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Same-Sex Marriage Invites State Intrusion into the Family

By rcw, Section Arguments
Posted on Mon Oct 13, 2008 at 12:31:02 PM EST

Once it can no longer be assumed that children belong to a mother and a father, where it is possible for children to be claimed by two mothers, or two fathers, or some other combination, then it is imperative for the state to intervene to settle the question of belonging and of responsibility.

by Seana Segrue

It has become fashionable to believe that marriage and children share only an incidental connection. Marriage is, according to many intellectuals and jurists, first and foremost about the companionate and emotional needs of consenting adults. For this reason, it is contended that the rules governing marriage laws should be purged of any expectation that children are begotten from adult sexual unions. Moreover, there ought to be no expectation that children are to be raised by their mother and father within the institution of marriage. If marriage and children are to become as severable as the “companionate” view of marriage suggests, then it follows that there increasingly ought to be no expectation that parental responsibilities flow from adult sexual relations. Children should not, in any meaningful sense, belong to a mother and a father.

Where duty is subordinated to choice, or where adults are to be parents only to the extent that they choose to be parents rather than because they are mothers and fathers, children are placed at risk in a number of ways. The ability to choose to be a parent has as its corollary the ability to choose not to be a parent, or to abdicate responsibility where parenthood is not desired. As the state undermines the duty-based and child-focused nature of marriage, it increases the likelihood that marital duties, especially to children, will be abdicated and that adults will place their sexual desires above their responsibilities to their children. Indeed, there is substantial evidence that existing reforms of marriage, especially as these relate to the liberalization of divorce laws, have had precisely this effect4 and that the results have been disastrous for children.5 It should be noted that it has taken over 30 years for the empirical evidence that divorce is enerally harmful for children to be established beyond dispute. At the time that divorce reforms were being passed, it was fashionable among intellectuals to contend that the best interests of adults also serve the best interests of children.

This formerly conventional wisdom has proven to be gravely mistaken, as the belief that mothers and fathers don’t matter to children in determining parenthood is apt to prove to be. Secondly, the attempt to render parenthood a matter of choice, rather than a moral obligation, if and when children are born, also encourages the commodification of children. After all, if one chooses to be a parent, then why can’t one also choose the child, or a package of desirable traits?7As marriage becomes companionate, children become not the focus of the family but additions to it that enhance or detract from a chosen lifestyle. Children that “fit” a lifestyle, such as those that are low-maintenance or attractive, will be selected over those who do not. This lesson, however, is one that is apt to be learned by the “chosen” children. It can be anticipated that they, like their parents, will increasingly come to view themselves and others not as intrinsically valuable, but as instrumentally so. Such an approach to familial relations is antithetical to unconditional love and a belief in the intrinsic value of all persons, regardless of their specific traits, which is the very foundation of a belief in human equality.

A third ethical issue that arises from the attempt to redefine marriage as serving the needs of adults, not children, is that it invites, over time, greater state intrusions into family life. This is necessitated by the fact that the state must increasingly intervene into the realm of the family to determine who owes obligations to whom. Where marriage is the union of one man and one woman who are responsible for the rearing of their begotten children and for one another, the state generally need not intervene to determine to whom children within such unions belong. The state’s role is primarily a supportive one of recognizing what the parents, and society at large, take to be obligatory because of established familial relations. Once it can no longer be assumed that children belong to a mother and a father, where it is possible for children to be claimed by two mothers, or two fathers, or some other combination, then it is imperative for the state to intervene to settle the question of belonging and of responsibility.

Read Canadian Marriage Policy: A Tragedy for Children, by Seana Segrue at Institute of Marriage and Family Canada.

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