http://www.religiouscoalitionformarriage.org/html/top_ten.php
Top 10 Social Scientific Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage (SSM)

7. Sexual fidelity

One of the biggest threats that SSM poses to marriage is that it would
probably undercut the norm of sexual fidelity in marriage.

1. Children hunger for their biological parents

2. Children need fathers

3. Children need mothers

4. Inadequate evidence on SS couple parenting

5. Children raised in SS homes experience gender and sexual disorders

6. Vive la difference

7. Sexual fidelity

8. Marriage, procreation, and the fertility implosion

9. For the sake of the children.

10. Women & marriage domesticate men.

http://www.religiouscoalitionformarriage.org/html/top_ten.php



Top 10 Social Scientific Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage (SSM)


A large and growing body of social scientific evidence indicates that
the intact, married family is best for children. In particular, see
work by David Popenoe, Linda Waite, Maggie Gallagher, Sara McLanahan,
David Blankenhorn, Paul Amato, and Alan Booth. This statement from Sara
McLahanan, a sociologist at Princeton University, is representative:
"If we were asked to design a system for making sure that
children's basic needs were met, we would probably come up with
something quite similar to the two-parent ideal. Such a design, in
theory, would not only ensure that children had access to the time and
money of two adults, it also would provide a system of checks and
balances that promoted quality parenting. The fact that both parents
have a biological connection to the child would increase the likelihood
that the parents would identify with the child and be willing to
sacrifice for that child, and it would reduce the likelihood that
either parent would abuse the child."
* Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur. 1994. Growing Up with a Single
Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. Harvard University Press. p. 38.

1. Children hunger for their biological parents

SS couples using IVF or surrogate mothers deliberately create a class
of children who will live apart from their mother or father. Yale Child
Study Center psychiatrist Kyle Pruett reports that children of IVF
often ask their single or lesbian mothers about their fathers, asking
their mothers questions like the following: "Mommy, what did you do
with my daddy?" "Can I write him a letter?" "Has he ever seen
me?" "Didn't you like him? Didn't he like me?" Elizabeth
Marquardt reports that children of divorce often report similar
feelings about their non-custodial parent, usually the father.
* Kyle Pruett. 2000. Fatherneed. Broadway. p. 204.
* Elizabeth Marquardt. 2004. The Moral and Spiritual Lives of Children
of Divorce. Forthcoming.

2. Children need fathers

If SSM becomes common, most SS couples with children would be lesbians.
This means that we would have yet more children being raised apart from
fathers. Among other things, we know that fathers excel in reducing
antisocial behavior/delinquency in boys and sexual activity in girls.
What is fascinating is that fathers exercise a unique social and
biological influence on their children. For instance, a recent study of
father absence on girls found that girls who grew up apart from their
biological father were much more likely to experience early puberty and
a teen pregnancy than girls who spent their entire childhood in an
intact family. This study, along with David Popenoe's work, suggests
that a father's pheromones influence the biological development of
his daughter, that a strong marriage provides a model for girls of what
to look for in a man, and gives them the confidence to resist the
sexual entreaties of their boyfriends.
* Ellis, Bruce J., Bates, John E., Dodge, Kenneth A., Fergusson, David
M., Horwood, L. John, Pettit, Gregory S., & Woodward, Lianne. Does
Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual
Activity and Teenage Pregnancy?. Child Development, 74, 801-821.
* David Popenoe. 1996. Life Without Father. Harvard.

3. Children need mothers

Although gay men are less likely to have children than lesbians, there
will be and are gay men raising children. There will be even more if
SSM is legalized. These households deny children a mother. Among other
things, mothers excel in providing children with emotional security and
in reading the physical and emotional cues of infants. Obviously, they
also give their daughters unique counsel as they confront the physical,
emotional, and social challenges associated with puberty and
adolescence. Stanford psychologist Eleanor Maccoby summarizes much of
this literature in her book The Two Sexes. See also Steven Rhoads'
book, which comes out in the fall.
* Eleanor Maccoby. 1998. The Two Sexes. Harvard.
* Steven Rhoads. 2004. Taking Sex Differences Seriously. Encounter.

