JERUSALEM — Gay marriage means more children being adopted by
gay couples. It means more children who otherwise would have been
raised by a mother and a father will instead be raised by two
mothers or two fathers.
That point is not new, and it was made powerfully in a recent column by Dennis Prager. But it is worth
pondering. Arguments that gay marriage will open the door to
additional strange forms of marriage, or make homosexuality more
widespread by legitimizing it, are speculative, however persuasive.
But there is no doubt that once pairs of women and pairs of men are
in fully legal, fully legitimate marriages, they will have exactly
the same right to adopt as man-woman couples.
There are studies demonstrating that children do best when
raised by a mother and a father, but I haven’t bothered looking
them up. I don’t need them. There may also be studies proving that
people are better off having friends than being alone, or better
off having jobs than being unemployed, but I haven’t done a Google
on those either. These are matters of common sense. Both mothers
and fathers have special things to offer and it is much better to
have one of each than two of one. If I knew I was going to be
reincarnated as an orphan, and could choose to be adopted by a
heterosexual or a homosexual couple, it wouldn’t be a hard choice.
But by legalizing gay marriage, society will be making that
“choice” negatively for a lot of children.
Since the 1960s, children have had a rough time in the Western
world. It started with the divorce revolution; there, the
intentions were still arguably good, since widespread divorce was
still a novel phenomenon and people could plausibly claim it would
be better for kids than troubled marriages. By now, after decades
of research and experience, we know that divorce and single
parenthood put kids considerably more at risk for a host of ills
like drug and alcohol abuse, delinquency, unwanted pregnancy,
depression, suicide-you name it. That’s one way kids have been
harmed by the loosening of constraints in adult society since the
'60s.
In addition to family breakup, children in the Western world
have been swamped with a depraved culture created by adults and
centering on sex and violence. Back when I was growing up, it was
drugs; producing a “psychedelic” album encouraging kids to take LSD
was a good way to make a buck. Today, drugs are less part of the
message; instead, it’s sleaze and blood. Many people were shocked
at the recent Super Bowl halftime show; well, throw in some
“spatter” and that’s what millions of teen and preteen kids spend
hours taking in every day. Other societies have systematically
poisoned children’s minds with evil ideologies; in today’s West
their minds get polluted by the garbage culture, and not because
anybody “believes” in the garbage, but because there’s lots of
money to be made from it.
Now, the new push is to turn kids over to be raised by
homosexual couples, in the name of an adult ideology of sexual
egalitarianism. This should be stopped in its tracks, by
constitutional amendment if necessary. As an American Israeli, I
live in a place where we have even more pressing, existential
concerns for ourselves and our children. But, keeping up with the
old country online and on TV, I know that America’s gay-marriage
debate has a moral significance that radiates to the whole Western
world and beyond. Now is the time to start putting an end to this
latest, irresponsible, adult ideological experiment, and put
children’s welfare first. Since we have to fight for Western
civilization, we need a Western civilization we can be proud of. If
it can’t do better by its children, it’s still better than the
alternatives, but it’s seriously flawed.
