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In the three previous posts I have explained to some extent my view of marriage and why same-sex marriage does a lot of good for little harm. I am now prepared to answer the questions Eve has asked me. Throughout the questions (explicit or implicit) will be in italics. All else is my response.
marriage isn't a catchall term for "chosen emotional relationships that society honors". [if it were] Where does that leave the recovery of friendship? I actually agree with the first statement.
I wonder why he thinks I meant "any man will do"! I thought so because you find it permissible to allow infertile opposite-sex couples to marry, but not same-sex couples. The difference you say is that the former can still provide "a father". Thus it seemed to me that your concern was with the presence of a man, not specifically the presence of "the" father.
When people who grew up in mother + grandmother-headed households say, "I never had a daddy," or, "I never learned what men are supposed to do in a family," are they really only articulating the problems of three-generation families? Or are they saying something about the deep importance of gender? In all honesty, I don't know. I would suspect that they feel a loss of a specific person and that this loss would be the same if they grew up in a mother + grandfather-headed household. Personally I didn't look to my father for how a man was supposed to act, but to both my parents for how people were supposed to act. My wife teaches her hebrew school students that they should be "mentshn" While the Yiddish word "mensch" comes from a German word literally meaning "man", it is better translated as "person". A "mensch" is an upright, honorable, decent person who has a sense of what is right and responsible. Likewise, I think "Be a man" doesn't mean act in a masculine fashion, but to act responsibly.
the percentage of fatherless children in this country has changed. It went way up between 1960 and 1990, and recently began a small decline. Why did that happen? I think the belief that fatherlessness is just an "alternative family structure" stymied early efforts to fix this problem; does Gabriel agree? I don't think I do. I think the problem has to do with an increased acceptance of divorce, an increased acceptance of cohabitation, and a rising lack of personal responsibility.
Does he think SSM would lead to no change in the number or percentage of children being raised in motherless or fatherless households? Would the change be minuscule, and if so, on what basis does he predict that? I think the change would be miniscule stemming from a few same-sex couples choosing to have children through reproductive technologies now that they can offer their family the protections of marriage.
But Gabriel's position here is an argument against all cultural honor for marriage and for responsible parenting. He's saying: Don't structure marriage around promoting fatherhood, because fathers who leave kids are responsible for their own actions. How is that different from, Don't structure societal expectation, cultural honor, marriage education, etc. around promoting fatherhood, because fathers who leave kids are responsible for their own actions? Marriage law is part of how society promotes fatherhood. On the contrary, holding someone responsible for their actions is part of encouraging them to take repsonsibility. I'm all for encouraging them to marry. Making that commitment is difficult. It requires sacrifice and that's why much of marriage law deals with making it easier to fulfill one's commitments. I think we should offer this same support to same-sex couples who take on the same obligations. Frankly, I don't see how denying two other people the right to marry does anything to encourage a third person to marry.
How do we strengthen relationships between children and their de facto caretakers, when those caretakers aren't married to the kids' parents (whether biological or adoptive)? Why not focus on strengthening, e.g., second-parent adoption laws, so that particular people who are already responsible for particular children--whether they're sleeping with the children's legal parent or not!--can be aided by law in fulfilling their responsibilities? Second-parent adoptions are a start, but they cannot replicate the benefits of marriage to childrearing. Part of that is that marriage makes the second-parent adoption automatic, but more importantly marriage establishes a legal bond between the caretakers that is beneficial to the child. It's not enough for both parents to promise to take care of the child, but also that they promise to take care of each other.
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