4. Inadequate evidence on SS couple parenting

A number of leading professional associations have asserted that there
are "no effects" of SS couple parenting on children. But the
research in this area is quite preliminary; most of the studies are
done by advocates and most suffer from serious methodological problems.
Sociologist Steven Nock of the University of Virginia, who is agnostic
on SSM, offered this review of the literature on gay parenting as an
expert witness for a Canadian Court considering SSM: "Through this
analysis I draw my conclusions that 1) all of the articles I reviewed
contained at least one fatal flaw of design or execution; and 2) not a
single one of those studies was conducted according to general accepted
standards of scientific research." This is not exactly the kind of
social scientific evidence you would want to launch a major family
experiment.
*Steven Nock. 2001. Affidavit to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice
regarding Hedy Halpern et al. University of Virginia Sociology
Department.


5. Children raised in SS homes experience gender and sexual disorders

Although the evidence on child outcomes is sketchy, the evidence does
suggest that children raised by lesbians or gay men are more likely to
experience gender and sexual disorders. Judith Stacey-an advocate for
SSM and a sociologist-reviewed the literature on child outcomes and
found the following: "lesbian parenting may free daughters and sons
from a broad but uneven range of traditional gender prescriptions."
Her conclusion here is based on studies that show that sons of lesbians
are less masculine and that daughters of lesbians are more masculine.
She also found that a "significantly greater proportion of young
adult children raised by lesbian mothers than those raised by
heterosexual mothers... reported having a homoerotic relationship."
Stacey also observes that children of lesbians are more likely to
report homoerotic attractions. Her review must be view judiciously,
given the methodological flaws detailed by Professor Nock in the
literature as a whole. Nevertheless, theses studies give some credence
to conservative concerns about the effects of SS couple parenting.
*Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz. 2001. "(How) Does the Sexual
Orientation of Parents Matter?" American Sociological Review 66:
159-183. See especially pp. 168-171.

6. Vive la difference

If SSM is institutionalized, our society would take yet another step
down the road of de-gendering marriage. There would me more use of
gender-neutral language like "partners" and-more
importantly-more social/cultural pressures to neuter our thinking and
our behaviors in marriage. But marriages typically thrive when spouses
specialize in gender-typical ways and are attentive to the gendered
needs and aspirations of their husband or wife. For instance, women are
happier when their husband earns the lion's share of the household
income. Likewise, couples are less likely to divorce when the wife
concentrates on childrearing and the husband concentrates on
breadwinning, as University of Virginia Psychologist Mavis Hetherington
admits.
* E. Mavis Hetherington & John Kelly. 2002. For Better of For Worse.
Norton. P. 31.
* Steven Rhoads. 2004. Taking Sex Differences Seriously. Encounter.

7. Sexual fidelity

One of the biggest threats that SSM poses to marriage is that it would
probably undercut the norm of sexual fidelity in marriage. In the first
edition of his book in defense of marriage, Virtually Normal, Andrew
Sullivan wrote: "There is more likely to be greater understanding of
the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man
and a woman." This line of thinking, of course, were it incorporated
into marriage and telegraphed to the public in sitcoms, magazines, and
other mass media, would do enormous harm to the norm of sexual fidelity
in marriage. One recent study of civil unions and marriages in Vermont
suggests this is a very real concern. More than 79 percent of
heterosexual married men and women, along with lesbians in civil
unions, reported that they strongly valued sexual fidelity. Only about
50 percent of gay men in civil unions valued sexual fidelity.
* Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solomon. 2003. Civil Unions in the State
of Vermont: A Report on the First Year. University of Vermont
Department of Psychology.
* David McWhirter and Andrew Mattison. 1984. The Male Couple. Prentice
Hall. P. 252.

