We are the only site on the web devoted exclusively to intellectual conservatism. We find the most intriguing information and bring it together on one page for you.

This One's For the Children - On Gay Marriage
by Sarah Alexander
23 May 2004

Continuing down the path towards full societal acceptance of homosexuality is akin to seeing a stop sign while driving and not stopping. If you don’t stop, chaos could occur.

She smiles, she dances for today; just for today, it is a happy day. The day her Mother is getting married. Or should I say Mothers? As I scanned through articles covering the first gay marriage in Massachusetts, I am saddened. Saddened to be living in a world that seems to have gone mad. Do they not see what they are doing to our children?

The Bible says in Proverbs that we are to “speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves. For the weak and defenseless.” In this article, I want to be a voice for the children. Through my research, and based on what I believe as an evangelical Christian, I feel very strongly that gay marriages will have a devastating effect on our nation’s children.

I think we all know the effects that homosexual marriages will have on children. Many of us just don’t want to face the facts. We prefer to live in a world where we can do what we want to do. It does not matter if our actions destroy the rest of society.

It is not only the evangelical Christian community that believes homosexual marriages will have an ill effect on children. Leading educators also agree. Consider what Pitirim Sorokin, founder and first chair of the Sociology Department at Harvard, says about marriage: “The most essential sociocultural patterning of a newborn human organism is achieved by the family. It is the first and most efficient sculptor of human material, shaping the physical, behavioral, mental, moral and sociocultural characteristics of practically every individual. …From remotest past, married parents have been the most effective teachers of their children.” (1)

Mr. Sorokin is speaking from an educated viewpoint. He has seen the positive effects the natural family has on children, and understands that raising a child in a two parent Mom and Dad family is essential for the children’s growth and development. A recent research study done by Child Trends also agrees with Mr. Sorokin’s findings. Child Trends found that a child’s early environment contributes to the natural development of the child. This includes being raised in a natural family. In a child’s life, there are certain things that only Dads will be able to teach their children. There are also other things that only Mothers will be able to teach their children. God meant for both the Father and Mother to work together to raise their children. When you place two Mothers together, or two Dads together, you really screw up the plan. Take for instance the number of single parent homes. Do you know that over the past 20 years, there has been a huge outbreak of children needing psychologists and counseling? People today have a huge need for emotional healing. Over the past 20 years, divorce rates have sky rocketed and homosexuality has become tolerated and accepted. Don’t you think there may be a correlation between this societal change and the number of counselors and psychologists that are now needed?

A home with two Mothers in it will have a difficult time showing their children how to love someone of the opposite sex. If you look at homes where one parent abuses the other parent, especially if the child is a girl, she will grow up to pursue guys who abuse her. My prediction is that if two lesbians raise a little girl/boy, the child will have a very high chance of either committing suicide or turning homosexual himself. Especially if one of the parents has been artificially inseminated. Consider the amount of adopted children who feel insecure and feel a piece of their life is missing because they don’t know their real parents. We are harming our children's well-being by allowing gay marriages.

Teenagers will also suffer from the effects of homosexuality. When you are a teenager, you want to try everything out. You are not very sure of yourself or what is good for you, and you long to be accepted by your peers. When you are not accepted, you start to wonder if something is wrong with you. You begin to explore different things in order to find an answer. Many young men have been led down to the path of homosexuality during this crisis time. The homosexual lifestyle leads to high rates of suicide, depression, HIV, drug abuse, STDs, and other pathogens. (2) Gay marriage may cause children to think, “I have another alternative if I get rejected from my girlfriend.” Instead of training our children to resolve conflict and face their problems, we mess up their minds more by saying, “we accept you and your wrong behavior as being ok.” Instead of trying to give a child an alternative to solve a problem, we as parents and teachers should be teaching our children problem solving skills. How do you expect our children to be able to work with people if we don’t teach them problem-solving skills?
In this article I have addressed a very sensitive issue. I apologize if I have offended anyone. I don’t hate homosexuals. I only wish that they could see that there is a way out of the lifestyle.

Homosexuality is wrong. When you are driving and see a stop sign you need to stop. If you don’t, chaos could occur. It is the same with God’s laws. He placed his law there for the benefit of mankind. When we don’t obey God’s law, chaos will happen. In this article, I have already pointed out that chaos has already started.

May we who stand for the truth continue to have the strength and the boldness to stand up for the next generation. So that they can continue to live in freedom and with security.

1. Pitirim Sorokin, Society, Culture, and Personality (New York: Harper and Row, 1947), pp. 246-247; The American Sex Revolution (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1956), p. 5.

2. Robert Benne and Gerald McDermott, Speaking Out: Why Gay Marriage Would Be Harmful

Sarah Alexander is from Washington State and is currently a Children's Pastor. She is the younger sister of IC co-editors Rachel and Andrew Alexander.

Email Sarah Alexander

Editor's Note: Hate mail will not be tolerated.

Send this Article to a Friend

Feedback from Salon.com and a rebuttal from one of IC's contributors

http://blogs.salon.com/0002874/

.....I offer this useful summary of the nation's conservative pundits.
We'll start with one Sarah Alexander, whose work appears in Intellectual Conservative. In a piece entitled "This One's For the Children - On Gay Marriage," she writes: "Through my research, and based on what I believe as an evangelical Christian, I feel very strongly that gay marriages will have a devastating effect on our nation's children." And while I'm sure she does strongly believe this as an evangelical Christian, she never offers any of that research to back up her assertion. For instance, she claims that: "It is not only the evangelical Christian community that believes homosexual marriages will have an ill effect on children. Leading educators also agree."

