We live in a strange country. Canada is one of the few in the world where same sex couples can be legally "married" and it now looks like it is something that is here to stay. Yesterday the House of Commons voted down a motion to reintroduce debate about the issue and Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper said that would be the end of it. The Tories wouldn't be bringing it up anymore.
Here in Canada those who oppose gay marriage are portrayed as being against a "minority right" or a "Charter right." (Here we have the Charter of Rights instead of the Bill of Rights.) While US courts have pretty consistently decided that gay marriage was not a constitutional right, judges here have ruled the opposite way.
What's particularly fascinating about this is that even a highly secularized country such as France has ruled against both gay marriage and gay adoption. A committee looked into the topic and decided that it was not fair to the children of such a union. All other things being equal, kids still fare best if they have both a male and a female parent: that is is what most social research shows, I believe. In fact, even the United Nations says a child's having both a father and a mother is a "right." (Canada has, contradictorily, been a signatory of a UN document with that idea imbedded in it.)
One of the results of gay couples either adopting children or using artificial insemination to have children, is that it sets the kids up later in life to want to go on a hunt for their missing biological parent or parents. It's a scenario that already happens again and again with adopted children: they have a sense of "incompleteness" until they get to know their birth families. Frequently it can be a heart-rending affair for such adopted children. But instead of that sort of angst being looked upon as a necessary evil (in the case of adoption) now as a result of gay "marriage", that experience will be the norm for a whole new segment of the population. The "rights" of the gay couple to have children trump the interests of the children themselves.
Here in Canada those who oppose gay marriage are portrayed as being against a "minority right" or a "Charter right." (Here we have the Charter of Rights instead of the Bill of Rights.) While US courts have pretty consistently decided that gay marriage was not a constitutional right, judges here have ruled the opposite way.
What's particularly fascinating about this is that even a highly secularized country such as France has ruled against both gay marriage and gay adoption. A committee looked into the topic and decided that it was not fair to the children of such a union. All other things being equal, kids still fare best if they have both a male and a female parent: that is is what most social research shows, I believe. In fact, even the United Nations says a child's having both a father and a mother is a "right." (Canada has, contradictorily, been a signatory of a UN document with that idea imbedded in it.)
One of the results of gay couples either adopting children or using artificial insemination to have children, is that it sets the kids up later in life to want to go on a hunt for their missing biological parent or parents. It's a scenario that already happens again and again with adopted children: they have a sense of "incompleteness" until they get to know their birth families. Frequently it can be a heart-rending affair for such adopted children. But instead of that sort of angst being looked upon as a necessary evil (in the case of adoption) now as a result of gay "marriage", that experience will be the norm for a whole new segment of the population. The "rights" of the gay couple to have children trump the interests of the children themselves.
posted by Ted | 8:20 AM
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