8. Marriage, procreation, and the fertility implosion

Traditionally, marriage and procreation have been tightly connected to
one another. Indeed, from a sociological perspective, the primary
purpose that marriage serves is to secure a mother and father for each
child who is born into a society. Now, however, many Westerners see
marriage in primarily emotional terms. Among other things, the danger
with this mentality is that it fosters an anti-natalist mindset that
fuels population decline, which in turn puts tremendous social,
political, and economic strains on the larger society. SSM would only
further undercut the procreative norm long associated with marriage
insofar as it establishes that there is no necessary link between
procreation and marriage. This was spelled out in the Goodridge
decision in Massachusetts, where the majority opinion dismissed the
procreative meaning of marriage. It is no accident that the countries
that have legalized or are considering legalizing SSM have some of the
lowest fertility rates in the world. For instance, the Netherlands,
Sweden, and Canada have birthrates that hover around 1.6 children per
woman-well below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1.
* For national fertility rates
* For the growing disconnect between marriage and procreation

9. For the sake of the children.

The divorce and sexual revolutions of the last four decades has
seriously undercut the norm that couples should get and stay married if
they intend to have children, are expecting a child, or already have
children. Political scientist James Q. Wilson reports that the
introduction of no-fault divorce further destabilized marriage by
weakening the legal and cultural meaning of the marriage contract.
George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate and an economist, found that the
widespread availability of contraception and abortion in the 1960s and
1970s, and the sexual revolution they enabled, made it easier for men
to abandon women they got pregnant, since they could always blame their
girlfriends for not using contraception or procuring an abortion. It is
plausible to suspect that SSM would have similar consequences for
marriage, that is, it would further destabilize the norm that adults
should sacrifice to get and stay married for the sake of their
children. Why? SSM would institutionalize the idea that children do not
need both their mother and their father. This would be particularly
important for men, who are more likely to abandon their children. SSM
would make it even easier than it already is for men to rationalize
their abandonment of their children. After all, they could tell
themselves, our society, which affirms lesbian couples raising
children, believes that children do not need a father. So, they might
tell themselves, I do not need to marry or stay married to the mother
of my children.
* James Q. Wilson. 2002. The Marriage Problem. Basic. PP. 175-177.
* George A. Akerlof, Janet L. Yellen, and Michael L. Katz. 1996. "An
Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States."
Quarterly Journal of Economics CXI: 277-317.

10. Women & marriage domesticate men.

Men who are married earn more, work harder, drink less, live longer,
spend more time attending religious services, and are more sexually
faithful. They also see their testosterone levels drop, especially when
they have children in the home. If the distinctive sexual patterns of
"committed" gay couples are any indication (see above), it is
unlikely that SSM would domesticate men in the way that heterosexual
marriage does. It is also extremely unlikely that the biological
effects of heterosexual marriage on men would also be found in SSM.
Thus, gay activists like Andrew Sullivan who argue that gay marriage
will domesticate gay men are-in all likelihood-clinging to a
foolish hope. This foolish hope does not justify yet another effort to
meddle with marriage.
* Steve Nock. 1998. Marriage in Men's Lives. Oxford.
* Institute for American Values. 2003. Hardwired to Connect. P. 17.

http://www.religiouscoalitionformarriage.org/html/top_ten.php



Top 10 Social Scientific Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage (SSM)

Top 10 Social Scientific Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage (SSM)
1. Children hunger for their biological parents

2. Children need fathers

3. Children need mothers

4. Inadequate evidence on SS couple parenting

5. Children raised in SS homes experience gender and sexual disorders

6. Vive la difference

7. Sexual fidelity
One of the biggest threats that SSM poses to marriage is that it would
probably undercut the norm of sexual fidelity in marriage.

