Does Gay Marriage Threaten Family Structure?

A friend commented on my recent post about the recently-passed California Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage, which I opposed, asking what I thought about the relationship between gay marriage and the nuclear family being the basic structure of human society. I guess, in response, one might ask other questions about the basic structure of human society.

We tend to think of the society we know now as being what the world was always like. That, however is far from the truth. Humans are essentially tribal in nature, and while children spring from families, family structure and the defined role of adults in the family structure has been fluid throughout human history.

Cave men and women lived in caverns or trees or settlements in large groups, sleeping in giant human crowds and raising children was a community affair. Some tribes who live far from or technological, developed societies continue to do similar things today. As Hillary said, it takes a village. Ancient families, such as those in biblical times often included marriages with multiple wives, and sexual liaisons with servants or slaves. In the absence of modern birth control methods, those extra-marital activities often produced children. What was the family structure like then?

Further, looking back just a century or two, people just didn't live as long as they do in America today. People died of infection and illness at startling rates, so families couldn't be enduring because members passed away. Women died in childbirth or from related complications. Men were injured in their roles as farmers or hunter-gatherers and little could be done medically to save the seriously injured (by today's standards).

So perhaps in the 20th century we created and/or promoted the myth of the ideal 1950's family. Dad went to work in his Ford or Chevy, Mom stayed home, baked cookies, cleaned the house with Spic and Span, and everyone was happy. The reality was and is far from that. Families struggled, men died in wars, women had to go out to work or decided that careers were more fulfilling than full-time home-making and family-raising. I wonder if, other than perhaps on TV, this ideal American family with it's supposed wonderful health and structure ever really existed. Among my friends, as I grew up in the 1950's and 60's there were divorces, career debacles, illness, accidental death, alcoholism, wife battering, sexual abuse, etc. This was in a middle class suburb, that, superficially, looked like Ozzie and Harriet might have lived there. But behind the closed doors there was a good deal of misery.

And what about today--the 21st Century? There are a greater percentage of working parents than previously seen; a larger proportion of families are in single parent, mostly female-led households. What affect does the family structure in those families have on children? What about poverty, or adult drug use, unemployment, etc.? I don't see the society rushing in to pass laws against any of these problems, or fixing them, out of concern about the affect they might have on family structure or the children who live in those families.

So that gets us back to Proposition 8 and the ban on gay marriage. I can think of many permutations of families that lack males, or lack females, but those missing members don't make those families fundamentally pathological. If Dad dies in Iraq and children are raised by Mom and Grandmother because Dad is gone does that mean the lives of the children will be ruined? Or that the structure of the society will unravel? Millions of Americans were raised in such family situations and are doing just fine. And many others, raised in two-parent families are in prison, or in a thousand other ways are doing very poorly by most measures.

So the notion that children raised in families by two men, or two women are going to be damaged, or that the society will suffer some universal harm is ridiculous on the face of it. And what is it those against gay marriage would have us believe? If two competent, loving women have children, raise them with love, support, concern, encouragement and care, that even so, the children will be somehow ruined by their imaginings about what goes on behind the bedroom door on some nights? Or because they see the two women hugging or kissing each other? Now that certainly would lead to the instantaneous and total dissolution of the world as we know it, wouldn't it? I mean, if two women actually kissed each other. Shocking! Wait, I'll have to tell my wife never to kiss my adult daughter ever again. I mean, if a child saw that, they might be ruined for life by the very sight of it!

Whatever those who favor a ban on gay marriage say, their opposition to it is simple bigotry. Girls are supposed to like boys, and if your constitution doesn't fit that model then you don't deserve basic human rights. So what if your lifetime partner is hospitalized and you can't see them. Who cares if you bought a house together and now that your partner is dead his family who despised him, rejected him and disapproved of his lifestyle is grabbing legal control of all of his property? I suppose the supporters of the ban on gay marriage would say, "You're gay, you don't deserve anything. You're an abomination."

Well, the Good Book says many things that we should do, but we no longer do. We don't have any altars where we slaughter animals and roast them as burnt offerings. We don't immediately kill children who curse their parents, either. There are a thousand things that the early Judaic writings forbid or say should result in severe punishments that are commonly done today. Religious groups pick and choose at will. So pointing to where it says you shouldn't do this or that doesn't impress me, and is in it's very nature disingenuous. You can't say everyone must follow chapter 43 verse 7 to the letter, and then decide that we really don't have to pay attention to verse 8 because nobody likes it. I'm sorry my fundamentalist friends, but that is simple hypocrisy.

So, in the end, the family structure argument is an empty one. Whether or not children will turn out to be healthy, happy people, and honest, productive citizens is controlled by many variables. The most important involve the love and skill that those in parenting roles can bring to the task of raising children. The sexual orientation of the parents, well, like their hair color, or skin color, or for that matter their affection for baseball, these have very little to do with whether they are good parents. Good parents not only come in all shapes, sizes and colors, they come with varying sexual orientations, and in all kinds of family structures and configurations. Having a home with a mother and a father, and even going to church (synagogue, temple, mosque, sweat lodge, or drum circle), are no guarantee of a positive outcome for a child, a family or a society.