Redefining Marriage is Not a Civil Right
The same-sex marriage proponents would have us denounce most blacks as bigots.
Same-sex marriage proponents have made surprising strides in getting a hearing for their radical marriage counterfeit. No society at any time has ever raised a generation of children in same-sex families, yet these family revolutionaries only needed to convince four judges in Massachusetts and one lawless mayor in San Francisco to inflict their highly experimental ideas on the rest of us.
Gay activists have gained their ground through emotional manipulation and by diverting the public’s attention away from the thousands of scientific studies that tell us how healthy child-development requires mothers and fathers. They have manipulated us by high-jacking civil rights language. And as a result, millions of boys and girls will be subjected to intentionally motherless and fatherless families for no other reason than to fulfill the desires of adults who want such families.
A moment’s reflection reveals that “giving marriage a gay make-over” as one gay protester in Denver recently put it, is not a civil rights issue. Sex preference is not skin color. San Francisco is not Selma. Marriage is not a lunch counter or a seat on a bus.
In recent months, with various judicial advances for homosexuality and same-sex marriage, there has been a substantial backlash in the polls against these things. The most dramatic backlash is centered in the African-American community. According to a CNN/USA Today poll, support for the legality of homosexual relationships plunged precipitously from 58 percent to 36 percent among black Americans as same-sex marriage became increasingly possible. In contrast, the same poll found 49 percent of weekly churchgoers – of any race – support the legality of these relationships. African-Americans are not allies of same-sex marriage advocates – certainly not brothers and sisters marching arm in arm in the struggle for equality. They are, instead, same-sex marriage’s greatest opponents, even more so, surprisingly, than the religious community.
The same-sex marriage proponent’s slippery rhetoric would have us denounce most blacks as bigots. Or maybe African-Americans see this not as an issue of equality, but morality -- and very little morality at that. Jesse Jackson recently challenged the comparison that gay “marriage” is a civil rights issue by explaining that “gays were never called three-fifths human in the Constitution and in that they did not require the Voting Rights Act to have the right to vote.” Is Jackson a bigot?
There are others who don’t fit into the same-sex advocate’s manipulative story that this is about the reasonable, caring people against the religious reactionaries and hateful Republicans. A recent Pew poll revealed that 60 percent of moderate Democrats oppose same-sex marriage, as does the Democrats' front-running presidential candidate, John Kerry. As president, Bill Clinton signed into the law the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, just as the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, sponsored by Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO) and Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO), does. President Clinton was never accused of writing discrimination into our nation’s laws, as The New York Times accused President Bush of attempting to do last week when he announced his support of a marriage-protection amendment.
Sen. Hillary Clinton has also clearly stated she believes marriage should remain between a man and woman, exclusively. Could Hillary be a bigot? If the same-sex marriage advocates are right, we should tar California Sens. Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein as advocates of discrimination, for they both recently expressed their public opposition to same-sex marriage.
The real reason the overwhelming majority of African-Americans and two-thirds of all Americans oppose same-sex marriage is because they understand it fundamentally redefines the family and says mothers and fathers don’t matter for children. And the black community, more than any other, has suffered under the ravages of this. The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, coordinator of the 1963 March on Washington and president of the National Black Leadership Roundtable, recently warned, “Don’t confuse my people who have been the victims of deliberate family destruction by giving them another definition of marriage.”
This is a very real issue for black leaders, because their children and communities have been profoundly wounded by the lie that families don’t need fathers. It is just as wrong to say mom’s lesbian lover can replace a father as it was to say a daddy could be replaced by a welfare check. Neither can teach a little boy how to grow to be a man and neither can make sure a little girl receives healthy, appropriate love and affirmation from a caring man.
And while a loving and compassionate society comes to the aid of motherless or fatherless families created by fate, there is no “civil right” to intentionally subject children to fatherlessness or motherlessness in order to fulfill adult desire. That is what every same-sex family does, and exactly why the African-American community, and Americans, oppose the idea in such large and growing numbers.
Glenn T. Stanton is the director of social research and cultural affairs at Focus on the Family. He is the author of Why Marriage Matters.
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