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.