Children and Marriage: the Sacrifice We’ll Live to Regret

Kengor_Catholic_Here We Go Again_090913

I recently wrote an article defending marriage—that is, against redefining marriage as it has been for millennia—for The Guardian, the prominent, British left-wing publication. The response by readers (click here) was vicious. I’d say I was surprised, but I wasn’t. I’d also say that some of the responses were childish, but that wouldn’t be fair to children; indeed, children know better.

That brings me to my point today: a common argument made by gay-marriage advocates, not only at The Guardian but elsewhere, including among many Catholics, is that there’s no reason two married men or two married women can’t raise children just as well as a married man and woman. They absolutely insist that there’s no essential complimentarity that a man and woman as husband and wife bring to the parental table. They insist that a married man and man or woman and woman could provide the same, or at least adequate, skill sets.

wrong 2Sorry, but as anyone who has children knows—or as anyone who has ever been a child should know—this is nonsense. Men and women are very different. My wife and I bring completely different traits to the table. Anyone who insists otherwise hasn’t been a parent or is ignoring the obvious.

We heard this argument before from liberals and progressives. It was during the 1970’s, the height of radical feminism, when they insisted that a woman didn’t need a man to raise children.

Fortunately, they wised up in the 1980’s and 1990’s, particularly after the ravages of the divorce culture. The likes of Bill Clinton and even (once upon a time) Barack Obama stressed the imperative of dads.

All of that, however, has again been jettisoned by liberals and progressives. Before, they did so in the service of their ideology’s embrace of radical feminism.

Today, they do so because of their ideology’s embrace of gay marriage. They are now sacrificing the fundamental significance of dads, of moms, of dad-mom marriages at the altar of gay marriage.

That is a sacrifice that they, their culture, their country, and especially our children, will live to regret.

For Catholic Exchange dot com and Ave Maria Radio, I’m Paul Kengor.

 

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Dr. Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College and executive director of The Center for Vision & Values. His books include “The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism” and “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.”

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