The freedom to marry: Keep dancing | Advocate.com

Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, has a great piece online about last week’s marriage decision in New York. An excerpt:

In fact, the plurality’s strained rationalizing of the discriminatory exclusion fails on its own terms.

New York’s ruling came just a week after the Arkansas supreme court unanimously rejected precisely the same proffered rationale; unlike the four-member majority of New York’s highest court, the judges in Arkansas (!) instead relied on the evidence provided by experts in child welfare. That evidence was, of course, available to the New York judges. Institutions such as the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Psychiatric Association, the Association to Benefit Children, and the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, among other authorities, submitted briefs to the court calling for an end to marriage discrimination in the interest of children and families.

And the very week of the New York decision, the American Academy of Pediatrics weighed in once again with an authoritative statement titled “The Effects of Marriage, Civil Union, and Domestic Partnership Laws on the Health and Well-being of Children” (see the academy’s full analysis on www.freedomtomarry.org). The nation’s kids’ doctors know best—and here’s what they said:

“There is ample evidence to show that children raised by same-gender parents fare as well as those raised by heterosexual parents. More than 25 years of research have documented that there is no relationship between parents’ sexual orientation and any measure of a child’s emotional, psychosocial, and behavioral adjustment. These data have demonstrated no risk to children as a result of growing up in a family with one or more gay parents. Conscientious and nurturing adults, whether they are men or women, heterosexual or homosexual, can be excellent parents. The rights, benefits, and protections of civil marriage can further strengthen these families.”

Not only was this evidence, this kind of careful consideration of what truly helps couples and kids missing from the New York plurality opinion, so was any actual logical connection between the ends ostensibly sought (promoting stability, helping children) and the means chosen (denying that stability and help to others).

“The silver lining of the decision,” he writes, “is, ironically, its thinness, illogic, and refusal to consider the lives of real people, including gay families, and the real meaning of the denial of the human experience that is marriage. While the dissent makes a convincing legal and moral case, the plurality and concurring opinions will present no impediment to a court or decision-maker wanting to do what is right and willing to apply real scrutiny to a constitutional and moral wrong.