Q: Would the legalization of gay marriage result in a net benefit to heterosexuals? Yes: Divorce rates triggered by fraudulent marriages will go down and more children will grow up in stable homes

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 22, 2003 | by Michael Alvear

Byline: Michael Alvear, SPECIAL TO INSIGHT

As outrageous as it may sound, gay marriage will greatly improve the lives of heterosexuals. It will reduce the number of divorces caused by fraudulent marriages, ensure that more orphaned children grow up in stable and loving homes, raise the standard of living for children with gay parents, make neighborhoods safer for families and boost the economies of struggling communities.

It is not the license to marry that will create these benefits; it is the massive shift in attitude that will result from it. Allowing gays to marry will do to homophobia what civil-rights legislation did for racism - reduce it substantially over the years.

The more gays are accepted as equal citizens, the more stable heterosexual marriage will become. Why? Because there are an untold number of traditional marriages that break up because one spouse comes out of the closet.

Homophobia drives gay men and women into fraudulent marriages. Pressure to conform, the weight of discrimination, potential loss of cherished dreams - serving in the military, worshipping in church, getting job promotions, raising kids - propels many into marriages to which they otherwise wouldn't commit.

Take my friend Cooper. Cooper is 64. He was married for 38 years. The divorce is pending. He leaves behind him a woman whose life was shattered by a truth that tunneled its way out of the mounds of shame, hostility and hatred that society heaped on it. Homophobia has a way of wounding gay and straight alike. It creates two classes of victims: people who are forced to lie and the people to whom they lie. As homophobia decreases, so will the pressure for gays and lesbians to enter into fig-leaf marriages - which, in turn, prevents children from being hurt by divorce and helps heterosexuals, such as Cooper's wife, create authentic, stable marriages.

Could gay marriage be a solution for the many children in foster care? There are plenty of gay and lesbian families willing to adopt some of the 568,000 kids languishing in institutions, but statutory bans and local judiciaries refusing to grant gay-adoption petitions impede them. According to the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute's latest national survey, only 40 percent of public and private adoption agencies have placed children with gay adoptive parents. The same survey showed that a majority of childless gay men and women would like to become parents.

Would children in foster care be better off living in loving gay homes or institutions that shuffle them from one home to another until they reach 18 years of age and "age out" of the system? Ask the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Child Welfare League of America, the North American Council on Adoptable Children, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychological Association and the National Association of Social Workers. Their conclusion: Gay and lesbian homes would be good for many of these kids.

What's the best way of making that happen? Giving gay couples automatic adoption rights. And the most effective way to do that? Allow them to marry. Gay marriage wouldn't just improve the lives of orphans; it also would improve the lives of children who have parents that happen to be gay.

Let's say two women with average incomes have a child together; we'll call him Billy. Because the women aren't allowed to marry, Billy doesn't get the financial and emotional safety nets other children get. For example, if Billy has a serious accident while his biological mother is away, the hospital can deny him the right to see his second parent, effectively torturing the child at the time of his greatest need. If Billy comes home to recuperate, the boss isn't legally obligated to provide sick leave to Billy's second parent, effectively preventing a child from being soothed by his nurturing parent. If Billy's biological mother dies, the surviving parent has no legal rights to Billy, effectively allowing the state to rip him from the arms of a loving mother and throw him into the foster-care system. If Billy's parents separate, the departing parent is under no legal obligation to provide alimony or child support, effectively plunging Billy into poverty.

From his parents' inability to get joint health-, home- and auto-insurance policies to his own inability to access his second parent's Social Security survivor benefits, Billy suffers. Allowing same-sex marriage would eliminate the unfair penalties children have to bear. Ultimately, the greatest benefactors to gay marriage are children - more than 500,000 of them.

Half a million? Yes, and that may be underestimated. Face-to-face surveys show that 1 percent of people identify themselves as gay. But random telephone surveys, which give more anonymity, produce numbers around 3 percent or 4 percent of the population. And online surveys, which give the most anonymity, consistently show the number to be around 6 percent. If the range is somewhere between 1 and 6 percent of the population, let's split the difference and call it 3 percent. But remember, that figure represents only the people brave enough to identify themselves publicly.