[quote]forlife wrote:
If you dispute this, provide specific logical arguments on why.[/quote]
Already have, and that is so despite your unwillingness to read what I have written.
One question: will there be more children raised by gay couples if gay marriage is enacted?
Yes or no?
You insist on lumping all situations where children aren’t being raised by their biological parents into one category, and thus, gay marriage wouldn’t affect “the math” of those children - it would merely shift where the children were raised.
I do not. Enacting gay marriage as an equal legal institution will, as repeated too many times, undermine marriage’s goals of keeping the biological family together. We need to reduce the number of kids that are outside of that unit, and creating out of whole cloth an “equal” institution with all the same benefits, etc. creates the same package of incentives to raise a child as traditional marriage does.
What does that mean? When you institute an alternative institution (or institutions), you send a message that in terms of family structures, “any of the above” are satisfactory. Traditional marriage does not reinforce that message, and in fact, rejects it outright. These are competing policy directives whose goals are not the same.
Marriage policy is designed to send the message: “if you create a child, stay together for the good of the child, don’t give the child away. The biological family is better than anything else, and because it is, we honor it especially so you will do it.” With gay marriage, the message is altered: “if you create a child, stay together, or find an “equal” family arrangement and give the child to them - either one is fine.”
Straightforwardly - gay marriage undermines the message of traditional marriage. We don’t want biological parents thinking there is any “equal” alternative out there to marrying one another and raising the child in a family of the biological parents. If you create that “equal” alternative, more parents will have the incentive to go that route instead of getting married - precisely and exactly what we don’t want from a policy perspective.
This does even go to the issue that gay couples would be more likely to engage in surrogacy if provided gay marriage. You couch in terms that almost sound like surrogacy happens “by accident”, and whistle past the real issue by saying “well, of course the mom wouldn’t marry the gay father”. That isn’t the point - the point is more gays would intentionally create more children if given gay marriage.
Though obvious, you won’t admit it, because it hurts your arguments the way you have structured them. But here is the point - we don’t want gays to engage in more surrogacy, so there is no reason to incentivize the practice.
Children don’t just “come into this world” - there is an active act to bring them in. We have no desire to incentivize or encourage this behavior - see traditional marriage.