One Marriage Under God: The Campaign to Promote Marriage in America

Conclusion: The Power of the “M-Word”

| 175 Conclusion The Power of the “M-Word” Same-sex marriage would enshrine in law a public judgment that the desire of adults for families of choice outweighs the need of children for mothers and fathers. It would give sanction and approval to the creation of a motherless or fatherless family as a deliberately chosen “good.” It would mean the law was neutral as to whether children had mothers and fathers. Motherless and fatherless families would be deemed just fine. —Maggie Gallagher, “What Is Marriage For?”1 Yessiree, family values are hot! Capitalism is cool! Seven-grain bread is so yesterday, and red meat is back! . . . Today Americans are consciously, deliberately embracing ideas about sex, marriage, children, and the American dream that are coalescing into a viable—though admittedly much altered—sort of bourgeois normality. What is emerging is a vital, optimistic, family-centered, entrepreneurial, and yes, morally thoughtful citizenry. —Kay Hymowitz, Marriage and Caste in America2 For over a decade, same-sex marriage has been a contentious issue in the United States, marked by contending ballot initiatives, legislation, and lawsuits to legalize or ban it. California exemplifies this factiousness. The Supreme Court of California ruled in 2008 that its law banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional, but a referendum in November—Proposition 8—passed and restored it. After withstanding a challenge in the state Supreme Court, a federal judge found the ban unconstitutional in a ruling that will likely move its way up to the United States Supreme Court. In the federal lawsuit, Kristin M. Perry v. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the marriage advocate David Blankenhorn served as one of two key witnesses for propo- 176 | Conclusion nents of Proposition 8 to argue that redefining marriage to encompass samesex relationships would be harmful to society. For Blankenhorn, legalizing same-sex marriage would weaken the institution . In an op-ed article for the Los Angeles Times, he explains: Every child being raised by gay or lesbian couples will be denied his [sic] birthright to both parents who made him. Every single one. Moreover, losing that right will not be a consequence of something that at least most of us view as tragic, such as a marriage that didn’t last, or an unexpected pregnancy where the father-to-be has no intention of sticking around. On the contrary, in the case of same-sex marriage and the children of those unions, it will be explained to everyone, including the children, that something wonderful has happened!3 In arguing for the importance of biological parents in the court case, Blankenhorn relied on studies that compare children raised by married, biological parents with those raised by unmarried mothers, stepfamilies and cohabiting parents (in Blankenhorn’s view, the latter constitute a tragedy). Judge Vaughn R. Walker ultimately determined Blankenhorn’s testimony to be inadmissible , because Blankenhorn’s investigation into marriage was not grounded in the “intellectual rigor” expected of social scientists.4 Moreover, the judge determined Blankenhorn’s conclusion that married biological parents offer a superior family form over married nonbiological parents to be invalid as the evidence he presented did not compare biological to nonbiological parents. According to Judge Walker, it may be true that “parents’ marital status may affect child outcomes,” but it does not follow that the correlation is grounded in biology.5 Even as Blankenhorn’s testimony was discredited in the California federal trial, his reasoning exemplifies a dominant cultural repertoire of marriage promotion: marriage is the best institution for heterosexual parents to raise children and thus needs to be strengthened and prioritized in law and public policy. Some marriage advocates would likely disagree with Blankenhorn ’s argument in favor of biological parenting; however, most would agree with its basic ideology that prioritizes heterosexual parenting (while a few might support marriage as the best institution for same-sex parenting) and decries the tragedy of unwed childbearing and divorce in weakening the institution and creating havoc on American society. In his decision, Judge Walker also confirmed the importance of marriage in public policy and to stabilize American society: “The state regulates marriage because marriage Conclusion | 177 creates stable households, which in turn form the basis of a stable, governable populace.”6 The federal court decision is an important step in combating discrimination against lesbians and gay men, and it appropriately points to the prejudice of efforts to ban same-sex marriage that enable stigma. Judge Walker draws on evidence of...