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Inventing something different from marriage and calling it equal to marriage does not make it equal to marriage.
Aristotle is quoted as saying, “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”
The push to redefine marriage in federal legislation is a national conversation about competing rights.
On one side we have the people who are advocating for homosexual marriage offering adult-centred arguments. On the other side we have the people who are resisting changes to marriage offering child-centred arguments. Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights establishes beyond dispute that marriage and parenting is a compound right. Homosexual “marriage” is not a human right.[1]
Children cannot give informed consent for themselves, or for their participation in what amounts to a social experiment. As such, where children’s rights may compete with any adult’s, the children always must be society’s priority.
The much touted hate and vitriol prophesied by Bill Shorten [2] if he cooperated with the national plebiscite could be avoided if a basic assumption of intentions was everyone’s beginning point. It is unhelpful to assume that people like me disagreeing with the homosexual marriage agenda are motivated by fear, ignorance or hate. Deeply held concerns for promoting the best interests of children and avoiding their harm from deliberate circumstances is what really motivates my side of this debate.
Children of homosexual parents tell of the harms they suffered even though they loved their loving & capable parents:
“Now we are normalising a family structure where a child will always be deprived daily of one gender influence and the relationship with at least one natural parent. Our cultural narrative becomes one that, in essence, tells children that they have no right to the natural family structure or their biological parents, but that children simply exist for the satisfaction of adult desires.” – Katy Faust
“I grew up surrounded by women who said they didn’t need or want a man. Yet, as a little girl, I so desperately wanted a daddy. It is a strange and confusing thing to walk around with this deep-down unquenchable ache for a father, for a man, in a community that says that men are unnecessary.” – Heather Barwick
“As a dependent child and teen, I was not allowed to say anything that would hurt the feelings of the adults around me. If I did, I could face ostracism or worse. Due to media silencing, political correctness, LGBT lobbying efforts and loss of freedom of speech, it is very hard to tell my story. But I am not alone. Over 50 adult children from alternative households have contacted me. Very few will share their stories publicly.” – Dawn Stefanowicz
“This is not equality for children, this is equality for adults, and the very term ‘marriage equality’ actually offends me, because nobody is thinking about the consequence on the other side of the coin: what comes out of that union. And what comes out of that union is us.” – Millie Fontana-Fox
Well we’re thinking about children now, and by refusing to allow a plebiscite the Left have given us the time to properly assess the plentiful evidence of the negative impacts on children by the Left’s proposed changes to marriage.
Let’s talk about it intelligently and without choosing to be offended. Let’s have a child-centred conversation that’s based on evidence and not partisan prejudices.
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Marriage Is Unique In Nature
What is marriage? Let’s get the facts straight. Marriage was not created by government – it’s a natural institution. Men and women have committed to each other and cared for their offspring long before there was any state or any laws.
It’s a biological fact that only a male and female can create new life. The sociological truth is that only a man and a woman can give a child her mother and her father.
Homosexual marriage makes it impossible for children to have both a mum and a dad. That is a premeditated injustice again future children.
The famous anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss observed, “Marriage is a sociological institution with a biological foundation.” Across all of human history and culture it’s a nearly universal phenomenon that two individuals of opposite sexes establish a household and bear and raise children.
The government’s interest in marriage is not therapeutic affirmation of dignity. Dignity is not conferrable by law. All people intrinsically possess dignity, and governments cannot increase or diminish it. Government’s interest in marriage is to reinforce that biological foundation to help keep a man with his mate, for the sake of social stability and the children typically resulting from their union. Even a barren marriage can still give an adopted child a mother and a father relationship.
Homosexual relationships do not bring together the two halves of nature. They are a different kind of thing to that great project of marriage and family. This is not discrimination. It is plain differentiation.
“A same-sex relationship is different to a marriage, because marriage is at its heart about children, and providing those children with their biological parents. Recognising difference is not discrimination.” – Paddy Manning [3]
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How Does Homosexual Marriage Hurt Your Marriage?
Changing the definition of marriage is like a retrospective repeal of a contract. We enter into the social contract of marriage with it defined as one thing, and then the law substantially changes the nature of that thing. The honoured vocation of a man and a woman entering into the socially critical great project of the creation of a family, devolves into the bureaucratic endorsement of emotional attachment. It goes from the lofty investment into the next generation of citizens, to a narcissistic, adult-centred thing totally detached from children.
The distortion of marriage and family says the children of the future need not have a mother and a father and it does not matter – when it clearly does.
There is also deliberate injustice against future children – not by tragic circumstance, but by choice. Children born into the institution of homosexual marriage will miss out on either a biological mother or a father, or both – by our popular decree.
Our children’s education will also be hurt. If homosexuality becomes enshrined in marriage you must teach children that homosexual – bisexual, transsexual – behaviour is identical to the relationship of their mum and their dad. Under anti-discrimination law parents will have no power to push back. Homosexual marriage equals homosexual sex education.
It will also give the powerful homosexual lobby the legal high ground to silence all pastors, professionals and other conscientious objectors who dare challenge the new orthodoxy and say some sexual behaviour is right but some is not.
