly the same, they are not very different. These beliefs are false and harmful. I aim to debunk them.
In Part Four, we will explore how the widespread acceptance of the step-family structure has weakened our ideas of “mother and father,” how it has contributed to our acceptance of multiple parents for young children, and how these dovetail quite well with the push for same-sex marriage.
This post first appeared on Ricochet on March 20, 2015.
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