8. Marriage, procreation, and the fertility implosion

9. For the sake of the children.

10. Women & marriage domesticate men.

Top 10 Social Scientific Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage (SSM)

http://www.religiouscoalitionformarriage.org/html/top_ten.php



Top 10 Social Scientific Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage (SSM)


A large and growing body of social scientific evidence indicates that
the intact, married family is best for children. In particular, see
work by David Popenoe, Linda Waite, Maggie Gallagher, Sara McLanahan,
David Blankenhorn, Paul Amato, and Alan Booth. This statement from Sara
McLahanan, a sociologist at Princeton University, is representative:
"If we were asked to design a system for making sure that
children's basic needs were met, we would probably come up with
something quite similar to the two-parent ideal. Such a design, in
theory, would not only ensure that children had access to the time and
money of two adults, it also would provide a system of checks and
balances that promoted quality parenting. The fact that both parents
have a biological connection to the child would increase the likelihood
that the parents would identify with the child and be willing to
sacrifice for that child, and it would reduce the likelihood that
either parent would abuse the child."
* Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur. 1994. Growing Up with a Single
Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. Harvard University Press. p. 38.

1. Children hunger for their biological parents

SS couples using IVF or surrogate mothers deliberately create a class
of children who will live apart from their mother or father. Yale Child
Study Center psychiatrist Kyle Pruett reports that children of IVF
often ask their single or lesbian mothers about their fathers, asking
their mothers questions like the following: "Mommy, what did you do
with my daddy?" "Can I write him a letter?" "Has he ever seen
me?" "Didn't you like him? Didn't he like me?" Elizabeth
Marquardt reports that children of divorce often report similar
feelings about their non-custodial parent, usually the father.
* Kyle Pruett. 2000. Fatherneed. Broadway. p. 204.
* Elizabeth Marquardt. 2004. The Moral and Spiritual Lives of Children
of Divorce. Forthcoming.

2. Children need fathers

If SSM becomes common, most SS couples with children would be lesbians.
This means that we would have yet more children being raised apart from
fathers. Among other things, we know that fathers excel in reducing
antisocial behavior/delinquency in boys and sexual activity in girls.
What is fascinating is that fathers exercise a unique social and
biological influence on their children. For instance, a recent study of
father absence on girls found that girls who grew up apart from their
biological father were much more likely to experience early puberty and
a teen pregnancy than girls who spent their entire childhood in an
intact family. This study, along with David Popenoe's work, suggests
that a father's pheromones influence the biological development of
his daughter, that a strong marriage provides a model for girls of what
to look for in a man, and gives them the confidence to resist the
sexual entreaties of their boyfriends.
* Ellis, Bruce J., Bates, John E., Dodge, Kenneth A., Fergusson, David
M., Horwood, L. John, Pettit, Gregory S., & Woodward, Lianne. Does
Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual
Activity and Teenage Pregnancy?. Child Development, 74, 801-821.
* David Popenoe. 1996. Life Without Father. Harvard.

3. Children need mothers

Although gay men are less likely to have children than lesbians, there
will be and are gay men raising children. There will be even more if
SSM is legalized. These households deny children a mother. Among other
things, mothers excel in providing children with emotional security and
in reading the physical and emotional cues of infants. Obviously, they
also give their daughters unique counsel as they confront the physical,
emotional, and social challenges associated with puberty and
adolescence. Stanford psychologist Eleanor Maccoby summarizes much of
this literature in her book The Two Sexes. See also Steven Rhoads'
book, which comes out in the fall.
* Eleanor Maccoby. 1998. The Two Sexes. Harvard.
* Steven Rhoads. 2004. Taking Sex Differences Seriously. Encounter.

4. Inadequate evidence on SS couple parenting

A number of leading professional associations have asserted that there
are "no effects" of SS couple parenting on children. But the
research in this area is quite preliminary; most of the studies are
done by advocates and most suffer from serious methodological problems.
Sociologist Steven Nock of the University of Virginia, who is agnostic
on SSM, offered this review of the literature on gay parenting as an
expert witness for a Canadian Court considering SSM: "Through this
analysis I draw my conclusions that 1) all of the articles I reviewed
contained at least one fatal flaw of design or execution; and 2) not a
single one of those studies was conducted according to general accepted
standards of scientific research." This is not exactly the kind of
social scientific evidence you would want to launch a major family
experiment.
*Steven Nock. 2001. Affidavit to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice
regarding Hedy Halpern et al. University of Virginia Sociology
Department.


