The saddest thing about the anti-gay ballot initiatives that passed Tuesday in California (banning same-sex marriage), Florida (banning even same-sex civil partnerships) and Arkansas (banning foster care and adoption by unmarried couples ie: same-sex couples) is the effect they have on the children of same-sex parents.
I don't think my partner and I would feel much need for legal marriage if we didn't have children. If we didn't have children, I'd be working full-time for my own benefits and wouldn't need hers. I'd have my own retirement security, probably be able to make the house payments if anything happened to her.
But we have two children and being able to both be their legal parents is critical to their well-being. As adoption attorney, Jennifer Fairfax points out in this article from US News and World Report,
"Adoption gives the child two legal parents, two people who have to support the child, two people that the child can inherit from. If the parent dies, the child can get security from either."
Considering the high value social conservatives place on stay-at-home parents, one would think that helping families support a stay-at-home parent by making sure that either parent can provide health benefits and other legal protections to the family's children would be a priority, leading to support for same-sex adoption and/or marriage.
My partner and I are lucky. We were able to adopt in one of a handful of jurisdictions that have strong court precedents for granting same-sex co-adoptions, though this jurisdiction does not have a law protecting these adoptions specifically. As such, either of us can give our children what straight parents take for granted. Our children can rely on the fact that if anything happens to one of us, their lives will not be further disrupted by legal questions about the status of their surviving parent.
Marriage would grant these rights automatically, as married couples always have the right to petition to adopt together and a married woman who gives birth can automatically name her legal spouse the child's other parent--regardless of whether or not the second parent is biologically related to the child. Marriage would also save us between $50,000 and $100,000 in taxes and other "fees" associated with cobbling together legal protections for our family over the years of raising our children. College fund, anyone?
When people oppose same-sex adoption, what they oppose is an idea that falls short of their ideal of two married, opposite-sex parents. But the plain truth of fact is that millions of children do not live in these kinds of families already. Banning their actual family structures from legal recognition and protection does not help those children magically attain the two-opposite-sex-parents ideal, even if you want to believe (against the word of authorities like the American Academy of Pediatrics) that ideal really is best.
What opponents of same-sex marriage and/or adoption do not understand is that these arguments are not theoretical. Banning various people from various institutional protections will not make those people go away. In fact, the "gayby" boom continues boomingly on unchecked. Every young queer high school or college student I talk to these days simply assumes that she or he will someday be a parent. It is not just a double-standard for adults gay rights opposition upholds, but a double-standard for increasing numbers of children (at least 90% of whom, for the record, will grow up to be heterosexual). When you deny me the right to marry or the right to adopt with my partner, you deny my children the same security yours take for granted. You may not like it, but my children are here now and they aren't going anywhere. Don't they deserve the same protection as their playmates?
See also: Separation of Church and State = Same-Sex Marriage
Image note: Which child deserves the protection of two legal, married parents?
