--John
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: John Spritzler <spritzler at comcast.net> Date: Nov 29, 2005 9:36 AM Subject: [anti-allawi-group] The anti-war movement and same-sex marriage To: "Spritzler, John (Comcast)" <spritzler at comcast.net>
Dear Friends,
I recently sent some of you an article [ http://newdemocracyworld.org/War/Antiwar.htm ] by Dave Stratman criticizing the Left anti-war leaders for making opposition to same-sex marriage a litmus test for who is welcome in their anti-war movement. This raises the question, of course, of whether people who oppose same-sex marriage are indeed reactionary bigots, and whether it is right and proper for good people everywhere (not just the anti-war
movement) to condemn them as such (as the Left seems to feel.)
Below is a recent article that relates to this question. It is about a
young boy whose mother used sperm from an anonymous donor to conceive him, and how (and more importantly for our discussion, why) the boy tracked down his biological father. We aren't told anything about what kind of relationship the boy's mother was in -- married to an infertile man perhaps, maybe a single mom with no partner, or possibly in a lesbian relationship. But lesbian couples commonly use anonymous sperm donors to "have a child of their own" and this is one reason why there has been a large growth in companies that provide such sperm. The flip side of the coin is gay couples hiring surrogate mothers to provide an egg and a womb and then to disappear after the birth so the gay couple can "have a child of their own." The degree to which society endorses these practices (by, for example, making same-sex marriage legal and promoting the notion that homosexuality is as good a basis for a family as heterosexuality) will largely determine the degree to which children like the young boy in this article will come into the world without having the experience of being raised by both their biological father and biological mother.
Some might say, so what? What difference does it make so long as the person or couple who raise the child are loving?
Reading this article, however, makes it apparent that many children, even those adopted by very loving couples, feel they are missing something very important in not having a close relationship with their natural mother and father. The article says: "Like many children whose mothers used an anonymous sperm donor, the 15-year-old boy longed for any shred of information about his biological father." Children, as they grow up, want to know where they came from, in the way that children raised by their natural parents take for granted, but other children long for. Children at a certain age feel hurt by the idea that the person who is their true mother or father had no love for them and no desire to raise them. A person's sense of self, who they are, do they belong, is intimately connected to the relation they do or do not have with their natural mother and father. This is true no matter how loving are the single parents or couples who actually raise the child.
When the issue of same-sex marriage is debated, what is at stake is whether society will promote or discourage the practice of bringing children into the world with an anonymous biological parent. The proponents of same-sex marriage like to deflect attention away from this question, but it is--implicitly if not explicitly--at the heart of the matter for many people who oppose same-sex marriage.
Proponents of same-sex marriage like to frame the question merely in terms of the civil rights of two adults, the same way opponents of Jim Crow laws banning inter-racial marriage did. But the difference here is fundamental when the perspective of the children from such marriages is taken into account. Children of inter-racial marriages are raised by their natural mother and father, but children of a homosexual couple necessarily are not.
Proponents of same-sex marriage sometimes argue that the position I'm taking here must be wrong because by my logic it would be a bad thing when a loving couple adopts a baby, who will then necessarily not be raised by its natural mother and father. This argument might sound reasonable at first blush, but it is not. There is a big difference between a couple (homosexual or hetersexual) adopting a child and a couple (homosexual or hetersexual) conceiving one with another man's sperm or another woman's egg. When a couple adopts a child, they are (from the child's perspective) attempting to make an extremely unfortunate and bad situation better. Adoption is only a good thing when something bad has already happened elsewhere -- the child's natural mother or father or both are for some reason unable to care for and raise the child, due perhaps to death, mental or physical incapacity, or possibly extreme poverty -- all things which we know are bad. Nobody, for example, would say to a perfectly fit and competent couple who just had a baby, "Oh, you should put your baby up for adoption because adoption is a very good thing."
When a couple brings a child into the world with an anonymous (to the child) sperm or egg donor, the separation of the child from its natural parent is again the result of an unfortunate and bad situation. But in this case the bad situation--infertility--is located in the couple; it is not something that happened elsewhere as in the case of adoption. A culture endorsing opposite-sex marriage but not same-sex marriage minimizes the occurance of the unfortunate and bad situation of couples being infertile and consequently tempted to bring children into the world with the bond broken between the child and one of its natural parents. Since all homosexual couples are necessarily infertile, the decision to legalize and thereby promote same-sex marriage necessarily increases the number of children who will come into the world with this important parental bond broken. To discuss the pros and cons of same-sex marriage without addressing this issue is wrong.
If same-sex marriage were legal but conceiving with anonymous sperm or egg were not, then my argument against same-sex marriage would no longer hold. But the forces pushing for same-sex marriage want to eliminate all traces of stigma attached to homosexuality, and this is why they will never accept the condition that same-sex couples not be allowed to "have a child of their own" the same as heterosexual couples.
The main point, however, is that reasonable and well-intentioned people can obviously hold divergent views on this question that involves society's responsibility to children. People opposed to same-sex marriage are not, merely for that reason, reactionary or bigoted, as the Left leaders of the anti-war movement declare. Only the warmongering ruling class benefits from an anti-war leadership that isolates the movement from a large part of the population (many of whom oppose the warmongering as much as anybody) by wrongly attacking these people as "homophobic" bigots. And maybe this is why The Nation and Harpers Magazine--the largest circulation anti-war weekly and monthly magazines, respectively, in the U.S.--which are both edited by members of the elite Council on Foreign Relations work so hard to handcuff the anti-war movement to support for same-sex marriage and condemnation of those opposed to it.
--John
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Tracking of sperm donor through Web raises alarms
By Rob Stein, Washington Post | November 24, 2005
-- Michael Pugliese