Strong essay - and the list of supporters of the Princeton Principles are NOT trivial: James Q. Wilson of Pepperdine University, Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Amy Wax of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, Hadley Arkes of Amherst College, Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School, Leon R. Kass and Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago, Jeremy Rabkin of Cornell University, Stephen Nock of the University of Virginia, and Daniel N. Robinson of Oxford University.] (the full text is below]
Rebuttals are always welcomed in the Comments section. Truth is truth - whatever it be :) An honest, intellectual dialogue on a given topic should do nothing more than help one arrive at the this. The below offers some "nutshell" issues mentioned in the article....
["Defenders of marriage saw through this. Scholars like Hadley Arkes and Robert P. George noted that by rejecting the grounding foundation of marriage--the unique psychosomatic unity possible only between one man and one woman in conjugal sex--the state would lose the principled basis for refusing to recognize polygamous (one man to multiple women) or even polyamorous (multiple men to multiple women, i.e. group) marriages. For pointing this out, they were called slippery-slope reasoners, scaremongers, and bigots. After all, it was said, no one seriously argues in favor of state-sanctioned polygamy or polyamory; George and Arkes were just slandering the good name and intentions of same-sex marriage activists.
Their statement, "Beyond Gay Marriage," was released recently as a full-page ad in the New York Times. Full of candor, the statement's mission is "to offer friends and colleagues everywhere a new vision for securing governmental and private institutional recognition of diverse kinds of partnerships, households, kinship relationships and families." The statement lists several examples of such relationships, among them "committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner"--that is, polygamy and polyamory. But this is mild compared to what follows: demand for the legal recognition of "queer couples who decide to jointly create and raise a child with another queer person or couple, in two households." The language is breathtaking. Queer couples (plural) who jointly create a child? And intentionally raise the child in two (queer) households? Of course, no reference is made to the child's interests or welfare under such an arrangement--only to the fulfillment of adult desires by suitable "creations."
Put simply, the logic of "Beyond Gay Marriage" would result in the abolition of marriage as we know it. The authors tellingly write:
Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others. While we honor those for whom marriage is the most meaningful personal--for some, also a deeply spiritual--choice, we believe that many other kinds of kinship relationships, households, and families must also be accorded recognition."
The people putting out this statement are not fringe figures. The more than 300 signatories include feminist icon Gloria Steinem, NYU sociologist Judith Stacey, Columbia University anthropologist Elizabeth Povinelli, Georgetown law professors Robin West and Chai Feldblum, the Rev. Cecil Charles Prescod of Love Makes a Family, Inc., Yale law professor Kenji Yoshino, Princeton religion professor Cornel West, writer Barbara Ehrenreich, and Pat Clark, former executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.
And these leaders have done no more than to affirm the logical implications of abandoning the conjugal conception of marriage as the exclusive union of sexually complementary spouses. There is no middle way between their demands and the conjugal conception of marriage. Either every consensual sexual and familial relationship is of equal value and thus merits equal legal recognition, or else conjugal marriage represents a unique human good and thus merits state recognition and support.
[the Principles because they are endorsed by an all-star list of over sixty scholars, including James Q. Wilson of Pepperdine University, Paul McHugh of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Amy Wax of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, Hadley Arkes of Amherst College, Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School, Leon R. Kass and Jean Bethke Elshtain of the University of Chicago, Jeremy Rabkin of Cornell University, Stephen Nock of the University of Virginia, and Daniel N. Robinson of Oxford University.]
Although initial reactions focused almost exclusively on the report's position on same-sex marriage, the Principles are concerned with much more. The authors highlight several threats to marriage: a culture of divorce (afflicting even low-conflict marriages), widespread cohabitation, out-of-wedlock births, same-sex marriage, and the unregulated fertility industry. While in the past, threats to marriage were understood as failures of an enduring institution, today there is a coordinated effort, as "Beyond Gay Marriage" demonstrates, to fundamentally redefine the institution's nature and purpose. Today's attack seeks to recreate marriage in a way that ignores and devalues the sexual complementarity of men and women, the interpersonal union spouses form in marital sex, their procreative potential, and child's need for--and right to--his biological mother and father. In other words, all of the "alternative family choices" that "Beyond Gay Marriage" celebrates, the Princeton Principles decry as irreparably damaging the health of the body social.]
The Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University and the left-of-center Brookings Institution, for example, confirmed the Principles' claims regarding child well-being. In a 2005 issue of their jointly produced journal, The Future of Children, titled, "Marriage and Child Wellbeing," the editors write in their introduction, "The articles in this volumeconfirm that children benefit from growing up with two married biological parents." Likewise, the left-leaning research organization Child Trends echoed these conclusions in a research brief summing up the scholarly consensus:
Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children, and the family structure that helps the most is a family headed by two-biological parents in a low-conflict marriage. Children in single-parent families, children born to unmarried mothers, and children in stepfamilies or cohabiting relationships face higher risks of poor outcomes. . . . There is thus value for children in promoting strong, stable marriages between biological parents.
No comments:
Post a Comment