Strong Marriage is a matter of justice for children because it’s the only relationship that unites the two people to whom children have a natural right- their mother and father. It is a comprehensive union of spouses with a special link to children. Each of its norms- permanence, monogamy, and exclusivity- distinctly benefit children.
Government can permit adults to form all manner of consensual relationships, but should only promote the one relationship- lifelong male/female unions- which protects children’s rights.
Marriage is not a guarantee of parenthood, but it’s guaranteed that every child is the product of a mother and father. Marriage is society’s best shot at giving children both… for life.
LEGISLATING MORALITY
Government’s interest in marriage is children. As explained in the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA):
At bottom, civil society has an interest in maintaining and protecting the institution of heterosexual marriage because it has a deep and abiding interest in encouraging responsible procreation and child-rearing. With their ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court made gay marriage the law of the land, yet these truths persist:
• Children are the natural product of a sexual relationship between a man and a woman.
• Both a father and mother are necessary and important for children.
• Marriage between one man and one woman is the best way to promote healthy families.
Post-Obergefell, there’s no longer any governmental or political institution in the US that recognizes children should have a mother and father. To do so may constitute discrimination.
REDEFINING MARRIAGE HAS REDEFINED PARENTHOOD
Everywhere gay marriage becomes law, children’s rights suffer. Redefining marriage redefined parenthood because it made men and women, and therefore fathers and mothers, legally interchangeable. Regardless of what parenthood laws may say, it’s impossible to legislate away a child’s longing for his or her mother and father.
“I grew up surrounded by women who said they didn’t need or want a man. Yet, as a little girl, I so desperately wanted a daddy. It is a strange and confusing thing to walk around with this deep-down unquenchable ache for a father, for a man, in a community that says that men are unnecessary. There were times I felt so angry with my dad for not being there for me, and then times I felt angry with myself for even wanting a father to begin with.” – Heather Barwick, raised by two moms
When law conflicts with children’s natural rights, it sends the message that a child’s normal yearning for their missing parent is wrong, not the law itself. Legalizing gay marriage is a nationwide gaslighting of kids with same-sex parents.
An excerpt from Them Before Us by Katy Faust
