One of the many contentious questions in the debate over gay marriage is whether, and how, same-sex marriage would affect the flourishing of families and especially of children. Alana Newman, who has written for us before on gay marriage and assisted reproductive technologies, took up that topic yesterday at the Family Scholars blog.
At a luncheon, she says, she once heard “a woman speak of her and her lesbian partner and their deep, passionate desire to get married.” She continues:
In defending why they should have the right to do so they first and most forcefully reveal that they have a son they’re raising, born using one woman’s eggs, the other woman’s womb, and someone else’s sperm—-a man that has been excluded and banished from the family. I notify her that I am against gay marriage and cite being donor-conceived as the essential experience that informs and shapes my opinion on this subject. She responds “but marriage and donor-conception have nothing to do with each other.” Even though she just propped up her son as the main reason why she and her partner should receive marriage privileges.
Recounting a lecture she attended by Robert George on What Is Marriage? , Newman writes that the philosophy underlying the left’s views on marriage, abortion, third-party reproduction is a dehumanizing form of mind-body dualism:
If “we”, our true selves, are our mind, and our body is just a vessel—-then what harm are drugs, promiscuity, abortion, and 3PR? . . . If my body is separate from “me” than it is totally ridiculous and pointless that I am spending so much time talking about and pining for my biological father . . . .But the body is the person. I am a woman. I am an amalgam of my father and mother. And they are of their mother and father. Intending parents that choose to dismember the human body and separate parenting into services rendered, particularly through surrogacy and egg donation, are dehumanizing their child . . . .
They are separating the person from a precious and sacred element of what it means to be human—-having a mother and father. And it all stems from the mistake of philosophically separating the mind from the body. For parents via 3PR [third-party reproduction], I am not the enemy to their children finding happiness. Neither is the Catholic church. The enemy to their children’s happiness is humanity itself.
Read the rest at Family Scholars .
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