DOES SSM STRENGTHEN MARRIAGE IN EUROPE?
Maggie Gallagher To me, the most persuasive part of Stanley Kurtz’s argument is this: If you go around telling people that marriage has nothing in particular to do with making and raising children, people just might believe you. I know of no same-sex marriage advocate, not even Jonathan Rauch (who has the deepest and most profound attachment to mariage as a social institution) who is willing to say “Children need moms and dads and marriage is how you get them for kids.” The core idea of SSM, as many recent posts from its advocates suggest, is that no one family form is any better than another. What kids need is love and stability and commitment, not moms and dads (which BTW you cannot get for children through cohabitation in any reliable way–but that’s another argument). SSM represent the institutionalizaiton of the “family diversity” ideal, not the beginning of a marriage renaissance. To me the most questionable assertion of Prof. Badgett is that “heterosexual” marriage in Europe is
