Legislating for same-sex marriage will reflect changing face of families

THE insidious subtext of the argument against same-sex marriage is that children, currently being raised by gay and lesbian couples, are harmed by the experience.

The speed at which conservative commentators have rushed to undermine the result of Constitutional Convention, which overwhelming voted in favour of same-sex marriage at the weekend, is instructive.

Arming himself with as much rhetorical mud as he could muster, Senator Ronan Mullen said the debate was a “flawed process” in which conniving politicians had tricked unsuspecting delegates into voting in favour of the proposition.

The obvious inference was that delegates, who had carefully listened to both sides of the debate before reaching their decision, were too stupid to comprehend the import of the issue. Given his insistence that the voting was somehow rigged, one wonders how Mr Mullen can explain the results of successive opinion polls, which have consistently revealed a large majority of Irish people endorse same-sex marriage.

Were those results also “flawed” or emblematic of some kind of malevolent left- wing conspiracy? The Iona Institute’s David Quinn tweeted that he had witnessed, “group-think at work yet again among many of the politicians”.

Sounds very sinister, doesn’t it? Until you realise that what Mr Quinn is actually describing is a democratic voting process in which the majority group happens to disagree with his minority view.

“Group-think” may be an Orwellian sounding moniker, but ultimately it’s at the heart of every democratic decision.

The caustic comments from Mr Quinn and Mr Mullen also beg another question: why did they persist in partaking in the convention if they were so convinced it was a charade? The implication must be that, having lost the debate; their only remaining option was to undermine the bone fides of the result.

In truth, the Constitutional Convention didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. The cynical reaction from the usual suspects has signalled that same-sex marriage campaigners can expect a bitter dirty tricks campaign if the issue is ever put to a ballot.

Conservative commentators couch their opposition to gay marriage in concern for children, but there isn’t a shred of evidence that gay marriage has any detrimental influence. Mr Quinn is fond of citing a 2002 study — entitled, Marriage from a Child’s Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children and What Can We Do About It? — to support his assertion that “sexual complementarity” is the most important attribute for good parents.

However, the president of Child Trends, the US group that published the report, has repeatedly stated that there is nothing in the report to substantiate this reductive position. “No conclusions can be drawn from this research about the well-being of children raised by same-sex parents. We have pointed this out repeatedly, yet to our dismay we continue to see our 2002 research mischaracterised by some opponents of same-sex marriage,” said Carol Emig.

Conversely, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the wealth of available evidence shows that children who grow up with same-sex parents ‘fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual’.

In short, it is not the gender of the parents that is important, but rather the nature of their relationships. This assessment has not stopped offensive claims that those fighting for marriage equality are attempting to use children as lab rats in their “social engineering” experiment. The suggestion is that the thousands of gay couples, currently raising children in Ireland today, are engaged in some kind of abominable Dr Frankenstein experiment.

Accepting the actual evidence, that same-sex marriage does not harm children, the other reason commonly advanced to prevent gay couples getting hitched is tradition. Conservative groups, in attempting to defend the traditional definition of marriage, present the institution as some kind of immutable relic impervious to changing social norms. They are not the first to do so. Writing in 1840, the editor of Christian Lady’s magazine painted a dystopian picture of a feminist future.

“The main plan is first to wholly abolish marriage, secondly to take every child from its mother at the time of its birth and to commit the infants to persons appointed for the charge, who shall nourish them like a promiscuous litter of pigs,” she warned.

The language of contemporary conservative groups may be more measured but the sentiment is the same — society will sunder if the institution of marriage evolves.

The same offensive arguments were advanced by bigots in America to defend the ban on interracial marriage, which remained on the statute books in 16 states until 1967, when it was eventually overturned by a Supreme Court decision.

Attitudes to gay and lesbian people in Ireland have changed irrevocably in a relatively short period of time.

An article in the Sunday Independent, in 1963, labelled homosexuality “a serious emotional disturbance” and blamed nurture, not nature, for the alleged dysfunction.

“The emotional climate of the home in which the male homosexual most often develops is one in which the mother is dominating, sexually prudish, and the father is weak, absent or aloof.

“The mother ‘loves’ her boy so much that she emasculates him and the father relegates most of the family authority to his wife,” it said.

A letter writer to the same newspaper in 1974 labelled homosexuality “a cancer that is attacking our society” and opined that “all homosexuals should be incarcerated — to my mind whipping is too good for them”.

When Senator David Norris attempted to have homosexuality decriminalised in 1984, the Supreme Court refused to do so on the basis that the institution of marriage would be damaged.

“There are some grounds for reasonable people to believe that sexuality should be confined to lawful marriage, that sexuality outside marriage should be condemned, and that sexuality between people of the same sex is wrong,” was the verdict of an eminent judge.

The view was that legalising homosexuality would somehow lead to the corruption of otherwise straight men who would leave their wives and children en masse to embark on sordid same-sex flings.

The argument against marriage equality today — that straight marriages will somehow be devalued if the constitutional definition of the institution is changed — is just as nonsensical. The right to marry one’s partner should be not be determined by race or creed or sexual orientation but is a basic human right that should be offered to every citizen.

Legislating for same-sex marriage, contrary to hyperbolic claims from some quarters, will not consign the role of mothers and fathers to a PC scrapheap, but will merely reflect the changing face of families in the 21st century.