Man Bites Blog

Andrew Sullivan writes:

It’s For The Kids

14 Sep 2007 12:17 pm

Some data from Canada on why same-sex couples get married:

According to the census, nearly one in four lesbian married couples in B.C. (24 per cent) have a child living with them, compared with just 13 per cent of lesbian couples living common-law.

Gay men are far less likely to have children than lesbians.

But they, too, have a big marriage gap, with 6.8 per cent of gay married men living with kids, compared with just 0.5 per cent of unmarried gay couples.

How does this undermine civil marriage for heterosexuals? How does it harm society? Isn’t it better for children of gay couples to have the legal and social security of a marriage? Isn’t legitimacy better than illegitimacy? And doesn’t this pattern actually enhance the conservative argument that marriage is primarily for the benefit of children? I guess that argument doesn’t count for much with some when lesbians make it.

Leaving aside the paltry 6.8% number for married all-male couples, 25 % of married all female couples have children, and this leads to the conclusion that lesbian marriage is “for the kids?”  As Sullivan would say, Please.  I am quite sure that if heterosexual marreid couples had such low numbers, Sullivan would point to it as evidence that the connection between marriage and children is a bogus invention of the “Christianist” right, and thus there is no non-bigoted reason to oppose “marriage equality.”  But for same sex couples, it’s evidence that it’s “for the kids.”  Right.

Both raising children and getting married would be indicators of a committed relationship, so I would certainly hope that there would be some correlation between the two.  Contrasting numbers between married and unmarried couples doesn’t prove anything.

And are any of these children are the natural child of one of the members of the marriage from a previous heterosexual marriage?  If so, then I would hazard a suspicion that those marriages at least, were undermined.  But I guess that argument doesn’t count for much when “Christianists” make it.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.