A thoughtful article HERE from Peter Saunders of the Centre for Independent Studies. He foresees the logical expansion of gay ‘marriage equality’ to polygamous ‘marriage equality, but he says the horse has bolted, now that gay couples have been given the right to adopt. He writes:
I can think of good arguments against allowing gay adoption, for there are third-party interests to consider (principally, the right of a child to both a mother and father). But gays already have the right to adopt children, and there will be no going back. Christian adoption agencies that do not want to place children with same-sex couples have had to close because such discrimination is now illegal under UK equalities law. With gay adoption already legal, I can think of no good, logical arguments against also allowing gay marriage.
Not so fast, and not so faint-hearted! We agree with Mr Saunders that the principle injustice in gay marriage is that it deprives a child of either a mother or a father, and the AMF President wrote in The Australian last August HERE:
Legalising same-sex marriage will inflict that deprivation on a child. That is why it is wrong, and that is why all laws are wrong that permit single people or same-sex couples to obtain a child by IVF, surrogacy or adoption.
and therefore we see the proper legislative response as per our Australian article from last week HERE:
Serious politicians must assert one unifying policy: that no law shall be enacted or allowed to stand which tends in any way to diminish the ideal of “a mother and a father for every child”. Such a policy will exclude the artificial creation of babies by single people or same-sex couples and exclude any same-sex institution that mimics marriage.
Marriage can be undermined via either the front gate or the back gate: by giving the name and ‘form’ of the relationship to gay couples and groups of adults, or by giving the ‘substance’ of marriage – namely the core ‘right to found a family’ – to gay couples or groups of adults.
Both the front and back gates must be defended with equal seriousness agains the assault. There is no right to gay adoption in some States, and that state of affairs must be restored to all States – for the sake of the child’s right to have both a mother and father figure in her life.
We don’t necessarily disagree. But the main point of my article was to focus discussion on evolved conventions rather than abstract principles. The debate over same sex marriage is generally waged between people committed to different sets of principles which cannot be reconciled. I think it may be more helpful to reflect on the blind wisdom of convention, even though it cannot be defended on any watertight set of principles.
Agreed, thank you Peter. But we at AMF do not think the defense of marriage depends on “the blind wisdom of convention” as much as the clear-sighted wisdom of conviction. A conviction that marriage is “a social insitution with a biological foundation”, as the great anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss put it, and a conviction that a child needs and deserves a mother and a father – a structure that only male-female marriage can provide.