Statistically, in evidence presented by 100 scholars of marriage and family to the United States Supreme Court in 2015, there is an immediate drop in normal marriage rates (of opposite sex couples) of about 5%. Marriage is altogether devalued, as evidenced in every single jurisdiction in the world which has experimented with this madness.
Marriage goes from a noble and unique institution holding men and women together for the sake of the next generation, to little more than a participation certificate for sexual attraction.
“We need fathers to realise that responsibility does not end at conception. Too many fathers are M.I.A, too many fathers are AWOL, missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it.” – Former President Barack Obama [4]
Marriage will materially change, despite lesbian Senator Penny Wong’s worthless assurances redefinition won’t change anything.
“Fighting for gay marriage generally involves lying about what we are going to do with marriage when we get there – because we lie that the institution of marriage is not going to change, and that is a lie. The institution of marriage is going to change, and it should change. And again, I don’t think it should exist.” – Masha Gessen, lesbian activist [5]
“Same-sex marriage is a breathtakingly subversive idea.” – E.J. Graff, lesbian social historian [6]
“A middle ground might be to fight for same-sex marriage and its benefits and then, once granted, redefine the institution of marriage completely, to demand the right to marry not as a way of adhering to society’s moral codes but rather to debunk a myth and radically alter an archaic institution. [Legalising “homosexual marriage”] is also a chance to wholly transform the definition of family in American culture.” – Michelangelo Signorile, homosexual activist [7]
The homosexual “marriage” campaign is really about capturing the legal high ground from where the rest of the rainbow agenda can be implemented.
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Research Homosexual Marriage Affects Children
Let’s examine the evidence. Biology builds us into a structure where we have a mother and a father in our life. We know, as certainly as we know anything in social science, that a child does best – on average – when raised by biological married parents. That has been established beyond doubt over some 50 years of rigorous research. The optimal structure is the natural structure. These are simple facts that are not affected by feelings.
It follows that any new structure that breaks the biological bonds of a child with his mother or his father, is going to fall short of that ideal and harm children. That includes single parenting and blended families, whether a result of tragedies such as death or divorce. Observing this fact is not a detraction or criticism of anyone’s ability to parent. I have never met anyone who planned on depriving their child of their other biological parent before that child was even born.
Homosexual marriage is another way of breaking the biological bond. It’s a simple fact that two men cannot provide a mother to children in their home, nor can two women provide a father to children in their home. It is expected that the same kind of harm or disadvantage to children, and that is exactly what researchers find.
So what about the “vast amount” of research so often quoted in the media finding “no difference in outcomes”?
Well they are claiming there is no difference in outcomes for children of homosexual households compared to heterosexual households, and that is true if you’re comparing it to heterosexual broken family structures. The American Psychological Association even has a rule that researchers may not compare with the ideal of married biological parents! The comparisons therefore are unreliable, if not irrelevant. When compared to households of married biological parents of course homosexual parenting is detrimental, disadvantageous and in some ways harmful to children.
So what makes a useful and reliable study? The important thing is to have the gold standard of research. The 50-70 studies mentioned by the media to support their narrative are essentially worthless because they fail the academic standards of:
- An unbiased (truly random) sample
- Sufficiently large sample size to be statistically valid
- Representative of the whole population.
There are only 10 such studies in existence. The vast majority of these find quite significant disadvantage or harm when you do the right comparison of homosexual households and married biological homes.
“The longer social scientists study the question, the more evidence of harm is found, and the fact that children with same-sex parents suffer significant harm in that condition, compared to children with opposite-sex parents, particularly among same-sex parents who identify as married, has been established beyond reasonable doubt. Despite intense political bias to suppress the findings set forth herein, evidence from large, nationally-representative studies has demonstrated that children raised by same-sex parents, particularly those who identify as married, do not fare as well as those with opposite-sex parents, and many experience substantial harm.” – Sullins, Regnerus, Marks [8]
It takes a great deal of negligence and indifference to the welfare of the child to advocate this deliberate change to the institution of marriage. To create a family structure by law where it is inevitable that a child will be deprived of their biological mother or father – intentionally – is unconscionable.
Will we never stop finding new ways of harming children?
“This story had its beginnings in a wrongful belief that women could be separated from their babies and it would all be for the best… and struck at the most primal and sacred bond there is: the bond between a mother and her baby.” – Prime Minister Julia Gillard, apologising for forced adoptions 2013 [9]
And yet now we’re being asked to break that most primal sacred bond all over again and deprive a whole new cohort of their biological mother or father.
“Same sex ‘marriage’ forces us to choose between giving priority to children’s rights or to homosexual adult claims.” – Professor Margaret Somerville [10]
The tiny percentage of the population that experiences homosexual attraction already enjoy 100% of the same legal rights and status as any other couple in Australia. Tanya Plibersek MP agreed, saying, “We removed every piece of legal discrimination against gay men, lesbians and same-sex couples on the statute books,” in an interview two years ago. [11] We don’t need to overturn the foundation of society to affirm the equality that already exists. Homosexual marriage is not a human right. [12]
What really matters with marriage is giving every child their chance of a mum and a dad.
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