Valuing Diversity

The Left, or champions of "equality", have been insisting for many years that diversity, including gender diversity and gender integration, makes an organization stronger and is generally beneficial. It is good, we have been told, for the military, for universities (including dorm rooms), colleges, and other schools, it is good for businesses and the workplace, it is good for hospitals, fire departments, and police departments, it is good in who provides our entertainment and information, it is good for leadership in charities, civic organizations, scouting, and churches, it is good for country clubs, and it is good for legislative bodies.

Gender diversity is good. Gender diversity makes us stronger. Gender diversity brings benefits to those involved. Gender diversity is required.

Right?

And yet, some of the very same activists who've been telling us this for years in their news releases, their picketing, their lawsuits, their plays, literature, and media productions, their classrooms, and any other way they can, suddenly contradict their claims when it comes to parenting, and when it comes to marriage, with or without parenting (though most marriages involve parenting).

Literally the same people who insist gender diversity makes organizations stronger deny it makes a gender-diverse relationship any different (let alone better) from a same-sex relationship, or adds anything important to parenting. They really want us to believe that everything they've said about gender diversity when it comes to everything else somehow doesn't apply to family.

We have overwhelming data that the absence or virtual absence of their father in their home while growing up correlates to many negative indicators in adolescents and adults. We don't have nearly as much information about the absence of mothers, so let's just stick with the absence of fathers. Many of those "fatherless" children had at least one other adult in the house in addition to their mother, including an aunt, a grandparent, etc. However, that isn't the same as having a father. Those who advocate that groomless marriage or same-sex parenting is no different than or at least not lacking anything worthwhile in comparison to the bride+groom union want us to believe that the absence of a father is entirely rectified by the presence a second female guardian. However, just as no man can satisfy a homosexual woman's desire for a woman, no woman, no matter how great a person she is, no matter how much she may love the mother of those children, can fulfill the need children have for a father.

Unfortunately, the neutering of state marriage licensing makes it official state policy that there is no difference. This is an insult to both men and women, husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, and to our intelligence and innate sensibilities. This is anti-science.

Neutering state licenses means that bride+groom unions can't in anyway way be encouraged or incentivized or preferred over brideless or groomless unions under the law or in any program relying on taxpayer funds. For example, adoption or foster care agencies under state control or receiving any state funds can't prefer a bride+groom couple over a groomless union in placing children. They have to operate as though
giving a child two mothers and giving a child a mother and a father is the same thing. It obviously isn't.

We're all better off recognizing and encouraging bride+groom unions and parenting within such unions, but under neutered licensing, we'll have much less ability and fewer ways of doing that.

Studies also indicate that intentional parenting is generally better than "oops, we got pregnant" parenting, but it would take a substantial increase in the size and reach of government to even try to ban the latter to give every child the former. However, all it takes to set aside gender-inclusive unions as special, and thus hold up in our public policy the value of fathering, is a pair of already-there government documents, and maintaining the bride+groom requirement - the worldwide, historically celebrated core of marriage - in state marriage licensing.

It doesn't exactly encourage men to marry when or before having children, nor stick around to father their offspring, when we have public policy and a culture that disrespects them and insists they bring nothing of value to marriage nor parenting. But hey, it isn't like we're having any difficulties these days with fathers being around for the children, right?

The Left should abandon its absurd, self-contradictory claims that heterosexual unions are no different than homosexual unions. Leftist homosexuality advocates have proven effective at organizing and appealing to emotion and wielding their power, but just because they can get precedents and common sense tossed aside, judicial activists to rule for them, and elected officials to abandon their obligations, protocols, and ethics doesn't mean they should press ahead with the neutering of marriage, which would ultimately leave everyone, including them, worse off. Their efforts are more admirably spent on fighting the criminalization of homosexuality abroad and fighting actual prejudice, homelessness, assault, vandalism, bullying, suicide, domestic violence, substance abuse, mental illness, and sexually transmitted diseases, which are real problems in "gay and lesbian communities".


Previously:

Bride-and-Groom is the Right Side of History

The Ideal of a Married Mother and Father