5. Children raised in SS homes experience gender and sexual disorders

Although the evidence on child outcomes is sketchy, the evidence does
suggest that children raised by lesbians or gay men are more likely to
experience gender and sexual disorders. Judith Stacey-an advocate for
SSM and a sociologist-reviewed the literature on child outcomes and
found the following: "lesbian parenting may free daughters and sons
from a broad but uneven range of traditional gender prescriptions."
Her conclusion here is based on studies that show that sons of lesbians
are less masculine and that daughters of lesbians are more masculine.
She also found that a "significantly greater proportion of young
adult children raised by lesbian mothers than those raised by
heterosexual mothers... reported having a homoerotic relationship."
Stacey also observes that children of lesbians are more likely to
report homoerotic attractions. Her review must be view judiciously,
given the methodological flaws detailed by Professor Nock in the
literature as a whole. Nevertheless, theses studies give some credence
to conservative concerns about the effects of SS couple parenting.
*Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz. 2001. "(How) Does the Sexual
Orientation of Parents Matter?" American Sociological Review 66:
159-183. See especially pp. 168-171.

6. Vive la difference

If SSM is institutionalized, our society would take yet another step
down the road of de-gendering marriage. There would me more use of
gender-neutral language like "partners" and-more
importantly-more social/cultural pressures to neuter our thinking and
our behaviors in marriage. But marriages typically thrive when spouses
specialize in gender-typical ways and are attentive to the gendered
needs and aspirations of their husband or wife. For instance, women are
happier when their husband earns the lion's share of the household
income. Likewise, couples are less likely to divorce when the wife
concentrates on childrearing and the husband concentrates on
breadwinning, as University of Virginia Psychologist Mavis Hetherington
admits.
* E. Mavis Hetherington & John Kelly. 2002. For Better of For Worse.
Norton. P. 31.
* Steven Rhoads. 2004. Taking Sex Differences Seriously. Encounter.

7. Sexual fidelity

One of the biggest threats that SSM poses to marriage is that it would
probably undercut the norm of sexual fidelity in marriage. In the first
edition of his book in defense of marriage, Virtually Normal, Andrew
Sullivan wrote: "There is more likely to be greater understanding of
the need for extramarital outlets between two men than between a man
and a woman." This line of thinking, of course, were it incorporated
into marriage and telegraphed to the public in sitcoms, magazines, and
other mass media, would do enormous harm to the norm of sexual fidelity
in marriage. One recent study of civil unions and marriages in Vermont
suggests this is a very real concern. More than 79 percent of
heterosexual married men and women, along with lesbians in civil
unions, reported that they strongly valued sexual fidelity. Only about
50 percent of gay men in civil unions valued sexual fidelity.
* Esther Rothblum and Sondra Solomon. 2003. Civil Unions in the State
of Vermont: A Report on the First Year. University of Vermont
Department of Psychology.
* David McWhirter and Andrew Mattison. 1984. The Male Couple. Prentice
Hall. P. 252.

8. Marriage, procreation, and the fertility implosion

Traditionally, marriage and procreation have been tightly connected to
one another. Indeed, from a sociological perspective, the primary
purpose that marriage serves is to secure a mother and father for each
child who is born into a society. Now, however, many Westerners see
marriage in primarily emotional terms. Among other things, the danger
with this mentality is that it fosters an anti-natalist mindset that
fuels population decline, which in turn puts tremendous social,
political, and economic strains on the larger society. SSM would only
further undercut the procreative norm long associated with marriage
insofar as it establishes that there is no necessary link between
procreation and marriage. This was spelled out in the Goodridge
decision in Massachusetts, where the majority opinion dismissed the
procreative meaning of marriage. It is no accident that the countries
that have legalized or are considering legalizing SSM have some of the
lowest fertility rates in the world. For instance, the Netherlands,
Sweden, and Canada have birthrates that hover around 1.6 children per
woman-well below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1.
* For national fertility rates
* For the growing disconnect between marriage and procreation

