The Supreme Court’s Misuse of Children to Justify Same-Sex Marriage

July 2, 2013

by Robert R. Reilly
Crisis Magazine

Photo credit: Reuters/photo by Jonathan Alcorn 2012

 

Of all the misconceived nonsense in the recent Windsor v. United States ruling, perhaps the most egregious was Justice Anthony Kennedy’s insinuation that “the children made me do it.” Windsor declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional because it defined marriage as being between one man and one woman. Why was DOMA a problem for children? Justice Kennedy said that by denying same-sex couples legitimacy, DOMA “humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples.” The Act “makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Thus Justice Kennedy portrays himself as riding to the children’s rescue.
 

This strategy is reminiscent of President Barack Obama’s misuse of the military to justify same-sex “marriage.” First, he forced the repeal of “don’t ask don’t tell” on the reluctant military, and then used that very same military as the excuse for endorsing homosexual “marriage,” as if it were the military asking for it. Those poor Marines in the foxholes of Afghanistan were just aching to marry each other, and Obama comes to their rescue. He shamelessly proclaimed: “When I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that “don’t ask don’t tell” is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”

This was completely risible, but one has to admire the audacity of his sophistical argument, as we do Justice Kennedy’s similar one. His goes like this: First, allow same-sex couples to adopt children, but then do not blame the humiliation of the children on the situation into which they have been placed, through no fault of their own, but upon the people who objected to it in the first place. Do not fault those who created the problem through the fabrication of faux “marriage”; fault those who warned that the fabrication of faux “marriage,” along with attendant adoptions, would create this problem. First, exploit children by placing them in this situation, and then exploit them again in order to justify it. Voilà! A fully formed faux family.

If children had their rights, there would be no such “families” in which to place them. The magnitude of the injustice involved in the redefinition of marriage comes most clearly into view in regard to children, to whom justice is also owed. As Professor Seana Sugrue writes, “the ability of same-sex couples to be parents depends crucially upon the state declaring that they possess such rights, and by extinguishing or redefining the rights of biological parents. With the rise of same-sex marriage, the obligations parents owed to their biological children are reduced to mere convention. This is true for everyone. Parents come to owe obligations to their children not because they are parents, but because they choose to be parents.” What is owed to children by right becomes optional by convention. This is a staggering loss for them.

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The views expressed by the authors and editorial staff are not necessarily the views of
Sophia Institute, Holy Spirit College, or the Thomas More College of Liberal Arts.

By Robert R. Reilly

Robert R. Reilly is the author of The Closing of the Muslim Mind (ISI Books). He is writing a book on the natural law argument against homosexual marriage for Ignatius Press.