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Heritage
Foundation
Morning
Bell: The Marriage Debate Through a
Child’s Eyes
By Jennifer Marshall
March 25, 2013
Earlier
this month, 11-year-old Grace Evans
appeared before a panel of Minnesota lawmakers considering a
redefinition of marriage
in that state. She testified to the significance of her mother and
father and
the different contributions each makes to her life.
Then
she ended with a simple question: “Which
parent do I not need, my mom, or my dad?”
It’s
a question proponents of same-sex marriage
cannot answer.
This
week, attorneys will echo Grace when they
appear before the Supreme Court to defend two marriage laws defining
the
institution as the union of one man and one woman. The Court hears
arguments
Tuesday on California’s Proposition 8 and Wednesday on the federal
Defense of
Marriage Act.
Americans
are free to live and to love as we
choose. And we’ve learned to make do in many circumstances when, for
one reason
or another, a mother and father cannot permanently be together with the
children they’ve brought into this world.
But
we have continued to give unique status in
law to the union of a man and a woman—the only relationship that
produces
children—as a permanent, monogamous, and exclusive relationship. We
uphold this
ideal in the interest of children, of limited, constitutional
government, and
of America’s future.
Marriage
Matters for Children
Decades
of social science, including the most
recent and robust studies, confirm that children tend to do best when
raised by
their married mother and father. So it surprised many last Thursday
when the
American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) endorsed same-sex marriage,
challenging
the ideal that children should have a mom and a dad.
“Based
on ‘extensive research,’ this statement from
a scientific organization may seem authoritative,” writes Heritage
senior
analyst Jason Richwine, Ph.D. “In reality, however, the AAP’s position
is based
on ideology, not science.”
As
Dr. Richwine observes, “the bottom line is
that the literature on same-sex parenting is not conclusive enough to
generate
any policy prescriptions from social science alone. We just don’t know
nearly
as much as the AAP claims that we know.”
He
notes that “the AAP has a long track record
of using its air of scientific authority to make pronouncements on
ideological
issues” like gun control and Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion…
Read
the rest of the article at Heritage
Foundation
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