Saturday, August 28, 2004

"Thirteen Bad Arguments for Same-Sex Marriage." This article from Christianity Today points to some studies that you probably won't learn about in the general media. One study conducted in Norway indicates that when a culture adopts same-sex marriage, heterosexual marriage fades away. Another study considers adoption of children by homosexuals and finds that the children in such families are more subject to molestation from other family members and more likely to have doubts about their own sexual identity than children with a mom and dad.

The article also mentions Andrew Sullivan. Those of us who read political blogs will recognize his name. He is a homosexual and a proponent of gay marriage. (And a Roman Catholic.) The article says that he concedes that infidelity is a characteristic of gay marriage. Rather than use that characteristic as an argument against gay marriage, the authors state that Sullivan believes that the concept of marriage should be modified to allow for infidelity generally, both for homosexuals and heterosexuals. Which brings us back to the Norway study, where, according to the CT article, heterosexual marriage has all but disappeared in one district where homosexual marriage is recognized.

Andrew Sullivan has posted several articles on gay marriage on his blog, and I do not find the arguments that the authors of the CT article says he makes, that if men in gay marriages can't always be monogamous, then the definition of marriage will just need to be changed. Sullivan does make the point that men seem to be less faithful than women, and points to the stability of lesbian marriage as a case in point. I have the sense that his sociology is mainly anecdotal, though, or that the studies may be "flawed" from the CT point of view. With heterosexual marriage having been a bulwark of Western Civilization for ages, it is, at the very least, outrageously risky to push this experiment on the majority in a matter of a couple of decades without giving it a hard, hard look.

(Of course, it is not a matter of cost versus benefit to "people of the Book". But the culture will not listen to scriptural based arguments against homosexualilty.)

As to the issue of homosexual adoption, one might ask why a study would be needed to show that molestation and identity issues become a problem. That would already seem predictable. But the article indicates that the promoters of "gay" adoption have come up with "studies" in support of the homosexual adoption, studies that show that they are good for children, but studies that, according to the authors of the article, are significantly flawed in their methodology. But I am not really sure that the idea of child molestation is all that robust on the social left or that the folks over there would mourn the erosion of the hard edges of sexual identity. So a study that shows increased molestation and identify problems may not be much of a problem to the proponents of gay marriage, except to the extent that the it disturbs the rest of us.

The State of Florida has a statute that forbids homosexual adoption. That law is under some pressure these days. The Florida Bar is divided into "sections" according to one's specialty, and there is a "Family Law" Section. There is a movement in that section to get the Bar behind repeal efforts. Membership in the American Bar Association, which has become significantly politicized over the past 25 years, is voluntary. But membership in the Florida Bar is mandatory for Florida lawyers. It will put Florida lawyers who oppose the gay agenda in a difficult position if the Florida Bar decides to lobby for repeal. The contingency still seems unlikely, but things can move quickly and negatively if we don't pay attention.

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