I opposed gay marriage believing that children have the right, insofar as society makes it possible, to know and to be cared for by the two parents who brought them into this world. I didn’t just dream up this notion: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which came into force in 1990, guarantees children this right.
The link used for the Convention goes to Unicef's summary/explanation. Here is a link to the actual treaty. If you look at Article 7 and Article 9, that guarantee has one very important qualification:
Article 7(Emphasis added.)
1. The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and. as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents.
. . .
Article 9
1. States Parties shall ensure that a child shall not be separated from his or her parents against their will, except when competent authorities subject to judicial review determine, in accordance with applicable law and procedures, that such separation is necessary for the best interests of the child. Such determination may be necessary in a particular case such as one involving abuse or neglect of the child by the parents, or one where the parents are living separately and a decision must be made as to the child's place of residence.
It's not a blanket declaration and takes full cognizance of the fact that it may be better for the child to be raised by adoptive parents or legal guardians.
This, I think, is where Blankenhorn begins to display his faulty understanding of marriage:
Marriage is how society recognizes and protects this right. Marriage is the planet’s only institution whose core purpose is to unite the biological, social and legal components of parenthood into one lasting bond. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its children.
This is where Blankenhorn has wandered off into fantasy in the past: marriage has never been primarily about children. They have been a normal and expected part of heterosexual relationships, but "marriage" as an institution is not and never has been solely or even primarily about children. It has been mostly about property.
It gets worse:
At the level of first principles, gay marriage effaces that gift. No same-sex couple, married or not, can ever under any circumstances combine biological, social and legal parenthood into one bond. For this and other reasons, gay marriage has become a significant contributor to marriage’s continuing deinstitutionalization, by which I mean marriage’s steady transformation in both law and custom from a structured institution with clear public purposes to the state’s licensing of private relationships that are privately defined.
This is simply not true, on any level. First off, to assign "clear public purposes" after the fact to an institution that has grown organically throughout human history (and even before) is, at best, self-serving, particularly in the context of having defined those "purposes" to suit one's own ideology. It's like assigning "purpose" to human evolution: it's not there. The universe doesn't really care about our "purposes." Blankenhorn has said in other contexts that he has studied marriage from, among other standpoints, anthropology. If he did, he learned nothing. (An interesting note on this, from the decision in Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health:
Without question, civil marriage enhances the "welfare of the community." It is a "social institution of the highest importance." French v. McAnarney, supra. Civil marriage anchors an ordered society by encouraging stable relationships over transient ones. It is central to the way the Commonwealth identifies individuals, provides for the orderly distribution of property, ensures that children and adults are cared for and supported whenever possible from private rather than public funds, and tracks important epidemiological and demographic data.
Marriage also bestows enormous private and social advantages on those who choose to marry. Civil marriage is at once a deeply personal commitment to another human being and a highly public celebration of the ideals of mutuality, companionship, intimacy, fidelity, and family. "It is an association that promotes a way of life, not causes; a harmony in living, not political faiths; a bilateral loyalty, not commercial or social projects." Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 486 (1965). Because it fulfils yearnings for security, safe haven, and connection that express our common humanity, civil marriage is an esteemed institution, and the decision whether and whom to marry is among life's momentous acts of self-definition.)
Let me explicate something I've stated before, and that the majority recognized in Goodridge: marriage, in its essence as a social institution is a life-stage marker, a recognition by the community of a change in status for the married couple. Long before there were governments, a couple would announce to their community that they intended to marry, i.e., to establish a new household. It was the community's recognition of this new household that established the couple as married. (If I had time to search through six or seven books by Joseph W. Campbell, I'd come up with a quote -- he stated the definition of marriage both elegantly and concisely, as was his habit.) To claim the "de-institutionalization of marriage" against that background completely misses the point. Marriage is not being transformed into a "private relationship" licensed by the state in any way that's discernible. Again, from Goodridge:
In a real sense, there are three partners to every civil marriage: two willing spouses and an approving State. See DeMatteo v. DeMatteo, 436 Mass. 18 , 31 (2002) ("Marriage is not a mere contract between two parties but a legal status from which certain rights and obligations arise"); Smith v. Smith, 171 Mass. 404 , 409 (1898) (on marriage, the parties "assume[] new relations to each other and to the State"). See also French v. McAnarney, 290 Mass. 544 , 546 (1935). While only the parties can mutually assent to marriage, the terms of the marriage - who may marry and what obligations, benefits, and liabilities attach to civil marriage - are set by the Commonwealth. Conversely, while only the parties can agree to end the marriage (absent the death of one of them or a marriage void ab initio), the Commonwealth defines the exit terms. See G. L. c. 208.
Why does Blankenhorn think that "marriage" as a label is so important? The majority of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court responded to an inquiry from the Legislature about the acceptability of "civil unions" thusly: "The dissimilitude between the terms 'civil marriage' and 'civil union' is not innocuous; it is a considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status."
Blankenhorn comes back to the erroneous idea of "private partnerships" in his rationale for -- finally -- supporting "gay marriage":
Perhaps some of this can be attributed to the reconceptualization of marriage as a private ordering that is so central to the idea of gay marriage.
There, I think, is the central flaw in his arguments, and one that he doesn't seem to be prepared to let go: I can't see that marriage is being reconceptualized, except insofar as any institution changes over time. It's certainly not being recast into a state license for private behavior. In fact, there are a number of court decisions, starting with Griswold and running through Lawrence, that state specifically that the government has no business licensing private behavior.
I suppose it's to the good that one of marriage equality's most prominent opponents has come out in favor, after all this time, even if it's obvious he doesn't know what marriage is. At least it gave me an opportunity to post my own summation of the question.
(For more on the anthropological understanding of marriage, note this post at Box Turtle Bulletin, with links to further exchanges between Glenn T. Stanton and Patrick Chapman.)
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