With the latest Rasmussen poll showing that support for gay marriage has fallen to its lowest level in a year, a group of GOP operatives have signed onto an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to impose gay marriage in all 50 states. That doesn’t sound very conservative, especially with this kind of broad sweeping language that really does insult millions of good-hearted Americans who disagree with gay marriage:
Amici do not believe there is a legitimate, fact based justification for excluding same-sex couples from civil marriage. Over the past two decades, the arguments presented by proponents of such initiatives have been discredited by social science, rejected by courts, and contradicted by amici’s personal experience with same-sex couples, including those whose civil marriages have been legally performed and recognized in various States.
Dozens of courts, including the European Court of Human Rights, have recognized there is no fundamental right to same-sex marriage, certainly not one deeply rooted in our country’s laws and traditions.
As for social science? Two new studies in peer-reviewed journals were just added to the pile that show children do best raised by a married mom and dad. Similar to other nontraditional families, children raised by same-sex couples were about two to four times more likely to suffer emotional problems, and twice as likely to suffer from ADHD.
And a new review of the studies by the same scholar finds “[s]ample bias in studies of same-sex parenting is large and pervasive. No results based on random population samples–but four-fifths of results from studies using non-random recruited samples–have been favorable to children with same-sex parents.”
One reason support for gay marriage is dropping is that people are beginning to see the harm it is inflicting needlessly on loving, law-abiding Americans as ideology replaces the rule of law, and common sense, and shoves aside a great deal of emerging scientific evidence, too.
How will conservative leaders respond? Will they stand with us against the powers that seek to suppress traditional understandings of marriage as bigoted and irrational? Or will they fall silent and complicit?
Brian Brown is the president of the National Organization for Marriage.
