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Same-Sex
Marriage Destroys Traditional Family
Mass. Legislators Should Heed Testimony from Family Group By Robert H. Knight
Robert H. Knight: Thank you for inviting me to testify on behalf of the Family Research Council. I've been asked to give a brief statement summarizing the importance of families and of marriage. One of the Family Research Council's functions is to provide research about families. Over the years, studies have overwhelmingly shown that children are best off in mother-and-father families, and the healthiest communities are those with the most intact families. In “Losing Ground,” a classic study of American social programs, sociologist Charles Murray documents that children in intact families experience higher academic achievement, are more secure psychologically and economically, commit fewer crimes, and are far less likely to fall into social pathologies such as unwed pregnancy, drug abuse, venereal disease and deviancies of all types than children in homes without fathers present.1 Likewise, numerous studies show that marriage itself is a societal good, leading to more fulfilled, and even longer, lives. Typical is a study in the American Journal of Sociology that finds married couples have longer lifespans than unmarried people. The authors conclude, “For both sexes, the hazard of dying falls significantly with marital duration, suggesting a cumulation of the benefits of marriage over time.” The researchers say their findings are hardly surprising: “The relationship between marriage and death rates has now reached the status of a truism, having been observed across numerous societies and various social and demographic groups.”2 The marital statistics contrast sharply with research on homosexual men. In Omega: The Journal of Death and Dying, a 1994 study concluded that the average lifespan for homosexual men dying of AIDS is 39, and the average age of death for those dying from causes not related to AIDS is 42.3 This is clearly not a healthy way of life, whether it involves steady relationships or not. Other medical studies show a high degree of sexually transmitted diseases associated with homosexual sex, including hepatitis A, B and C, “gay bowel syndrome,” and various other maladies associated directly with homosexual sexual activity. Likewise, studies show a high degree of destructive behavior among lesbians, including alcohol and drug abuse and emotional and physical violence. This is occurring even in homosexual-affirming cities like San Francisco, so it cannot be blamed on lack of social acceptance. The behavior itself is the problem. This behavior is controllable and even changeable. Thousands of people have left the homosexual lifestyle with the help of such organizations as Exodus International, which has more than 125 chapters around the nation. Reports about a genetic origin for homosexuality have proved to be more hype than real science. Dr. Dean Hamer, who authored the much-publicized genetic X marker study on identical twin brothers, acknowledged recently that there is no test to determine a “gay gene” and that “there never will be a definitive test—never ever ever. Sexual orientation is just much more complicated than that.”4 Other researchers on “gay gene” studies have acknowledged that environment plays a larger part—perhaps the largest determinant—in the formation of gender identity. Push To “Normalize” Homosexuality At the heart of the drive for married status, as with the rest of the homosexual rights agenda, is normalization of homosexuality. By striving to require all citizens to recognize same-sex unions as “marriages,” activists seek to put people with traditional values on the wrong side of the law. Christian business owners will be forced to subsidize homosexual relationships, and schoolchildren will be taught that homosexuality is healthy and normal. Those who disagree that two men or two women can be married will find themselves being legally harassed. The heart of family life is marriage, the foundation of civilization. Marriage, which brings the two sexes together in a unique legal, social, economic, and spiritual union, has had special protection within the law and the culture because it is indispensable to civilized life. No other relationship provides society what marriage does. No other relationship transforms young men and women into more productive, less selfish and more mature husbands and wives, and fathers and mothers, than marriage. No other relationship affords children the best economic, emotional and psychological environment. Only as we have drifted from the defense of marriage have we experienced soaring social problems, such as divorce, illegitimacy, sexually-transmitted diseases, and crime. The answer is not to push the envelope further but to restore the primacy of marriage within the law and the culture. Over the years, there have been attempts to remove from marriage the restriction that it be limited to one man and one woman. In the mid-1800s, polygamists were soundly rebuffed. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court declared in 1885 that any prospective state had to have law resting on “the basis of the idea of the family, as consisting in and springing from the union for life of one man and one woman in the holy estate of matrimony; the sure foundation of all that is stable and noble in our civilization, the best guaranty of that reverent morality which is the source of all beneficent progress in social and political improvement.”5 Marriage is not something that can be taken
lightly, or altered without much impact. Same-sex proponents often point
out that some states once banned interracial marriage, but the comparison
is invalid. Skin color is inborn and benign, while sexual behavior has
everything to do with character, morality, and society's basic rules of
conduct.
