The second major criticism of Kurtz's Weekly Standard article was that he did not demonstrate that RP's actually caused any harm. The criticism was that at best he established a correlation between acceptance of same-sex unions and the acceptance of unmarried cohabitation. It seems to many critics, myself included, that other causes have caused both effects. In fact, many of Kurtz's own statements seem to indicate this. Still, Kurtz has argued that RP's have contributed to the acceptance of the latter. This his how he explains it in his NRO response:
There [the WS article] I showed that gay marriage had split the Norwegian church and weakened the position of those clergy most likely to speak out against the trend toward unmarried parenthood among heterosexuals. In Norway, the clergy most accepting of gay marriage are the clergy least likely to criticize unmarried parenthood. With priests who see homosexuality as sinful effectively banned from churches, their criticisms of out-of-wedlock parenthood will be lost as well. Since traditional religion is one of the strongest barriers to out-of-wedlock births (conservative religious districts in Norway have by far the lowest rates), it's obvious that the flag movement will help remove a key counterforce to the decline of marriage. And it is very unlikely that conservative priests would have been so thoroughly and effectively banned if the issue were only unmarried heterosexual parenthood. It took the question of homosexuality to produce what amounts to a near total purge of conservative clergy from Nordland's churches.
The flag movement Kurtz refers to is the practice of flying rainbow flags outside churches signifying that nobody inside the church may speak negatively about homosexuality. His argument thus seems to be: legal recognition of same-sex unions causes growing acceptance of homosexuality causes those who speak out against homosexuality (especially clergy) to be silenced (or at least ignored) causes the same people to have less success speaking out against other issues (like cohabitation) causes an increase in cohabitation causes harms like family dissolution. It is a very indirect chain even if one accepted all of the links, which aren't all so clear. For example, does legal recognition of same-sex unions cause acceptance of homosexuality or vice-versa? More importantly why does one need to attack homosexuality in order to preach against cohabitation? Can't one preach that "living in sin" is sinful without reference to homosexuality? It is certainly possible to point to the harms of cohabitation (increased chance of dissolution), while encouraging all couples (same-sex included) to choose marriage and reject cohabitation. To argue that A is harmful because many people who oppose A also oppose B which is itself harmful is not a particularly strong argument against A. It seems to be more of an argument that those people should spend their time opposing B directly.
Kurtz also mentions that, "The connection between gay marriage and unmarried parenthood extends to all sectors of Scandinavian society — religious or not. So when professors from NTNU use the example of gay marriage to argue that marriage is unnecessary for parenthood — they have just as much effect on their secular "congregations" as Lutheran clergy have on theirs." He seems to see this as the same process above, except in a secular environment. Actually it's a separate causal link. The issue is not one of common opponents to two phenomena, but the existence of one being used in support of another. Here the arguments goes: legal recognition of same-sex unions causes such unions to be used as an example of marriage without parenthood causes people to make arguments that marriage is unnecessary for parenthood caused people to believe said arguments causes people to have children without marrying. Before going further with this analysis, I should point out that herein lies a major distinction between RP's (until recently) and SSM. Under RP's initially a couple was not allowed to adopt or have access to reproductive technologies. Thus RP's were quite explicitly unions without reagards to parenthood. On the contrary one reason many SSM advocates, myself included, are so adamant about the rights of same-sex couples to marry is that in this country many same-sex couples are adopting and raising children. We feel marriage would help protect those families in the same way they help protect families headed by opposite-sex parents. It is the people that strive to deny these families the protection of marriage that are saying that marriage isn't important for parenting.
Even if same-sex couples never had children, though, Kurtz's causal chain would be seriously flawed. We can today, without SSM, point to marriages without kids. Those marriages do not establish that marriage is unnecessary for parenthood. They establish that parenthood is unnecessary for marriage. One does not imply the other. If people are incorrectly using and accepting such false logical arguments the solution is not to ban childless marriage but to speak out against the faulty logic. If people start to believe that acceptance of SSM requires believing marriage has nothing to do with having children, then acceptance of SSM could lead to more children born out-of-wedlock. It's unfair, though, for SSM oponents to make such false statements and then blame SSM advocates for the consequences. Kurtz, and other opponents of SSM, set up this false dichotomy. They claim marriage is either about the relationship between the adults, or it is about their children. Why can't it be both? In particular, family advocates should point out that the relationship between the adults has a significant impact on their children. A more stable, committed relationship between their parents is likely to be better for the children. I don't understand how this changes any if the parents are of the same-sex.
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