Quote:
Originally posted by Not Me
Why is the government involved at all? The purported reason that government promotes marriage by conferring special benefits and rights on married people was because of biological and historical reasons as well as this thought that children are best raised by both a mother and a father.
I still maintain that children are best raised by both a mother and a father. Now plenty of single mothers do a good job raising their kids and there are gay couples that do a good job raising their kids. But just because they do a good job doesn't mean that the children would not have been better off with both a mother and a father.
Of course, good single parent households and good gay households are preferable to bad heterosexual married people raising kids. But if all else is equal, given the choice between a mother and a father raising a child together vs. two mothers or two fathers or one mother or one father raising a child, the mother/father duo is the best for the child.
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(1) There is no purported reason. It's just always been done that way.
(2) Cite, please.
(3) We let, e.g., single fathers raise kids, even if it might be for the best in some abstract, academic way for the kid to have a mother. Thus, we don't force couples to stay together for the good of the children, because sometimes it would be worse. I can say this from personal experience.
(4) During WWII, when we were mobilizing the country to fight Hitler and Tojo, there was a government program that forced single parents to marry government-provided spouses of the opposite sex. In the euphoria after VJ Day, the program was abandoned. It is now widely acknowledged to have been a failure.
(5) Love is best for kids. And, as the Beatles noted, all you need is love. Yeah. Love, love. Although love was formerly believed to be exclusively available only to traditional (tm) couples, The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name now dares to speak its name.
(6) Why is the government involved at all? A fine question. You and the five other people who believe that there is any chance that the government will get out of the business of legislating morality should get together in the lobby of the Radisson at the next libertarian (tm) convention and discuss this. Perhaps the six of you should pick a state to move to where you can vote to change the laws so you can all marry each other.
