New at Reason

Tim Cavanaugh | October 22, 2004

Cathy Young on child custody battles.

Comments

|10.28.04 @ 5:12PM|#

The presumption of joint custody is hardly ever raised by advocates of same-sex marriage who like to point out that there are children living with parents in same-sex households.

That's because the pro-SSM arguments aren't actually focussed on the children but on the adults.

The vast majority of children who live with at least one of their parents who is in a same-sex live-in relationship, the vast majority of these children are children of divorce. The kids already have both moms and dads who had been in man-woman marriages. That one parent subsequently enters a same-sex live-in relationship does not mean that parent's partner becomes the replacement of the other parent.

That's the case for about 96% of all the children who live in same-sex households. Maybe a couple percent are adopted by unrelated adults; maybe another two percent (a huge overestimate) are derived from artificial reproductive technologies. But the vast majority would be directly impacted by the custody issue that stems from divorce in our country.

Supposedly SSM would encourage same-sex couple to "marry". The primary reason that homsexual men and women say they marry persons of their opposite sex is that they had wanted to form families -- to have their own children. Tied-up with this are the many ethical questions about artificial reproduction techniques. Unlike the presumptin of joint custody, access to artificial methods of producing children is an unspoken presumption on the part of SSM advocates. If SSM discouraged mixed-orientation marriages between men and women, and it presumes artificial means of producing children is also a right, then presumably fewer and fewer children will live with same-sex couples. As fewer and fewer will be the offspring of divorced opposite sex couples. The argument of SSM that points to the children is not a fully formed argument. In most cases, the advocate is reciting a talking point that is a sham of an argument.

SSM-advocates are typically silent on the pros and cons of the presumption of joint custody. Children are an afterthought in the SSM campaign. Personally, I'm undecided about the value of the presumption of joint custody, but I do know that the marriage movement (not the narrow SSM campaign) has been wrestling with the issue for many years.