Broken Marriages The Problem Not Gay Nuptuals?

[David Gold]

So says USA Today in an editorial.

Broken marriages, not gay nuptials, pose risk to kids
As protestors chanted "no discrimination" outside Massachusetts' state capitol earlier this month, name-calling legislators bickered over the terms of a new law that would govern gay marriages.
On the West Coast, hundreds of gay couples lined up outside San Francisco's City Hall last week after the mayor granted them marriage licenses in apparent violation of California law. State officials promptly vowed to challenge the move in court.

Those tumultuous scenes are precursors to the battle heating up in Washington over a drive for a federal marriage amendment that would rewrite the Constitution to forbid same-sex marriage.

If amendment promoters plan to subject the nation to the type of inflamed disputes occurring in Boston and San Francisco, they need a powerful reason. And they offer a compelling one: protecting children. They say letting gays marry will hurt children by weakening the institution of marriage.

Considerable evidence does document that children face fewer problems when married mothers and fathers bring them up. But even the most ardent opponents of gay marriage concede their claims that gay unions will hurt children are based on supposition and anecdotal evidence. Scientific studies about the impact of gay unions on traditional families are lacking.

Instead, a long line of respected studies on families points to a far more common reason that children increasingly are put at risk: the breakup of heterosexual marriages.

Yet by focusing their efforts on fighting gay marriage, amendment sponsors divert attention from the broken homes that create challenges for the young.

A large body of research concludes that children growing up in single-parent homes suffer education failures, lawlessness, drug use and suicide at rates two to three times those of children raised by married parents.

Data collected by two family-policy think tanks, the Institute for American Values and the Center for Law and Social Policy, show:

Boys raised in single-parent homes are twice as likely to commit a crime that leads to prison by the time they reach 30, according to a study presented at a 1998 meeting of the American Psychological Association.

Children who grow up with a divorced parent are twice as likely to divorce as adults, according to an article in the Journal of Marriage and the Family in 2000.

Children growing up in single-parent families are twice as likely to drop out of school, according to a 1994 study published by the Urban Institute.

If amendment sponsors want to protect children, as they claim, they can focus more on embracing marriage-building proposals from family experts. The Institute for American Values says these include better child-support enforcement, more marriage counseling, added tax incentives to encourage low-income workers to marry and divorce reforms such as mandatory waiting periods.

Supporters of the amendment say legalizing gay marriage will make the institution less attractive to heterosexual couples. But that conclusion is based on conjecture.

Before they create a coast-to-coast uproar, amendment backers owe the nation proof that the drastic constitutional step they favor truly would make life better for children.