9. For the sake of the children.

The divorce and sexual revolutions of the last four decades has
seriously undercut the norm that couples should get and stay married if
they intend to have children, are expecting a child, or already have
children. Political scientist James Q. Wilson reports that the
introduction of no-fault divorce further destabilized marriage by
weakening the legal and cultural meaning of the marriage contract.
George Akerlof, a Nobel laureate and an economist, found that the
widespread availability of contraception and abortion in the 1960s and
1970s, and the sexual revolution they enabled, made it easier for men
to abandon women they got pregnant, since they could always blame their
girlfriends for not using contraception or procuring an abortion. It is
plausible to suspect that SSM would have similar consequences for
marriage, that is, it would further destabilize the norm that adults
should sacrifice to get and stay married for the sake of their
children. Why? SSM would institutionalize the idea that children do not
need both their mother and their father. This would be particularly
important for men, who are more likely to abandon their children. SSM
would make it even easier than it already is for men to rationalize
their abandonment of their children. After all, they could tell
themselves, our society, which affirms lesbian couples raising
children, believes that children do not need a father. So, they might
tell themselves, I do not need to marry or stay married to the mother
of my children.
* James Q. Wilson. 2002. The Marriage Problem. Basic. PP. 175-177.
* George A. Akerlof, Janet L. Yellen, and Michael L. Katz. 1996. "An
Analysis of Out-of-Wedlock Childbearing in the United States."
Quarterly Journal of Economics CXI: 277-317.

10. Women & marriage domesticate men.

Men who are married earn more, work harder, drink less, live longer,
spend more time attending religious services, and are more sexually
faithful. They also see their testosterone levels drop, especially when
they have children in the home. If the distinctive sexual patterns of
"committed" gay couples are any indication (see above), it is
unlikely that SSM would domesticate men in the way that heterosexual
marriage does. It is also extremely unlikely that the biological
effects of heterosexual marriage on men would also be found in SSM.
Thus, gay activists like Andrew Sullivan who argue that gay marriage
will domesticate gay men are-in all likelihood-clinging to a
foolish hope. This foolish hope does not justify yet another effort to
meddle with marriage.
* Steve Nock. 1998. Marriage in Men's Lives. Oxford.
* Institute for American Values. 2003. Hardwired to Connect. P. 17.

http://www.religiouscoalitionformarriage.org/html/top_ten.php
Top 10 Social Scientific Arguments Against Same Sex Marriage (SSM)

A large and growing body of social scientific evidence indicates that
the intact, married family is best for children. In particular, see
work by David Popenoe, Linda Waite, Maggie Gallagher, Sara McLanahan,
David Blankenhorn, Paul Amato, and Alan Booth. This statement from Sara
McLahanan, a sociologist at Princeton University, is representative:
"If we were asked to design a system for making sure that
children's basic needs were met, we would probably come up with
something quite similar to the two-parent ideal. Such a design, in
theory, would not only ensure that children had access to the time and
money of two adults, it also would provide a system of checks and
balances that promoted quality parenting. The fact that both parents
have a biological connection to the child would increase the likelihood
that the parents would identify with the child and be willing to
sacrifice for that child, and it would reduce the likelihood that
either parent would abuse the child."
* Sara McLanahan and Gary Sandefur. 1994. Growing Up with a Single
Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. Harvard University Press. p. 38.

1. Children hunger for their biological parents

SS couples using IVF or surrogate mothers deliberately create a class
of children who will live apart from their mother or father.

Yale Child
Study Center psychiatrist Kyle Pruett reports that children of IVF
often ask their single or lesbian mothers about their fathers, asking
their mothers questions like the following: "Mommy, what did you do
with my daddy?" "Can I write him a letter?" "Has he ever seen
me?" "Didn't you like him? Didn't he like me?" Elizabeth
Marquardt reports that children of divorce often report similar
feelings about their non-custodial parent, usually the father.
* Kyle Pruett. 2000. Fatherneed. Broadway. p. 204.
* Elizabeth Marquardt. 2004. The Moral and Spiritual Lives of Children
of Divorce. Forthcoming.

2. Children need fathers

If SSM becomes common, most SS couples with children would be lesbians.