The original post can be found here: http://askthebigot.com/gay-marriage/
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The more I read, the more dismayed I became.
If the point of marriage is children, then no marriages ought to be condoned unless the parents [edit: people who wish to be married] already have them. Otherwise it’s making a mockery of child-centric marriage.
“If marriage is a child-centric institution”… but it isn’t. There are myriad legal, social, emotional, and economic benefits to marriage, regardless of whether a child comes into the picture. There is no – and should BE no – requirement to involve children in a marriage for it to claim legitimacy, as would be necessary if it were truly a “child-centric institution”. This isn’t 17th-century England. You are entitled to your opinion that marriage is a “child-centric” institution, but to give that opinion force of law is not something you are entitled to. That’s the issue that I, as a supporter of marriage equality, have with those against it. Believe what you like, but when your beliefs limit anyone else’s legal freedoms to engage in society on equal terms, we have a problem. If marriages and civil unions are more or less the same in legal standing, then there ought to be no problems with calling them the same thing; if they don’t have the same legal standing, then our government has a duty to address that inequality.
To answer the loaded question you posed here: “If that is the case, then why have some gay marriage advocates sought, bought, and/or trumpeted the “studies” which are aimed at “proving” that children do not suffer any ill effects by being systematically separated from a natural parent?” Because some same-sex couples desire to raise children. Not all do, but some do. People who disagree with same-sex parentage often trot that idea that “children suffer… ill effects” out, so the science is there to repudiate their claims that same-sex parents, married or not, are unfit.
(Citing a movie as evidence of your claim, as you did with that bit about The Parent Trap, is is also perhaps not the best tack to take; it proves nothing and gives the impression that you believe that movies are real.)
Children ought to have positive role models of all sexes, regardless of their family makeup. A heterosexual marriage certainly does not ensure that; nor does it absolve those parents of that obligation to provide outside adult role models.
The cherry-picking of examples (one child’s statements do not an argument make, if the article by FrauM on your website regarding transgender children is to be believed – be consistent in your content! [Edit - this is meant to point out the site’s inconsistency and not to invalidate the statements or experiences of transgender or any other children. It is inappropriate and dishonest to only listen to children and give their statements weight when the things they say seem to back up the arguments you are trying to make. That little girl’s experience is not to be invalidated, but neither can it be used to definitively say that all children raised in same-sex households feel that way.], loaded questions (as above), and hyperbole don’t need to be there, either. “[H]uman trafficking”? Heavens. Questionable rhetoric, and a dangerous misappropriation of the phrase at that. It is also inappropriate overall to attempt to influence the concrete details of others’ lives based on your own abstract musings and beliefs on the subject. To state that heterosexual marriage is “natural” marriage clearly implies that you consider any other marriage to be unnatural; again, while you are entitled to your beliefs, our government would be sorely amiss to give such backwards views force of law.
To the person above who has stated that they intend to link to this post during debates on this subject: I’d advise against it. It won’t persuade anyone who thinks about it critically, and will only serve to solidly reinforce the beliefs of those who disagree. I can personally vouch for that.
