Lifestyles Left and Right
Domestic Disturbances
There’s a lot more to the marriage movement than the debate over same-sex matrimony.
If you judged by the headlines and the ballot boxes, you’d think the only interesting thing about marriage is whether Ellen DeGeneres can marry Portia de Rossi. But the central issue in the gay marriage controversy — how we should connect sex, babies, and marriage, and when we can or should separate them — plays out in almost every American life, including the lives of the heterosexual majority.
Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency highlighted concerns over fatherhood. A man whose first autobiography dealt extensively with his troubled relationship with his divorced father was elected president, and t-shirts bearing photos of the President-elect with his wife and children sold out at sidewalk stands in neighborhoods where husbands are hard to find.
Nisa Muhammad, the founder of Black Marriage Day and creator of a marriage education curriculum for black couples, noted that many people she worked with didn’t see the need to get married: “Our first session is called ‘Why marriage?’ So that when they get the skills they’ll value having the skills.”
She blamed “an absence of cultural cues that guide most young people, but especially black young people, toward marriage. There’s the Beyonce song ‘Put a Ring on It’ but [songs like that are] very few and far apart.” The cultural shifts go beyond the music charts: “Some people grow up never going to a wedding,” Muhammad pointed out. “There used to be weddings all the time in the summertime — we used to be junior bridesmaids, grow up being flower girls.”
Muhammad often finds herself working with low-income families, whose concerns could not seem further away from the lives of couples and singles who pay startling sums for surrogate mothers or egg donors. The often chaotic lives of poor families seem remote from the intensely planned, often lawyer-vetted arrangements of families who use sperm donors or other forms of third-party reproduction.
But many of the issues of father-longing and changeable family constellations are similar — though not the same — from the penthouses to the projects. As the first wave of donor-conceived children come of age, and begin to speak plainly about their experiences, they often inadvertently articulate concerns at the heart of the marriage movement: a child’s need for her father, and for a unified family.
Elizabeth Marquardt first became interested in donor conception after her first book was published, Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce. Herself a child of divorce, she studied the emotional, ethical, and spiritual difficulties faced by children growing up in a divided family.
And she began to notice similarities to the lives of children of divorce in the “very poignant stories” told by many donor-conceived children: “Father loss is father loss whatever guise it comes in,” she says. Some of the subjects in her forthcoming study, My Daddy’s Name Is Donor, said that “to have been conceived by an anonymous sperm donor with pretty much no hope of being able to find out who it is feels like the death of their father.”
Donor-conceived children can have many unknown half-siblings; they lack information about their biological parents’ medical histories; and they lack a defined relationship to the donor parent. Marquardt says that even laws allowing children to learn their donor parent’s identity at age 18 don’t address major issues: “How do you start a relationship [with the donor parent]? Who are you to each other? If you ask him for $20, is it all over? If he has hundreds of children, will he get kind of tired of this? If he gets sick, do you have an obligation to care for him?” And, overarching these day-to-day questions: “How many people are we going to bless as parent figures in children’s lives?”
Donor conception is primarily used by heterosexuals, and yet it is also directly tied in to gay marriage. As Marquardt notes, “With the right to marry comes the right to form a family,” and for a gay couple, donor conception is the only way to form a family in which at least one partner has a biological tie to the child. Therefore, she fears that “we stand on the brink of not being able to have that debate [about problems with donor conception] because to oppose donor conception is to be anti-gay.”
Gay couples are much more likely than straight couples to use “known donors,” and to make the donor a part of the child’s life. But these children must negotiate at least two different families. “There’s no obligation for their own parents to make one family the way marriage requires,” Marquardt notes.
And the couples who enlist donors face their own identity issues. Marquardt describes distancing ways of framing the relationship, calling a sperm donor “the Y guy” or the “uncle,” as “cutesy ways of minimizing the fact that he might have real importance to the child. The moms tend to want to keep the known donor at arm’s length.”
She points out, “The reason why people…want donor offspring is that they want a biological connection to their child.” By the same token, that child will likely feel a connection to the biological parent.
Marquardt says that the donor offspring in her study “as a group, broadly embraced the right of adults to access these technologies, and at the same time broadly embrace the right of children to know absolutely everything. They’re not saying, ‘ban this.’” For her own part, Marquardt would ban anonymous donation, “and if a friend [asked me for advice on donor conception] I’d encourage her not to do it.”
