Marriage and Equality – How natural marriage promotes equality for children
By Jennifer Johnson, Associate Director, the Ruth Institute
“Gay marriage” supporters aren’t the only ones who care about equality. The ancient Christian teachings on sex and marriage ensure that every child is raised with his or her own married mother and father, except for an unavoidable tragedy. That’s
a kind of equality people don’t talk about. And we need to talk more about it.
I have observed three ways that natural marriage upholds equality for children.
First way:
Every child lives with his own married mother and father in a unified home, except for an unavoidable tragedy.
The Christian teaching on marriage and sex creates “structural” equality among children—they’re all with their own parents. None of them are shuttling
back and forth between “two homes.” None of them have had a genetic parent/family severed from them due to being conceived as a result of anonymous
sperm or egg donation. None of them have birth records that have been falsified to accommodate a non-genetic parent’s wishes.
I first saw this form of equality one day when talking to Dr. Morse about her childhood. I asked her, “How many kids had divorced parents when you were
young?” She said that she could think of one. So my mind pictured the playground, with her and all her schoolmates on it. I imagined each of them with
a diagram of their family structure above their heads, in a little bubble like a cartoon. All of the kids had an intact family, except for one.
Second way:
The acceptance of all family members should be a two-way street between parents and their children.
Natural marriage creates equality between the generations. Let me use an anecdote from my own life to illustrate what I mean.
When I was growing up, my parents were divorced, so I spent my entire childhood doing the back-and-forth thing between “two homes.” They also both remarried.
So, in each of those places, I had a male father figure. So, I had two half-time dads, a dad, and a step-dad.
I was about twelve or so when I consciously understood that my two half-time dads did not equal one dad. To a casual observer, it might seem as though
me being with each of them for half-time would be the same as having one whole dad.
But it was not.
I am not 100% sure how I came to this realization, but I do remember consciously thinking it as I stood in the driveway one day. It might have been because
I was an eye-witness to what a full-time dad looked like. My step-dad was a full-time dad to my half-sister. She lived with both her married parents,
my mom, and my step-dad. I could see quite clearly that what she had and what I had were two very different things.
Family photos of other people’s whole families were on the walls, but not of my whole family. Family photos were taken, but not with me in them.
I was the only one who had divided Christmases, divided birthdays. I’ve seen this referred to as “Two Christmases,” or “Two birthdays” in some divorce
literature. These are euphemisms. My dad wasn’t welcome on Christmas morning, and my mom wasn’t welcome on Christmas Eve. I don’t think either of them
would have come, had they been invited. They were too busy with their new families. And when I got a little older and my parents lived further apart,
I traveled alone during the holidays to see each of them. Nobody else had to do that.
Third way:
Everybody’s pain and grief caused by injustice deserves to be expressed, acknowledged, healed, and prevented so that others don’t experience the same thing.
Not only does the inequality happen on the level of the family, it happens in the wider culture. The child lives under a burden and is not allowed to feel
anything negative about the particular family form that was chosen for him. If he feels grief about missing half of himself, it is “disenfranchised
grief,” grief that is not acceptable to the wider culture.
Our culture is profoundly concerned about adults and their happiness in their marital, sexual and reproductive choices. But we fail to understand that
when we redefine all of those things to expand those choices, the children must live under structural inequalities, double standards and unreciprocated
demands.
Read Jennifer Johnson’ whole report on Marriage and Equality. We can defend man-woman marriage! We can defend the rights of children to their own parents! Get the arguments you need by downloading the full report Marriage and Equality on your Kindle for $2.99. Or, purchase a physical copy of this brand new Report here.