Under the U.S Constitution as written and for more than a century interpreted, the definition of marriage and family was simply none of the federal government’s constitutional business. The limited scope of the federal government was described by James Madison: "In the first place, it is to be remembered, that the general [i.e., federal] government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws: its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any." It was understood that local communities should be able to make and administer laws for interpersonal relationships as the people in each community desired.
We looked last week at how the essential nature of old-fashioned marriage—the traditional, uncompromising, no-fingers crossed, for better or worse commitment to the well-being of a particular person of the opposite sex—provides two very important benefits to the state: (1) the state benefits from more people being born to provide workers, consumers, soldiers, teachers, etc., and (2) the state benefits if we become better humans, a natural consequence of such a marriage. Now let’s look at the other side of the coin: what does the state lose when the family structure does not fit this traditional mold?
Imagine that decades of studies and analysis had established the following to be true of houses painted blue:
- Children living in blue houses consistently have lower grades than children in houses of other colors.
- Children living in blue houses are rated by their peers as being less pleasant to be around than children in houses of other colors.
- In any given year, teenagers living in blue houses are three times more likely to need psychological help than teenagers in houses of other colors.
- Children living in blue houses have more psychological problems than children who lost a parent to death.
- Children living in blue houses are at greater risk to experience injury, asthma, headaches and speech defects than children in houses of other colors.
- Children living in blue houses are at greater risk to experience injury, asthma, headaches and speech defects than children in houses of other colors
- After a house is painted blue, children in that house are fifty percent more likely to develop health problems.
- Children in houses of other colors are 20% to 35% more physically healthy than those living in blue houses.
There is another alarming trend in house paint. Research has shown that medical, psychological, and relational pathology within gray homes is more prevalent than in the general population. An objective synthesis of the clinical and research literature derived from hundreds of sources revealed the following scientific findings:
- More than one-third of the people in gray houses are substance abusers.
- Forty percent of adolescents in gray houses report suicidal histories.
- People in gray houses are more likely than those in other homes to have mental health concerns, such as eating disorders, personality disorders, paranoia, depression and anxiety.
- Relationships in gray houses are more violent than those in other houses.
- Despite knowing the risks of AIDS, people in gray homes repeatedly and pathologically continue to engage in unsafe sex practices.
- People in gray houses represent the highest number of sexually transmitted diseases.
- Some of these problematic behaviors and psychological dysfunctions occur in gray homes at about three times the prevalence in other homes.
Until about 60 years ago, the law made it very hard to paint your house blue. Now, about 50% of homes with children in them are painted blue. And as you might imagine, gray houses were absolutely outlawed…until 50 years ago. Laws against painting your house gray started being relaxed in some parts of the country in 1962. Since that time and in various states where such laws still existed, various state courts and even the Supreme Court of the U.S. have ruled that it is against the law to have laws against painting your house gray!
Alright, enough with the analogies. Blue houses are broken homes or single parent homes. Divorce used to be fairly rare, frowned upon, and legally difficult to obtain; the law took marriage vows seriously and held people to them unless one of the parties had really gone bad. Gray houses are homosexual people and behavior. Here are some of the sources:
David Popenoe, Life Without Father: Compelling New Evidence That Fatherhood and Marriage are Indispensable of the Good of Children and Society, (New York: The Free Press, 1996), p. 197.
“Shuttle Diplomacy,” Psychology Today, July/August 1993, p. 15.
Kristin Anderson Moore et al., “Marriage From a Child’s Perspective: How Does Family Structure Affect Children, and What Can We Do About It?” Child Trends Research Brief, June 2002, p. 1.
James E. Phelan, MSW, Neil Whitehead, Ph.D. and Philip M. Sutton, National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality Scientific Advisory Committee, “What Research Shows: NARTH’s Response to the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Claims on Homosexuality,” Journal of Human Sexuality, 1 (2009): 1-128.
The following findings didn’t precisely fit my blue house gray house analogies, but are additional facts (a little older data, but poignant) also worth noting:
There is no substitute for mom and dad: “Seventy percent of juveniles in state reform institutions grew up single parent or no-parent situations.” Beck, Allen, Survey of Youth in Custody 1987
Biological connection with both parents (impossible in homosexual couples) matters: “Step-parenthood per se remains the single most powerful risk factor for child abuse that has yet been identified.” (Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, Homicide, p. 87-88)
All sorts of laws are enacted every year with “it’s for the children” as justification, so why have we eliminated laws that protected children from the substantially increased “blue” and “gray” risks described above?
These facts make good old-fashioned, man and woman, committed for life marriage the most important thing the state could do “for the children!”One can argue about details. Politically-motivated research is being pursued full-force these days to try to explain away the above, unsuccessfully. One piece claims that [s]ame-sex couples are just as good at raising well-adjusted, healthy kids as heterosexual couples according a new study published in the February issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family.” The study says that “they looked everywhere” and “there is no research” to support the belief “that children need both a mother and a father to do well.” Not sure what sort of research they were looking for, because they apparently missed all of what I cited. (Maybe they didn’t have internet access.)
Why have these laws changed in a direction that places children at risk? Human nature is still a powerful thing. We want what we want, and we want it now, and we don’t really care who it affects. The current and future state of gay rights started in blue houses, not gray houses. "The theory that everything is good had become an orgy of everything that was bad." G.K. Chesterton
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