Our new family forms derive from our belief that we can separate sex, marriage, procreation, and childrearing, not only out of tragic necessity but as positive, equally-valid alternatives. Donor-conceived children show the blessings that can come from this separation — but also its limits. It is simply not true that children only want two people to love and care for them. They also often long for their biological parents, the man and woman whose physical union brought them into the world.
That longing, and the need it reflects, is one of the core reasons for renewing our marriage culture.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (46) | Leave a comment
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frost| 1.5.09 @ 7:13AM
Personally, as a Libertarian/deist, I really don't care about the gay marriage crap. But, felt there were two ingredients missing: Portia de Rossi's real name is (was?) Mandy Rogers -- and, in the interest of total disclosure, the latest Clarence Page column (yuck!) failed to mention the Black, very Liberal LA Times columnist who wrote the thing which inspired "Barack, the Magic Negro" satire/parody - - perhaps one of the most disgusting omissions I've encountered of late....
Just thought it deserved mention.
Stella | 1.5.09 @ 10:15AM
Please see the link >
http://beware-of-the-fertility-industry.blogspot.com
Thank you.
David Hart | 1.5.09 @ 10:49AM
Utter nonsense. Gibberish. The issue is about equal protection under the law ...
http://www.tips-q.com/content/tushnet-amspec-sex-babies-and-marriage
Sherry| 1.5.09 @ 10:56AM
My problem with this whole scenario is the usual double standards - how is it possible that no same sex marriage violates their rights - however civil unions are open only to gay couples. Why is this not a violation of non-gay couples who choose not to marry?
David Hart | 1.5.09 @ 11:08AM
Sherry:
That is a valid point. Presumably, civil unions are comparable to common law marriage???
The bottom line to all of this is that gay marriage provides equal protection under the law to ALL. Nobody has ever posed a rational argument that supports the notion that one couple’s same-sex marriage affects – in any way whatsoever – another couple’s “traditional” marriage.
Michigan-Matt| 1.5.09 @ 11:32AM
David would have us believe that gay marriage provides equal protection to all... except he overlooks that while HE might be one day covered by gay marriage, those of us who want to marry our sister still can't, or who want to marry our twin still can't, or want to marry our yellow lab still can't, or those who want to marry more than one person still can't, or who want to marry an underage but consenting person still can't, or who.... well, I guess those choices would have to await inclusion AFTER David get's his "rights" restored and equal protection for "all", eh?
It isn't about "equal protection for all"; it's about special rights bestowed on politically-active groups in our society. To say otherwise is utter twaddle.
David Hart | 1.5.09 @ 11:58AM
"Slippery slope" argument is a sure sign of a baloney sandwich with hyperbole on the side on the tray of reason. We can PRETEND that we cannot differentiate between gay marriage and bestiality, incest, pedophilia or polygamy but that's all we can do - pretend.
Underpinning gay marriage is a legal relationship between consenting adults. The last time I checked bestiality, incest, pedophilia and polygamy were all illegal. Perchance that changed?
Sherry| 1.5.09 @ 12:03PM
David:
"That is a valid point. Presumably, civil unions are comparable to common law marriage???"
This would be the only available comparison as non-gay couples are not allowed the priviledge of civil unions. So, we are not allowed to cover our loved ones on our insurance or protect our rights.
This movement does not care about "equal" rights - only "your" rights.
Mary| 1.5.09 @ 2:02PM
When conservatives are outraged about donor conceptions or gay marriage, and focus on the “need” for a child to know his or her biological father, that claim of biological primacy also denigrates traditional adoption (two married heterosexual parents). Ultimately and sadly, the conservative message ends up reading as ‘adoption is bad.’
Yet adoption remains and will remain the only life-saving option for children whose parents are unable or unwilling to care for them.
How are conservatives going to get adoption friendly?
First, please note that there are four fundamental differences between donor procreation and traditional adoption: in traditional adoption, the child is given life by his or her parents and placed for adoption. While there are legal and social services costs with adoption, it is not a business arrangement between the biological and adoptive parents. Second, the child is not created deliberately; the child exists, whether in the womb or an orphanage. Third, there is no biological connection between the adopted child and the adoptive parents, other than belonging to the human race—a concept and profound link we seem to be losing sight of. Lastly, the traditional adoptive family does not seek to overturn the traditional family; it is part of it.
(I’ll also note here that while traditional adoption involves sadness and loss, it is not “tragic.” Let’s save tragedy for abortion, other forms of murder, desperate poverty, child abuse, illness, and unnecessary wars—not biological parents making a loving placement plan for their child, who is raised by loving adoptive parents.)
