Gay-marriage opponents urge against radical change

Staff/wire report

WASHINGTON

Same-sex marriage opponents acknowledge they face a tough task in trying to persuade the Supreme Court to allow states to limit marriage to a man and a woman.

But they are urging the court to resist embracing what they see as a radical change in society’s view of what constitutes a marriage, especially without more information about how same-sex marriage affects children who are raised by two fathers or two mothers.

The idea that same-sex marriage might have uncertain effects on children is strongly contested by those who want the court to declare that same-sex couples have a right to marry in all 50 states. Among the 31 plaintiffs in the cases that will be argued at the court April 28 are parents who have spent years seeking formal recognition on their children’s birth certificates or adoption papers.

Kelly McCracken, originally from Warren, is part of the same-sex marriage case that the Supreme Court will hear. McCracken, 32, and her wife, Kelly Noe, 32, live in Cincinnati and have a daughter, Ruby. Noe and McCracken got involved with the same-sex marriage case after McCracken had to fight to get her name on Ruby’s birth certificate because Ohio does not recognize same-sex marriage. The couple will go to Washington for the oral arguments. The court will decide whether Ohio’s ban on recognizing same-sex marriages violates the U.S. Constitution. McCracken’s mother is Pam Politsky of Warren.

Opponents, in dozens of briefs asking the court to uphold state bans on same-sex marriage, insist they are not motivated by any prejudice toward gays and lesbians.

“This is an issue on which people of good will may reasonably disagree,” lawyer John Bursch wrote in his defense of Michigan’s gay-marriage ban. Bursch will argue on behalf of the states that same-sex couples can claim no constitutional right to marriage.

Same-sex couples now can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia, the product of a dizzying pace of change in state marriage laws. Just three years ago, only six states allowed it.

In most states, courts have struck down gay-marriage bans written into state laws or enshrined in state constitutions.

The concern for children is among several threads that run through the legal, political, social and religious arguments being advanced in support of upholding the same-sex marriage bans.

“If children don’t do as well when they are raised by same-sex parents, why would we want to establish or encourage that as a social norm?” asked the Rev. D. Paul Sullins, a Catholic University sociology professor. Sullins has analyzed data in government surveys and concluded that children brought up by two parents of the same sex have a higher rate of emotional problems than their peers raised by heterosexual parents.

Sullins has been harshly criticized by sociologists who support same-sex marriage, but he said he stands by his data. “I don’t know of any Catholic way to compute the equation,” he said. “The idea that there are no differences is emphatically mistaken. I don’t know how else to say that.”

Another argument opponents make is that a ruling in favor of same-sex marriage could lead to opening marriage to three or more people.

“Expanding the definition of marriage away from the way cultures and civilization have always defined it can only lead to further confusion,” said the Rev. Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “We’re always told that what we say is slippery-slope alarmism. And yet the slope is quite slippery.”