Marriage Equality Rhode Island

learn / Info for Families

Children of Same-Sex Couples

Same-sex couples in Rhode Island (and elsewhere) are raising children. These children deserve the protections and security that having married parents would bring them.

“If my dad married another man, who would be my mom?”

Opponents of equality frequently attempt to use our own children against us. A major national opponent with a chapter here in Rhode Island recently ran a radio ad featuring a child’s voice asking the above question. This kind of anti-intellectual fear-mongering unfairly singles out our children and marks them as targets for bullying.

Children need to feel their families are supported

Family is a basic element of self-identification for young children. Research has shown that children need to feel that their family is supported by their community in order to succeed both academically and socially. Recent U.S. Census data shows that more and more children are being raised in environments that don’t mirror the “ideal” household of a mother and father of the same race raising children that are biologically related to them both. All kinds of families deserve to be respected.

Family comes in all shapes and configurations

The reality is that children today are raised in a variety of different kinds of families, large and small. There are one-parent, two-parent and grandparent-headed families. There are step-families, blended families, foster families, families of birth and families of intention. There are families with one child, families with ten children, families with no relatives and families bursting with extended family activity. Families are interracial, multiracial, intergenerational, gay and straight. That’s simply the reality and no amount of legislation can or should change that.

children grow and thrive in a diversity of situations

The traditional definition of the married, heterosexual couple with 2.5 children is only one of the many, many kinds of families that our children grow and thrive in. To say that it is the only acceptable home for children insults all children’s homes that don’t look like this. An acceptable home for a child is one in which love, commitment and support are freely given among its members.

Mainstream Experts Support Gay Parenting

Scientific evidence has prompted numerous mainstream health and child welfare organizations to adopt policies opposing restrictions on lesbian and gay parenting, including the following:
• American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (1999)
• American Academy of Family Physicians (2002)
• American Academy of Pediatrics (2002)
• American Bar Association (1995, 1999, 2003)
• American Psychiatric Association (1997, 2002)
• American Psychoanalytic Association (2002)
• American Psychological Association (1976, 2004)
• American Medical Association (2004)
• Child Welfare League of America (1988)
• National Association of Social Workers (2002)
• North American Council on Adoptable Children (1998; amend.2002; amend.2005)

What the research says

The American Psychological Association has found that groups opposing marriage rights for same-sex couples repeatedly mis-characterize the implications of the existing scientific research for public policy on gay and lesbian parenting. They do so by relying on studies that simply do not address gay and lesbian parents and their children, because the research that has directly studied gay and lesbian parents and their children has not found any evidence to justify discrimination against them.

Opponents of marriage rights for same-sex couples argue that children without both a mother and father have poorer physical and mental health, poorer academic achievement, greater likelihood of substance abuse, higher risk of suicide, and greater criminal propensity. The studies they cite, however, examined children of divorced parents and of single parents, and thus support the conclusion that—all else being equal—children fare better when raised by two parents than by one.

Doing what’s best for children

With all the things out there that threaten and harm children, happy, devoted, same-sex couples who go to great lengths to have or adopt children are assuredly not one of them. In fact, all of the major medical and mental-health associations in the country agree that children raised by same-sex couples do just as well as children raised by opposite-sex couples.

Although same-sex couples may not marry in Rhode Island, that doesn’t change the fact that they are still raising children together — and those children deserve to have their families legally protected by marriage just as much as children of opposite-sex couples do. Many same-sex couples are fighting for marriage rights because they love their children and want to give their families every protection the law will allow.

If helping and protecting children is a cause that is important to you, then it follows that achieving marriage equality should be important to you as well.

Sources

Some of the information on this page came from The Family Equality Council, The Human Rights Campaign and Soulforce. Each of these organizations has a quantity of resources for same-sex couples raising children and their families.