But there is a fundamental similarity between adoption and donor procreation: the biological unknown. People make too much of biology. Over a decade ago, I listened to Dr. Laura rip into an adult adoptee who wanted to find her biological family because she wanted to know where she got her black hair. I can’t remember the details of the conversation, but I remember the "so what." ‘So you find out your uncle or grandfather had black hair,’ Dr. Laura said. ‘So what? Does it make you a better person? Does it make you kind or good?’ It was wonderful.
Everyone's family tree contains every characteristic under the son. Aunt Susie can sing beautifully; great-Uncle Frank is tone deaf. Grandma Louise was a bookkeeper; her daughter can’t balance a checkbook. Great-grandfather Ed was short. His grandson is tall. When people attribute who they are to inherited characteristics of relatives, they’re approaching narcissism.
Didn't those of our ancestors who came here voluntarily risk their lives to get away from that sort of garbage? Isn’t a claim to DNA entitlement what makes Caroline Kennedy unqualified?
Let’s stop gazing at the navel lint of DNA and create a vigorous, life-affirming culture. It doesn’t matter who your parents were. It matters who you are.
Observer2| 1.5.09 @ 5:06PM
Common law marriages are not equivalent to civil unions. Essentially if a man and a woman live together, tell others thye are married, and are of legal age - they are married. They are real marriages which arise from agreement between the parties but without benefit of clergy. Some US states still recognize common law marriage.
For reasons that should be obvious to all, common law marriage assumes / requires the parties to be a man and woman.
Civil unions are essentially a contract.
Pat| 1.5.09 @ 5:45PM
What infuriates many conservatives is our Ayn Rand spouting, Libertarian approach to social issues happily morphing into our bleeding heart N. Y. Times approach to addressing the problems resulting from our completely irrational approach to social issues. Given our unique American ability to compartmentalize every issue (which saves a lot of deep thinking on our part), we can steadfastly maintain that marriage related issues (read sex related) are nobody's business but the individual citizen. The unmarried mother with 4 kids by 3 dads is a lifestyle choice - one even applauded by some.
But when the mother can't feed, clothe and educate the kids, and the dads are indifferent, it's suddenly no longer a Libertarian issue, it magically morphs into a "compassionate" issue - one we all need to toss money in the pot to solve.
Abortion is a strictly a woman's choice (plus her doctor and various medical technicians), but paying for abortions from the Treasury are another matter if Obama's folks have anything to say about it (and they have a lot to say or will have shortly).
It's fun to be irrational, but does get under the skin of some of our more rational conservatives.
Alan Brooks| 1.5.09 @ 6:59PM
i dont mind gays-- but why cant they just go back into the closet? want sex? do it and shut up.
dont speak thy name.
Ron Proby| 1.6.09 @ 12:29AM
An good anti gay marriage argument rarely if ever posed: Hetros, just as gays, have always had the right to marry a member of the opposite sex. Allowing gays, or anyone else, to marry a member of the same sex is a brand new right.
Henece gays are claiming a right that never existed for anyon a right that is therefore not the basis for a discrimination claim.
Ed| 1.6.09 @ 12:43AM
Gee, David, not very long ago relationships between consenting same-sex adults were every bit as illegal as those between siblings, and the inclination for them was in the DSM. And Mary, you'll find as many conservatives adopting as liberals, depending on where you are.
Ron, you have hit the nail on the head. The thing about gay "marriage" is that it's advocates are saying that the ontology of marriage must be changed to be what they would like.
Don L| 1.6.09 @ 6:02AM
The idea that to be against donor conception etc. is anti-gay is personally offensive to God and this Catholic who believes in the dignity of the human being and the right of a child to be conceived by two married parents who have committed (the scariest 21st cent word) themselves to the responsibility of raising their own flesh and blood.
Being anti-gay is a different issue, involving the -love the sinner, but loathe the sin morality.
Monica| 1.6.09 @ 3:42PM
If something is legal, man will eventually get used to it. However, even though something is "the norm" and legally acceptable, it doesn't necessarily follow that the law is morally good or ethical.
"An unjust law is no law at all." St. Augustine
Chairm | 1.7.09 @ 5:55AM
In her column, Eve Tushnet said: Our new family forms derive from our belief that we can separate sex, marriage, procreation, and childrearing, not only out of tragic necessity but as positive, equally-valid alternatives.
* * *
The marital presumption of paternity is one of the strongest and most vigorously enforced laws in our legal system. It arises from the both-sexed nature of human generativity. It is at the core of marriage, combined with sex integration.
The use of third party procreation is extramarital even when married couples partake of it.
