Bending the Knee

His work as a community organizer in poor neighborhoods impressed on David Blankenhorn a simple fact: Children flourish when parented by their biological mothers and fathers. Traditional marriage turns out to be best for kids, a truth that has been amply verified by sociological studies, some of which have been conducted by the Institute for American Values, the nonprofit he founded 1987. So if we care about kids, we should strengthen traditional marriage by discouraging serial cohabitation, working against the divorce culture, and resisting the push to redefine marriage for the sake of gay rights.

Or so Blankenhorn thought. As we learn in his recent New York Times op-ed and NPR interview with Mark Oppenheimer, longtime marriage advocate David Blankenhorn has changed his mind about gay marriage. Sort of.

The homosexual marriage movement redefines marriage so that it has nothing to do with reproduction and children, but instead reflects the desires of adults. By this way of thinking, marriage is a private personal relationship. From this it follows that we must be “fair,” which means “respecting everybody’s choices.”

For more than two decades, Blankenhorn has worked against defining marriage in terms of my choices, because it reflects a widespread pattern of neglecting the needs of children for the sake of satisfying the desires of adults. No-fault divorce provides the most obvious example, but so does the gay-marriage movement. As he wrote in The Future of Marriage, “The weakest support for marriage as an institution is in those countries with same-sex marriage.” Meanwhile, “the most support is in countries without same-sex unions.” Correlation does not prove causation, “but correlation is important. Correlations show that certain things tend naturally to cluster together.”

Blankenhorn hasn’t really changed his mind about that. “I’m not recanting any of it,” he says in the Times. Instead, he’s decided it’s not important enough to stand in the way of gay marriage. It’s time for “bending the knee a bit,” accepting gay marriage as inevitable rather than fighting it.

He’s always believed in “the equal dignity of homosexual love.” Now “the time for denigrating or stigmatizing same-sex relationships is over.” Legalizing gay marriage will be “a victory for basic fairness.” But more decisive are his changed views of American society. Thirty states have passed constitutional amendments defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, but as he correctly points out, “most of our national elites, as well as most younger Americans, favor gay marriage.” They can’t be resisted, he concludes, and so it’s best to join ’em. His hope? “Instead of fighting gay marriage, I’d like to help build new coalitions bringing together gays who want to strengthen marriage with straight people who want to do the same.”

Good luck, David. The push for gay marriage has consistently been framed in terms of equal rights, not expanding or strengthening a culture of marriage. When it comes to the culture of marriage, most gay advocates want us all to affirm “alternative households” across the board. Is this good for children? Who cares. In the Nation, Richard Kim writes, “I think all the debates over which type of family produces the best outcomes for children ought to be meaningless as a matter of state policy.”

Certain things do indeed naturally cluster together.