Last month, I wrote, “It used to be that ‘Think of the children!’ was an argument against marriage equality. Now that’s an argument for it,” as ruling after ruling after ruling for marriage equality has heavily weighed the interests of children. A Reuters article yesterday covered the same theme.
Joan Biskupic of Reuters writes, “With legal battles over gay marriage simmering across the United States, proponents are showcasing a group they had once sidelined: children. . . . The lawyers’ approach marks a strategic shift from several years ago, when proponents of gay marriage kept the focus away from children, if there were any.”
She marks the U.S. Supreme Court of U.S. v. Windsor, which struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act, as the turning point. I’d probably put it a little earlier than that, as marriage equality activists analysed and regrouped after the 2008 defeat of California’s Proposition 8 and a strategy that neglected to include same-sex couples and our children.
Biskupic does, as a journalist should, look at the stance of marriage equality opponents. I’m a little miffed, though, that Reuters (I’m guessing it was one of Biskupic’s editors) included the section heading, “‘Unsettled’ Social Science” in reference to opponents’ view of studies about children of same-sex parents. Biskupic’s actual sentence using the phrase was, “In June, when a U.S. appeals court ruled against Utah’s marriage ban, Judge Carlos Lucero wrote that the best that gay-marriage opponents can say is that ‘the social science is unsettled.'” To me, it’s a little different to have a heading emphasizing that something is unsettled, versus one that says, “At Best, ‘Unsettled.”
Even “at best, unsettled” is being generous. As Biskupic herself notes, U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Friedman of Michigan, in his marriage ruling, “said that research questioning the competence of same-sex parents represents “a fringe viewpoint that is rejected … across a variety of social science fields.”
And as U.S. District Court Judge Michael McShane wrote in striking down Oregon’s marriage ban, “The realization that same-gender couples make just as good parents as opposite-gender couples is supported by more than just common sense; it is also supported by ‘the vast majority of scientific studies’ examining the issue” (quoting the American Psychological Association’s amici brief in the case). Most recently, this study adds to the list.
I find it strange, then, that Reuters went with a section heading that could easily be misinterpreted by someone scanning the article. Nevertheless, this is a good read on the important role we parents and our children are playing in the fight for equality.