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Marriage redefinition and Childrens rights
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darkpagandeath wrote: »Well I don't think that would fly if it was directed at the other players in this.
OK, let me put it this way. They got touchy about women being able to continue to work after marriage. They got touchy about people in miserable, loveless marriages being able to divorce. They got touchy about contraception becoming available. Some of them probably even got touchy about marital rape being recognised as a crime. They got over it. Their touchyness doesn't get to stand in the way of equality.0 -
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If you get to watch all this are you still 100% sure redefining marriage in our constitution is the correct thing to do? It would be best if you watched it before slamming it, if you don't watch it at all probably best not comment.
Yes, I'm still sure that marriage equality is 100% the right thing to do and I'm not sure having watched Quinn's entire speech how anyone can think that it contains ANY valid counter arguments.
It's difficult to describe the number of different ways in which Quinn's argument breaks down, but let's give it a go.
Firstly, Quinn describes marriage (as the constitution does) as the foundation on which the family is based. He then goes on to argue that somehow, a same-sex couple which gets married can't have a family. This is because the only family he sees is one in which the children are the biological offspring of both parents. However, this view is a) out of touch with reality and b) not in keeping with the spirit of the constitution. According to research conducted by the ESRI in 2011, one in three families are not the traditional family described by Quinn in the video and one in four children under 21 do not live in a traditional family.
Also, while same-sex couples cannot reproduce children on their own without intervention, they can and do still produce children using AHR, surrogacy or adoption. This means that same-sex married couples can still raise a family. One way or another a future generation is being produced. It's just that the way in which these children are born do not fit into Quinn's narrow view of the world.
Secondly, when Quinn talks about marriage and children he is also wrong but for a very different reason. Firstly, we can see from birth statistics that an increasing number of children are being born to parents who are not married:
In 2012, 35% of children were born to parents who are not married. So even without marriage families are springing up around the country.
Furthermore, Quinn speaks about children as if raising children are an essential part of marriage. If that is the case, will he be campaigning to revoke the marriage licenses of the 261,652 couples who are married but do not have children as revealed by the last Census.
A heterosexual couple who do not want to or cannot produce children are not restricted from getting married, so why should a gay couple be so restricted.
Quinn then goes on to contradict his own point by mentioning that marriage has only two requirements, consent and consummation. First off, he's wrong, marriage actually has quite a four requirements: consent, capacity, notice and consummation. However, the relevant point here is consummation which Quinn speaks about at length. There are, however, a couple of points about consummation which undermine his argument.
Firstly, consummation is the ability to have sex. So this is something shared by straight and gay couples.
Secondly, it is impotency and not infertility which constitutes non-consummation for the purposes of declaring a marriage void. The law in this respect does not view marriage as an institution for producing children, but rather for the sexual union of two people.
Thirdly, while Quinn points out that Britain and France are beginning to scrap consummation as a requirement since the introduction of marriage equality, he fails to point out that other jurisdictions who haven't introduced same-sex marriage have also scrapped the concept of consummation, like Australia, for example.
Quinn then goes on to present a scaremongering version of the future where children who are adopted will no longer be preferably placed with a married heterosexual couple and that IVF will no longer be restricted to a married heterosexual couple and so on. This makes it sound as if equality for gay couples in adoption, fostering, IVF etc. would be bad for children which is demonstrably untrue. We know from over 40 years of research on the issue that there is no difference in the outcome of a child who is raised by a gay couple compared to a straight couple. If you would like to read all the research for yourself, I have documented it here:
Marriage Equality 2015 - Parenting research
He then goes on to compound this flawed argument by pointing to an opinion poll that his institute conducted which found that a majority of people would prefer a heterosexual married couple. Argumentum ad populum anyone?
As much as Quinn then hammers the point about the necessity of both a mother and father, the research (above) has shown that there is nothing specific to any gender which makes for a good parent. As one researcher summarised the position:
"First, fathers and mothers influence their children in similar rather than dissimilar ways.
Stated differently, students of socialization have consistently found that parental warmth, nurturance and closeness are associated with positive child outcomes regardless of whether the parent involved is a mother or father.
Secondly, as research has unfolded, psychologists have been forced to conclude that the characteristics of individual fathers - such as their masculinity, intellect, and even their warmth - are much less important, formatively speaking, than are the characteristics of the relationships they have established with their children.
Marital harmony is a consistent correlate of child adjustment, whereas marital conflict is a consistent and reliable correlate of child maladjustment."
One final point about adoption is the storm-in-a-teacup nature of adoption in relation to the marriage equality argument. The adoption figures above show that just 49 adoption orders were granted in 2012. Out of these just 16 were granted to couples where there was no pre-existing relationship with the child.
Quinn then goes on to speak about AHR and how children are being deliberately denied a mother or father. He then presumes to speak for these children and goes on about how angry they are about being denied their rights. However, it would seem that Quinn hasn't actually met any of these children as the ones who have come forward publicly have said entirely the opposite. If you want a firsthand view of a child's experience in this situation may I suggest that you read Sonics2k's fantastic AMA.
In making this point, Quinn also talks about a future where these children and the tens of thousands of them out there are looking for their donor parents. Tens of thousands, really? Even in large scale surveys such as those in the United States same-sex couple families only account for approximately 1.5% of all family types. In Ireland in the 2011 census there were just 4042 same-sex couples registered. Where are these tens of thousands of donor conceived children coming from?
Quinn's arguments are logically flawed, factually untrue and are simply an attempt to scare people and paint this dystopian vision of society of what will happen if marriage equality is introduced. Then again, so did people like him before contraception and divorce were introduced. We're still here and we'll continue to be after marriage equality is passed.0 -
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