What Does it Matter?

Heather Mac Donald is the John M. Olin fellow at the Manhattan Institute and co-author of The Immigration Solution. She writes a fine, admirably lucid and articulate article.

Reengineering the Family

The main answer to the “Why does it matter?” question is this: The institutionalized severing of biology from parenthood affirms a growing trend in our society, that of men abandoning their biological children.
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Gay child-rearing undercuts another understanding of why fathers should stay with their children: that mothers and fathers bring complementary attributes to child-rearing.
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The facile libertarian argument that gay marriage is a trivial matter that affects only the parties involved is astoundingly blind to the complexity of human institutions and to the web of sometimes imperceptible meanings and practices that compose them. Equally specious is the central theme in attorney Theodore Olson’s legal challenge to California’s Proposition 8: that only religious belief or animus towards gays could explain someone’s hesitation regarding gay marriage.