the national interest June 11, 2012
Gay Marriage Does Not Mean Baby-Snatching
By Jonathan Chait
Photo: DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty
The gay-marriage debate is a baffling spectacle because, once you have abandoned the premise that homosexuality is evil and must be stigmatized, any remaining justification collapses. And yet a hardy, dwindling cohort of social conservatives soldier on nonetheless. Ross Douthat today argues that gay marriage is problematic because children raised by married, biological, opposite-sex parents fare better than other children. His conclusion seems highly disputable for reasons he himself mentions (the data set is entirely from the pre-gay marriage era, when gay parents were unmarried, closeted, and so on.) But the larger flaw here is that his entire focus on child welfare seems completely beside the point.
Douthat writes:
Regnerus's study is a reminder of why marriage has traditionally been regarded as something other than just a celebration of love and a signifier of civic equality, and why the rationale for the institution has involved a child's rights to his or her biological parents as well as in two lovers' rights to one another.
Who is challenging "a child's rights to his or her biological parents"? If gay marriage means my kids are going to be snatched away and raised by a pair of guys living near Dupont Circle, then I'm against it. But I'm pretty sure that's not part of gay marriage.
Indeed, there's nothing about gay marriage that is going to reduce the supply of children raised by married, opposite-sex biological parents. So even if we accept Douthat's highly dubious reading of the data, and we thus assume that it's vastly better for children to be raised by their married mommy and daddy, why does this argue in any way against gay marriage? Gays can acquire children through adoption, or through surrogate motherhood. None of these ways deprives a child of married, opposite-sex biological parenting. The only alternatives for such a baby are either not to be adopted or not to be born at all.
As for adoption, if you want to stretch Douthat's argument farther and assume the superiority of non-biological opposite sex parenting over gay parenting, then you could find a way to give opposite-sex couples adoption preference over gay couples without denying gays the right to marry. As for the latter, I assume an ardent pro-lifer like Douthat would concede that a baby is better off being raised by gays than not being born at all. Either way, the alleged superiority of straight, biological, married parenting to gay parenting is completely beside the point.
Could Trump's Going Away Ceremony Be a Ghost Town?
After Climate Alarmism
By Charlotte Klein and Matt Stieb
Steve Bannon, Lil Wayne, Elliott Broidy, and Kodak Black are among the most notable figures in Trump's final clemency spree.
inauguration liveblog
Biden Heads to D.C. for Inauguration: Live Updates
By Intelligencer Staff
The president-elect got emotional as he left Delaware for Washington. Meanwhile, Trump is preparing to move out of the White House.
Trump's Farewell Address Is a Hypocritical Paean to Patriotism and Free Speech
No president has done more damage to American ideals.
By Olivia Nuzzi
By Matt Stieb
By David Wallace-Wells
A major foreign policy shift out of the gate
Blinken confirms Biden admin will end support for Saudi-led campaign in Yemen.
"The Houthis bear significant responsibility for what's happened in Yemen, but the way the campaign has been conducted has also contributed significantly to that situation & so our support should end"
—@jmhansler
U.S. Surpasses 400,000 COVID-19 Deaths
More than 100,000 Americans have died from the coronavirus in the past five weeks.
We're Lucky the Trump Presidency Wasn't Worse
By Eric Levitz
Electing an authoritarian reality star brought us mass death and insurrection. But it's also left us with a fighting chance to fortify our democracy.
Invites for the final event of Trump's presidency suggest there are concerns it may be poorly attended.
How to Sign Up for a COVID Vaccine in New York
After a sluggish start, New York is ramping up vaccination efforts, making more people eligible for the shot and opening new mass vaccination sites.
Democrats Push Voting-Rights Expansion With Fresh Urgency
By Ed Kilgore
Republicans will block the reforms, but at the price of underlining an authoritarian strain in their thinking that will outlive Trump's presidency.
A review.
Policing Facebook Under a Biden Administration
Talking to FTC Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter about keeping big tech honest.
Trump's Second Impeachment Trial Will Be a Democratic Production
The question of whether a former president can be tried and then banned from future office will hang over Trump's second trial from the get-go.
McConnell doesn't seem to be softening on the president
McConnell, just now, on the rioters who stormed the Capitol: "The mob was fed lies… they were provoked by the President and other powerful people"
—@PeterAlexander
All of President-elect Joe Biden's Cabinet Nominees
A running list of Biden's announcements and reported picks as the incoming administration begins to take shape.
The Biden team noted that Levine has been confirmed three times by the GOP-controlled Pennsylvania state senate
President-elect Joe Biden announced Tuesday that he will nominate Pennsylvania's top health official, Rachel Levine, to be his assistant secretary of health. Levine, a pediatrician, would become the first openly transgender federal official to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
"Dr. Rachel Levine will bring the steady leadership and essential expertise we need to get people through this pandemic — no matter their zip code, race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability — and meet the public health needs of our country in this critical moment and beyond," Biden said in a statement. "She is a historic and deeply qualified choice to help lead our administration's health efforts."
