Prepared remarks for the Rhode Island legislature, hearings on

same sex marriage

Dr Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth
Institute, a project of the National Organization for Marriage
February 9, 2011
Providence, Rhode Island
www.ruthinstitute.org
jmorse@ruthinstitute.org

I am here today to address those of you who have already

made up your minds to redefine marriage. History will not be
kind to you. Previous generations of social experimenters have
caused unimaginable misery for millions of people. Particular
people advocated the policies that led to today’s 50% divorce rate
and 40% out of wedlock childbearing rate. None of these people
has ever been held accountable.
I am here today to hold you to account, for the predictable
harms you will cause by redefining marriage.
Let me remind you of the essential public purpose of
marriage. Marriage attaches mothers and fathers to their
children, and to one another. Once you replace that essential
public purpose with inessential, even frivolous private purposes,
marriage will not be able to do its job. But children will still need
secure attachments to their mothers and fathers, a need which
will go unfulfilled.
You are redefining parenthood, as a side effect of redefining
marriage, without even considering what you are about to do.
Until now, marriage makes legal parenthood track biological
parenthood. The legal presumption of paternity means that
children born to a married woman are presumed to be the
children of her husband. With this legal rule, and the social
practice of sexual exclusivity, marriage attaches children to their
biological parents.
Same sex couples of course, do not procreate together.
“Marriage equality” requires a slippery move from “presumption
of paternity” to the gender neutral “presumption of parentage.”
This sleight of hand transforms parenthood. The same sex
partner of a biological parent is never the other biological parent.

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Rather than attaching children to their biological parents, same
sex marriage is the vehicle that separates children from a parent.
No longer will the law hold that children need a mother and a
father. Under the inspiration and guidance of people like you in
other states, courts are saying silly things like, “the traditional
notion that children need a mother and a father to be raised into
healthy, well-adjusted adults is based more on stereotype than
anything else.”1
This statement made by the Iowa Supreme Court in Varnum
v Brien, is false as a general statement. Mountains of data show
that children do need their mothers and their fathers,2 and that
children care deeply about biological connections.3 The gay
community is not responsible for today’s generation of fatherless
children. But they will be responsible for the next such
generation.
And don’t tell me that we already have lots of children
unattached to their parents. We should be taking steps to place
responsible limits on things like divorce, rather than careening
headlong into further and more institutionalized injustices to
children.
Are you really prepared to accept responsibility for the
consequences of detaching legal parenthood from the natural
moorings of biology? Do you really want a world in which children
may have three or four legal parents?4 Are you ready for contract
parenting, in which adults parcel out parental responsibilities