Gay Marriage Is Unnatural Marriage reflects the natural moral and social law evidenced the world over. As the late British social anthropologist Joseph Daniel Unwin noted in his study of world civilizations, any society that failed to channel sex into marriage soon lost what he called “expansive energy,” which might best be summarized as a societal will to make things better for the next generation.6 In fact, no society has loosened sexual morality outside of man-woman marriage and survived. Analyzing studies of cultures spanning several thousands of years on several continents, Harvard sociologist Pitirim Sorokin found that virtually all political revolutions that brought about societal collapse were preceded by a sexual revolution in which marriage and family were devalued.7 When marriage loses its unique status, women and children most frequently are the direct victims. Giving same-sex relationships or out-of-wedlock heterosexual couples the same special status and benefits as the marital bond would not be the expansion of a right but the destruction of a principle. One can no more expand the definition of marriage than one can expand the definition of a yardstick and still use it as reliable measure. _________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________ Marriage-based kinship is essential to stability an continuity. A man is far more apt to sacrifice himself to help a bona fide son-in-law than some unrelated man (or woman) who lives with his daughter. Kinship imparts family names, heritage, and property, secures the identity and commitment of fathers for the sake of the children, and entails mutual obligations to the community. Same-sex relations are a negation of the ties that bind, which are the continuation of kinship through the procreation of children. Even childless married couples retain the possibility of becoming parents either biologically or through adoption, thus providing children with role models of both sexes. Marriages benefit more than the two people involved, or even the children who are created. Their influence reaches children living nearby, as young minds seek out clues to appropriate sexual behavior. Deliberately creating motherless or fatherless families is not remotely in the interests of children or the community, and benefits only a particular political agenda. Destroy Traditional Marriage And Family Homosexual activist Michaelangelo Signorile put it candidly when he wrote that activists should "fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society's moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution. ..."9 Likewise, homosexual activist Tom Stoddard, who recently died of AIDS, admitted, “I am no fan of marriage.” He wrote that “gay marriage” was merely a way of forcing society to accept homosexuality because marriage “is the centerpiece of our entire social structure, the core of the traditional notion of ‘family.’” 10 But when homosexuals talk about marriage and monogamy, they mean something different from what folks usually mean. Evidence is overwhelming that few gay couples are stable, and those that are long-term have an understanding to have outside sexual contacts. Andrew Sullivan, the [former] homosexual editor of The New Republic, concedes in his book “Virtually Normal” that homosexual relationships are quite different. He contends that many homosexual households reflect “greater understanding of the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man and a woman.” Clearly, those who care deeply about children, about morality, about the well-being of the larger society, must resist the attempts by a tiny segment of the population to seize marriage for their own purposes. The aggressors here are not ordinary people, who are doing their best to live according to age-old, time-tested morality and family structure, but those who are trying to harness the power of the law to force acceptance of their agenda. Individuals struggling with same-sex desires should be accorded compassion, but this does not mean they should be given a mandate to radically redefine marriage. Creating counterfeit versions would undermine the special status of marriage in the law and in the culture -- to the detriment of children, families and, finally, to civilization itself. As with the effort to counterfeit marriage, the drive to include “sexual orientation” in civil rights law is morally wrong and unnecessary. If the state of Maryland does this, it will place millions of Christians, Jews and Muslims outside the civil law. The imposition of an official code of immorality makes morality itself a form of bigotry. No law that imposes immorality on people is a valid law. The consequences