Then she cites research that purportedly shows that children do better when they grow up with married parents. The studies say nothing about gay marriage (and would seem to indicate that having married same-sex parents would be better for kids than unmarried same-sex parents). So, I'm afraid that Sarah is putting words in the mouths of those leading educators.

RESPONSE: The 'rebuttal' consists in saying that an article that is "for" something and does not explicitly say that it is against, say, the marriage between a person and a hamster, does not in fact constitute an argument against humans/hamsters. The second part of the argument consists in saying that a married hamster/human couple would possibly be better than an unmarried situation involving a hamster and a human.

You can see that what the arguer wishes to claim is that there is no standard for normalcy, ergo everything is apriori suspect. Hence the arguer isn't really arguing--he/she's simply assuming that gay marriage is normal and the fact that it hasn't existed before is no reason to suspect it isn't normal. This isn't, of course an argument, it's a belief.

But here's the cruxt of her argument:
"A home with two Mothers in it will have a difficult time showing their children how to love someone of the opposite sex. If you look at homes where one parent abuses the other parent, especially if the child is a girl, she will grow up to pursue guys who abuse her. My prediction is that if two lesbians raise a little girl/boy, the child will have a very high chance of either committing suicide or turning homosexual himself."

Yup, if two lesbians raise a boy, he will probably turn gay (although it seems that if a girl who sees her father abuse her mother later pursues men who abuse her, then it would follow that a boy who sees his mother love his other mother would pursue women who love him). Or he will commit suicide. Or both. (Although the gayness would probably occur before the suicide.)

RESPONSE: Again, the arguer assumes that there is no standard for normalcy, and then tries to get Sarah to provide evidence justifying what has always existed. Sarah's argument is here from common sense: We have african-american teachers in schools because we assume that african-american kids need role models. By extension, one can argue that a child who has exposure to men and women will adjust more easily to a world with men and women. This argument simply assumes that models are important.

Of course the best argument against gay adoption is that *other kids will do violence to a child who has two dads* because of simple prejudice. This argument has nothing to do w/ stigmatizing homosexuals--it simply acknowledges that a stigmata occurs to a child who is in a novel situation--which wouldn't occur if the child were in a situation w/ two parents of different genders. Do we prefer to put kids in two-parent homes (male/female)? Or w/ one parent. Obviously the former. The same holds true regarding gays. Will it be socially easier on a child to be w/ a mom and dad? The answer is obviously yes. IS there a chance a child, raised by two Steves in South Alabama will be subject to stigmatizing? Yes. Will this child possibly have a greater chance of stress etc--even suicidal tendencies? Obviously yes--and this has nothing to do w/ making a moral statement about homosexuality.

The author's final argument simply confuses things. Her point is easily refuted by the hamster analogy. Is it not better, she says, to be w/ a person and hamster who do not abuse one another, than to be in a situation with Ward and Jane Cleaver --where Ward strikes Jane on occasions? The obvious answer is to find another Ward and Jane where abuse *doesn't occcur,* not go searching for violence-free hamster/human combinations. The point is if you don't need to have recourse to the hamster situation, don't!

"Especially if one of the parents has been artificially inseminated. Consider the amount of adopted children who feel insecure and feel a piece of their life is missing because they don't know their real parents. We are harming our children's well-being by allowing gay marriages." Well, it seems like Sarah is saying that if really wanted to protect children, we wouldn't let them be adopted -- because they might later commit suicide. Here's another way gay marriage hurts kids:

"Teenagers will also suffer from the effects of homosexuality. When you are a teenager, you want to try everything out. You are not very sure of yourself or what is good for you, and you long to be accepted by your peers. When you are not accepted, you start to wonder if something is wrong with you. You begin to explore different things in order to find an answer. Many young men have been led down to the path of homosexuality during this crisis time. The homosexual lifestyle leads to high rates of suicide, depression, HIV, drug abuse, STDs, and other pathogens. Gay marriage may cause children to think, "I have another alternative if I get rejected from my girlfriend."

RESPONSE: I have already responded essentially to this above.

Again, if we really want to protect our kids, we must order girls to never reject teenaged boys. Otherwise, they could turn gay.

RESPONSE: I tend to think that kids should be spared excessive sexual pressure of all sorts when they are younger. People have their entire lives to think about what is presented to them in/through the media at roughly every instant.

Like I said, Sarah doesn't offer any research to back her argument that gay marriage is bad for children.

RESPONSE: She's also offereed no evidence to condemn the hamster/human cohabitations. Moreover, I bet there's no research out there--meaning clearly that no one could really have assumed there's something worng w/ it. In fact, didn't the founding fathers, I mean, couldn't they really have intended. . .

While she seems like a nice enough woman (she apologizes for any offense she may have given), and while she seems properly conservative, she just doesn't seem all that intellectual.

RESPONSE: If you automatically assume your own position is right--even despite the fact that nothing in history says it is--then you'll amaze yourself about how little you actually need to "argue." The burden of proof is on the gay marriage proponents to address such things as why a child won't suffer more stigmatizing by having "two dads," than if he/she had a parent of both sexes. And the gay marriage proponents should quit confusing the issue by saying "heteros abuse," ergo a peaceful set of homos is better than. . . .that's confusing the issue and "isn't very intellectual."