1
Varnum v Brien Supreme Court of Iowa, No. 07–1499, Filed April 3, 2009, pg 54, footnote
26
2
Among the many citations that could be given, “Why Marriage Matters: 26 Conclusions
from the Social Sciences,” (NY: Institute for American Values, 2005), summarizes some of
the most important research.
3
See Elizabeth Marquardt, Norvell Glenn and Karen Clark, “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A
Pathbreaking Study of Young Adults Conceived through Sperm Donation,” (NY: Institute for
American Values, 2010).
4
“Pennsylvania Court finds three Adults Can Have Parental Rights,”
http://newyorklawschool.typepad.com/leonardlink/2007/05/pennsylvania_co.html (quoting
Superior Court case, Jacob v Shultz-Jacob, 2007 Westlaw 1240885 , 2007 PA Super 118),
“Canadian court rules boy has a dad and two moms,”
http://www.religioustolerance.org/hommarr3par.htm
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amongst themselves? That is the world you are bringing into
being. 5
The next generation of children of divorce may be shuttling
between 3 or 4 households, with their backpacks and their
sleeping bags. Whether you’re ready or not, I hold you
accountable.
And don’t try to tell me “nothing so terrible has happened in
Massachusetts.” Redefining marriage redefines the way in which
generations relate to one another. It is ludicrous to believe that
we would feel the full impact of such a change in a few years. It
will take at least a generation, a full thirty years or more, before
the full effects of redefining marriage work themselves out
throughout the social system.6
The only argument you have is so-called “equality.” You
have taken a venerable American concept and twisted it out of
recognition. Equality used to mean limiting the power of the state
to make irrelevant distinctions among citizens. In your hands,
equality has become a battering ram for smashing every aspect
of social life that has any hint of sexual differentiation. No more
mothers and fathers, only Parent 1 and Parent 2.
Far from limiting the power of the state, your version of
equality has become a tool for the hostile takeover of civil society
by the state. Churches are already under attack for daring to
dissent from the new state-imposed Orthodoxy that marriage is
whatever the government says it is.7
5
“Why just Two? Disaggregating Traditional Parental Rights and Responsibilities to
Recognize Multiple Parents,” Melanie Jacobs, Michigan State University College of Law, Legal
Studies Research Paper Series, No. 05-04; “Johnny has two mommies—and four dads,”
Boston Globe, October 24, 2010,
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/10/24/johnny_has_two_mommies__a
nd_four_dads/
6
Quoting divorce statistics in Massachusetts is frankly ridiculous, since the divorce rate rose
by 4.5% in MA between 2004 and 2007, while the divorce rate across the whole of the US
fell by 2.7%. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/Divorce%20Rates%2090%2095%20and
%2099-07.pdf (Divorce Rate by State, 1990- 2007, Division of Vital Statistics, National
Center for Health Statistics, CDC. Page last updated, November 19, 2010), and
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/marriage_divorce_tables.htm National Marriage and Divorce
Trends, National Vital Statistics System. Provisional number of divorces and annulments and
rates, United States, 2000-2007, page last updated, November 19, 2010.
7
For a general discussion of the likely impact of same sex marriage on a variety of church-
related activities, see Douglas Laycock, Anthony R. Picarello, Jr. and Robin Fretwell Wilson,
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 Parents are losing the right to direct the education of their
own children.8 Foster parents in the UK must submit to the state’s
views about marriage.9 Reputable adoption agencies have been
put out of business.
And the pettiness of some of the complaints brought by
same sex couples is simply staggering. Christian bed and
breakfast owners have been sued for not allowing unmarried
couples to stay in double rooms. They would have gladly rented
them separate rooms, but that was not good enough for the
thought police.10 Same sex couples have brought legal
complaints against wedding photographers, as if there were a
constitutional right to have your picture taken by the person of
your choice.11 All in the name of “civil rights.”
Let me remind you that a vast majority of African Americans
completely reject same sex marriage. They are deeply offended
by the high-jacking of the moral authority of their civil rights
movement.

Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts, (Lanham, MD:

Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008).
8
See in Massachusetts for instance, Parker v. Hurley, 514 F.3d 87, 92-93 (1st Cir. 2008),
cert. denied, 2008 WL 1926813 (Oct. 6, 2008), and in California, SB 777 requires “non-
discrimination” in instruction, for private as well as public schools. Senate Floor Analysis of
S.B. 777, Senate Rules Committee, Office of Senate Floor Analysis 2 (Sept. 19, 2007)
(internal quotations omitted), available at http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/07-08/bill/sen/sb_0751-
0800
/sb_777_cfa_20070919_103650_sen_floor.html. See S.B. 777, 2007-2008 Reg. Sess. (Cal.
2007), available at http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/07-08/bill/sen/sb_0751
-0800/sb_777_bill_20071012_chaptered.pdf;
9
In the UK, see the recent cases of Owen and Eunice Johns,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1325311/Gay-rights-laws-danger-freedoms-Bishops-
speak-homosexuality.html and John and Charlotte Yallop,
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2010/August/Christians-Denied-Foster-Kids-Over-Moral-
Stance/
10
A UK couple who runs a bed and breakfast out of their own home is being sued by a same
sex couple because they were denied a double room.
http://wn.com/Christian_B&B_owners_sued_by_homosexual_couple
11
The New Mexico Human Rights Commission fined a Christian wedding photographer
because she declined to take photos of a lesbian commitment ceremony.
http://media.npr.org/documents/2008/jun/photography.pdf
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 When slavery was abolished, all slaves became free men and
women. When women obtained the right to vote, the
discrimination ended with the very next election. But for children
of same sex marriage, the situation will be different. When we
come to our senses 30 years from now and realize that we have
perpetrated a grotesque injustice, not a single child born
fatherless or motherless within a same sex marriage will get his
missing parent back. Only prevention will protect children’s rights.
The thin disguise of marriage equality will not mislead
anyone, nor will it atone for the wrong this day done.12
And to those of you who plan to vote for man/woman
marriage, I say: stay strong! History is on your side.

12
Slight paraphrase of Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessey v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537,562
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