In Ireland, the old is out and the out are in | Catholic World Report

Glory be to God for strange and unusual things.

Gays’ struggle for tolerance

has long been about much more than “tolerance”. But “tolerance” and “equality” have been the two rhetorical hammers constantly employed by the Reign of Gay, which has now claimed its most significant, high profile conquest. As expected, The New York Times is delighted that the good (gay) guys have crushed the nasty (Catholic) guys:

Ireland has become the first nation to approve same-sex marriage by a popular vote, sweeping aside the opposition of the Roman Catholic Church in a resounding victory Saturday for the gay rights movement and placing the country at the vanguard of social change.

Ah, who doesn’t want to be “the vanguard of social change”? Change is good, as they say, although reasons for why change in general is good are often vague and reactionary, and the reasons for why this particular change–the wholesale celebration and installation of homosexuality as a social good–are built on the sands of sentimentality and subjectivism.

In honor of the occasion, let us consider this from the nay-saying Family Research Council offering Ten Arguments From Social Science Against Same-Sex Marriage, here excerpted at risk of verbal disembowelment by supporters of same.

1. Children hunger for their biological parents.
Homosexual couples using in vitro fertilization (IVF) or surrogate mothers deliberately create a class of children who will live apart from their mother or father.

Yale Child Study Center psychiatrist Kyle Pruett reports that children of IVF often ask their single or lesbian mothers about their fathers, asking their mothers questions like the following:”Mommy, what did you do with my daddy?” “Can I write him a letter?” “Has he ever seen me?” “Didn’t you like him? Didn’t he like me?”

Elizabeth Marquardt reports that children of divorce often report similar feelings about their non-custodial parent, usually the father.

Kyle Pruett, Fatherneed (Broadway Books, 2001) 204.
Elizabeth Marquardt, The Moral and Spiritual Lives of Children of Divorce. Forthcoming.

2. Children need fathers.
If same-sex civil marriage becomes common, most same-sex couples with children would be lesbian couples. This would mean that we would have yet more children being raised apart from fathers. Among other things, we know that fathers excel in reducing antisocial behavior and delinquency in boys and sexual activity in girls.

What is fascinating is that fathers exercise a unique social and biological influence on their children. For instance, a recent study of father absence on girls found that girls who grew up apart from their biological father were much more likely to experience early puberty and a teen pregnancy than girls who spent their entire childhood in an intact family.

This study, along with David Popenoe’s work, suggests that a father’s pheromones influence the biological development of his daughter, that a strong marriage provides a model for girls of what to look for in a man, and gives them the confidence to resist the sexual entreaties of their boyfriends.

* Ellis, Bruce J., et al., “Does Father Absence Place Daughters at Special Risk for Early Sexual Activity and Teenage Pregnancy?” Child Development, 74:801-821.
* David Popenoe, Life Without Father (Boston: Harvard University Press, 1999).

Etc., from #3, “Children Need Mothers,” to #10, “Women and Marriage Domesticate Men.” Meaty enough stuff, it seems to this longtime dabbler in the art of sociology.

Cautionary notes, at least, warning us that all that glitters in the enthusiasm for gummint (societal) recognition of same-sex marriage is not to be enthusiastic about. Just sayin’.