are grave for the culture if this occurs. As “gay rights” advance, the ability of people to disagree with the agenda recedes. Our forefathers, including great patriots from Maryland, fought a war largely over taxation without representation. What would they think of this far greater intrusion into the intimate areas of citizens' lives? Polls indicate that Americans want homosexuals to have the same rights as everyone else—but not special rights. When asked in a Newsweek poll whether enough has been done to protect “gay rights,” 40% answered “done too much” and 26% answered “done enough.” Only 27% answered, “more effort needed.”11 Likewise, in a poll that asked, “Should gays and lesbians in the workplace be given special protections, like those given to minorities or the disabled or not?” fully 83% said “no.” Only 13% said "yes."12 Clearly, Americans understand that being homosexual is not like being black or Hispanic or disabled. In fact, as a group, homosexuals earn far higher incomes, hold more advanced college degrees, have more discretionary income, and hold more professional and executive positions than average Americans.13 They also exercise political clout far beyond their numbers, partly through fund-raising but also through intimidation tactics. How many other pressure groups can call on the shock troops of ACT-UP! or Queer Nation to harass people who disagree with them? As “gay rights” advances, the activists’ demands will increase, not decrease. Just last week, a group of homosexual activists announced the formation of a new group to demand what they call “cloning rights” to recreate themselves.14 A lesbian columnist suggested that this “stunning possibility” could, “carried to its logical extreme, eliminate men altogether.” I don't think nature—and nature’s God—can be
dispensed with that easily. We have reached this bizarre state of affairs
only because the original model of the family has not received proper protection.
Activists who promote the deadly lies of the sexual revolution have been hammering away for years, misdiagnosing the deterioration of the family as a benign change or as an evolutionary step toward a more civilized order. They are wrong. When families collapse, communities collapse. The wreckage is all around us in the form of seriously disturbed children, vicious crime, and a growing cynicism and selfishness that borders on narcissism. When Barney Frank, the homosexual congressman from Massachusetts, asks the question, “Who is it going to hurt if my [male] partner and I get ‘married,’” the answer is: “Everybody.” Marriage—real marriage—is not an option
but a non-negotiable necessity. It deserves the highest protection under
the law.
Robert H. Knight’s testimony was provided by the Family Research
Council, 801 G Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20001 (www.frc.org).
Endnotes 1.Murray, Charles, Losing Ground: American Social Policy 1950-1980, (New York: Basic Books, 1984). 2.Lee A. Lillard and Linda J. Waite. "'Til Death Do Us Part': Marital Disruption and Mortality," American Journal of Sociology 100 (1995), pp. 1131-1156. Cited in "Living Longer, New Research." The Family in America. Rockford Institute. July 1995. 3.Paul Cameron, Ph.D., William L. Playfair, M.D., Stephen Wellum, B.A., "The Longevity of Homosexuals: Before and After the AIDS Epidemic," Omega: The Journal of Death and Dying, Vol. 29, No. 3, 1994. 4.Lisa Keen, "DNA discoverer backs aborting 'Gay' fetuses," The Washington Blade, Feb. 28, 1997, p. 1 at 21. 5.Murphy v. Ramsey, 114 U.S. 15, 45 (1885). 6.Joseph Daniel Unwin, Ph.D., Sexual Regulations and Cultural Behavior, address given March 27, 1935, to Medical Section of the British Psychological Society and published originally by Oxford University Press. Reprint: (Trona, California: Frank M.Darrow, 1969). 7.Sorokin, Pitirim. The American Sex Revolution. (Boston: Porter Sargent Publishers, 1956.) 8."They Call It Polyluv," The New York Times Magazine, February 16, 1997, p. 15. 9.Michaelangelo Signorile, "Bridal Wave," Out, December/January Double Issue, 1994, p. 161. 10.Thomas Stoddard, "Why Gay People Should Seek the Right to Marry," Lesbians, Gay Men and the Law. William B. Rubenstein, ed. (New York: New York Press, 1993) pp. 398, 400. 11.Newsweek poll taken May 24, 1996, by Princeton Survey Associates. 12.Voter/Consumer Research poll conducted in 1996, commissioned by Family Research Council. 13.Overview of the Simmons Marketing Survey, Rivendell Marketing Company, Plainfield, New Jersey, undated. 14.Anita Manning, "Pressing a 'right' to clone humans: Some gays foresee
reproduction option," USA Today, March 6, 1997.
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