Some sense of proportionality is certainly required for discussion of this issue.
As Marquardt said: for a gay couple, donor conception is the only way to form a family in which at least one partner has a biological tie to the child.
The use of "donor" sperm does not cure fertility problems. It is an endrun.
In the case of an all-male or an all-female relationship, it is sex-segregative even as the prospective parents rely on the two-sexed basis of human generativity.
By comparison, maybe 10% of married couples experience infertility and most of them resolve it through changes in behavior. They do not resort to the novel technologies.
But of those who seek further medical treatment, half already have children. They experience subfertility. It is important to keep in mind that subfertility, and infertility, are conditions contingent upon the presence of both sexes. Infertility is not the same as the lack of someone of the other sex. The one-sexed relationship is non-fertile, not infertile nor subfertile. No one-sexed scenario is fertile without the other sex. That lack is not an actual disability like infertility or subfertility.
In any case, the vast majority of married couples who experience infertility, and who get further medial treatment, do not use the gametes of "donors" even when using IVF and Assisted Reproduction Technologies. Less than 1% of children born in the USA were conceived with such technologies; and of those about 90% were conceived via "donors".
A tiny fraction of that tiny fraction of 1% of children born via ARTs/IVF were born to single persons and to one-sexe couples.
For the parents of that tiny fraction, 100% reliance on "donors" is the starting place -- which means sex-segregation, or the segregation of fatherhood from motherhood.
This is the virtual inverse of the core meaning of marriage.
Chairm| 1.7.09 @ 5:57AM
Typo correction: Less than 1% of children born in the USA were conceived with such technologies; and of those about 90% were NOT conceived via "donors".
Chairm| 1.7.09 @ 6:01AM
Also note that if the use of "donor" gametes is justified on the basis of attaining a child with a biological tie to at least one partner, then, would that basis also justify the use of technological interventions to combine the gametes of two men or two women?
I think not. It would not be a form of human procreation but of human manufacture.
We are all born equal, of a man and a woman.
Welcome to the future| 1.7.09 @ 11:03PM
The reason gays and lesbians have been allowed to have registred unions it makes them easier to find for extermination.
All criminals be aware, and get ready to die, this is the New World Order, you are surplus to requirement.
Fitz | 1.18.09 @ 2:34PM
“Our new family forms derive from our belief that we can separate sex, marriage, procreation, and childrearing, not only out of tragic necessity but as positive, equally-valid alternatives. Donor-conceived children show the blessings that can come from this separation — but also its limits. It is simply not true that children only want two people to love and care for them. ”
Eve Tushnet Emphasis’s this point well. It needednt matter if the issue is same-sex “marriage” or donor conception intentionally depriving a child of a his or her Father or Mother is an appalling ethical; leap from adoption that provides a Mother & Father for a child deprived my unfortunate circumstance.
Society is certainly capable of not sounding an alarm when it comes to the narrow edge of technological change in an area of rapid scientific change. This is precisely what has occurred and will continue to occur in un-coded genome world. If we are not willing to take seriously the needs of the child we will have completely missed any hope of maintaining a sound and responsible ethic. The felt “needs” of adults no matter how deeply felt cannot be allowed to run roughshod over the protection of vulnerable children.
It is precisely this narrow technological practice that results when a couple cannot conceive naturally and the Mother or Father’s reproductive biology is disabled. This can easily be distinguished from the case when two men or two women who don’t have the capability to reproduce to begin with. They are always and everywhere incapable of reproduction. Making third party intervention a social norm rather than a hidden private reality.
In this way same-sex marriage undermines the institution of marriage and responsible parenthood much more dramatically, publicly and legally than surrogate parenting. It requires by design of the “marriage” type that all children “begotten” of those “unions” be necessarily and with malice aforethought denied the right to know an be known by their Mother or Father.
Combined with this is the fact that once born – such children are further hindered by intentionally being brought into unions where they are not only deprived of their natural parent(s) but further not provided with an intact Mother or Father in a married home. Leaving daughter or son without the crucial parenting gender that social science proves to be indispensable.
Such a public disavowal of the very standards for responsible reproductive behavior represents a much larger threat to maintaining intact married natural parents for any society’s children writ large. Not only does same-sex marriage undermine natural parenting it undermines Motherhood as crucial, Fatherhood as crucial, and marriage as both a normative and critical integration for parent & child.
Certainly the issues overlap and Eve Tushnet ethical point stands (tall). However by any measure of social standards the greater threat to child well being and the status of marriage as a normative childrearing institution is presented by same-sex “marriage.
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