Levine serves as Pennsylvania's secretary of health and has been leading the state's public health response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden selects transgender doctor, Rachel Levine, as assistant health secretary
life after warming
The war on denial has been won. And that's not the only good news.
the end stage
Trump Plans to Issue at Least 100 Pardons and Commutations on Tuesday
By Chas Danner
He is also reportedly still considering whether or not to try to preemptively pardon himself and his family members and aides.
New COVID Strain Spreading Across U.S.: What We Know
As public-health officials warn that the U.K. COVID strain could soon become common in the U.S., an unrelated variant has been found in California.
How Close Did We Get to an Election Coup?
At several moments, Trump's efforts to overturn Joe Biden's victory were scarily close to success. Fortunately, he was too incompetent to pull it off.
Trump Wanted to Erase Obama's Legacy. He Failed.
Almost every Obama achievement Trump tried to negate has remained.
Multiple Extremist Group Members Arrested: Live Updates
The FBI is continuing to round up rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol. Meanwhile, Sunday's state capitol protests were a non-event.
Keystone XL may soon be out of stock
U.S. president-elect Joe Biden has indicated plans to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline permit via executive action on his first day in office, sources confirmed to CBC News on Sunday. A purported briefing note from the Biden transition team mentioning the plan was widely circulated over the weekend after being shared by the incoming president's team with U.S. stakeholders. The words "Rescind Keystone XL pipeline permit" appear on a list of executive actions supposedly scheduled for Day 1 of Biden's presidency.
Biden indicates plans to cancel Keystone XL pipeline permit on first day in office, sources confirm
Navalny returns to Russia, is immediately detained
Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who recuperated in Germany from a near-deadly poisoning, returned to Moscow on Sunday and was detained shortly after leaving his plane. The detention of Mr. Navalny could set off an international backlash and protests at home. He has accused the Kremlin of trying to murder him in YouTube videos viewed more than 40 million times.
Russia's penitentiary service, which has said that Mr. Navalny was wanted for violating the terms of a prior suspended sentence, released a statement saying that Mr. Navalny had been detained pending a court hearing. …
Before he was detained at passport control, Mr. Navalny gave an impromptu statement to journalists. He stood in the transit area of the airport's Terminal D, before a lit-up screen showing a photo of the Kremlin, and apologized to air travelers inconvenienced by the air-traffic tumult surrounding his arrival. "I am not afraid," he said in remarks carried by Russian news media livestreams from the scene. "I know that I am right. I know all the criminal cases against me are fabricated."
Navalny Returns to Moscow and Is Detained on Arrival
NSA is installing Trump-selected GOP operative as agency's top lawyer
The National Security Agency is "moving forward" to install Michael Ellis, a former GOP political operative and White House official, as the agency's top lawyer, the agency said Sunday. The announcement came a day after acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller ordered the NSA director, Gen. Paul Nakasone, to immediately place Ellis in position as the agency's general counsel.
Ellis had been selected for the job in November by the Pentagon general counsel after a civil service competition. But Nakasone was not in favor of Ellis's selection and sought to delay his installation, according to several people familiar with the issue, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity. …
Ellis was selected under pressure from the White House, people familiar with the matter said at the time. The move drew criticism from national security legal experts as an attempt to politicize a career position.
The NSA is 'moving forward' to install Michael Ellis, a former GOP operative, as its top lawyer, the agency said Sunday
What Explains Bitcoin's Resurgence?
By Nic Carter
Written off for dead by many after falling 90 percent, the cryptocurrency is back at all-time highs. Believe it or not, a lot has changed.
how we live now
What Has the Pandemic Done to Our Eyes?
By Eve Peyser
Humans weren't meant to stare at screens.
A look back at the president's most notable lies from the most tireless fact-checker of the Trump era
My personal favorite lie: Trump was once named Michigan's Man of the Year
Trump has never lived in Michigan. Why would he have been named Michigan's Man of the Year years before his presidency? He wouldn't have been. He wasn't. And yet this lie he appeared to have invented in the final week of his 2016 campaign became a staple of his 2020 campaign, repeated at Michigan rally after rally. It's so illustrative because it makes so little sense.
—CNN's Daniel Dale
Trump's Job Approval Plunging as He Leaves Office
Trump's support is in free fall, but is high enough among Republicans to keep them from dumping him. Biden enters office with a bit of a honeymoon.
Even the Guy the MyPillow CEO Wanted to Enlist for a Coup Is Confused
By Ben Jacobs
The mattress mogul might have handed Trump a plan for holding onto power. One of the people named has no idea what's going on.
end-times
How BidenWorld Is Scrambling to Prepare for January 21
By Gabriel Debenedetti
His much-needed recovery agenda will have to weave its way through a Washington that is about to be increasingly distracted by Trump's re-impeachment.
intelligencer is a Vox Media Network. © 2021 Vox Media, LLC. All rights reserved.