Most of the marriage equality plaintiffs going before the U.S. Supreme Court next week are parents, and the well-being of children is likely to be a big factor in the case. Let’s meet some of these intrepid families.
- NPR’s superlative Nina Totenberg profiles the plaintiffs in a 10-minute audio interview (and text, for those who prefer it). She observes: “Most have children and lead the typically harried lives of working parents. They say they didn’t set out to be pioneers. They consider themselves ‘accidental activists,’ meaning they filed lawsuits not to further a cause but because of the way the bans affected their lives.”
- The Associated Press gives us “Stories of life—love, children, death—woven through Supreme Court same-sex marriage cases,” starting with Pam Yorksmith’s middle-of-the night trip to the emergency room, “with her 9-month-old son coughing and laboring to breathe,” but the doctors refusing to treat him until they called Pam’s wife Nicole, his only legal parent.
- LGBTQ Nation has a series of interviews with the plaintiffs, including parents April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, Brittani Henry and Brittni Rogers, Johno Espejo and Matthew Mansell, Kelly Noe and Kelly McCracken, and David Michener and William Ives
- TIME gives us an interview, not of the plaintiffs, but of the same-sex military spouses who are part of a friend-of-the-court brief filed by former military officials in the case, showing how “the patchwork of marriage laws around the country hurts military families and threatens national security.”
- Gary Gates, the preeminent demographer of LGBTQ life, explains “Why the American Family Needs Same-Sex Parents.” He says, “Same-sex couples are three times more likely than their different-sex counterparts to be raising adopted or foster children. Among married couples, same-sex couples are five times more likely. In states where same-sex couples can legally marry … adopted and foster children there are nearly 10 times more likely than children in general to have same-sex parents. As marriage becomes more widely available for same-sex couples, they will likely expand their already disproportionate role as parents to some of the nation’s neediest children.” I agree with this as a sociological argument—but will add that we same-sex couples shouldn’t take this to mean we’re “failing” if we choose to bear children ourselves. Individual couples have to do what’s right for them—even if the overall picture turns out (as seems likely) to be what Gates predicts.
- Finally, as this story of a Wisconsin couple makes clear, even winning the right to marry doesn’t guarantee parental recognition. Marriage is one battle, but there are more to be won.