More on Civil Unions

One claim of proponents of civil unions is that this legal institution will provide for greater equality. Yet their practice shows that equality is not their goal. Take for example the case of two elderly sisters who petitioned for a civil union:

Joyce and Sybil Burden, age 88 and 80 respectively, have been living together in a home built on land inherited from their parents for the past thirty years. The land and house have so appreciated in value that they fear if one died first the other would have to sell in order to meet the rather stiff inheritance tax that the U.K. imposes on inherited property. Surviving legal spouses and civil partners are not subject to inheritance tax in such circumstances.

Until December 2005, the Burden sisters had no grounds for a discrimination complaint, since all unmarried cohabitants faced the same concern and the European Convention allows governments to grant special rights and exemptions to married couples. But on December 5 of last year, the U.K’s new Civil Partnership Law went into effect, allowing same-sex couples to form partnerships having the same inheritance and tax status as married couples, providing a basis for the Burden sisters to mount a discrimination claim.

Sadly, the European Court ruled against the sisters, signaling that it too is party to discrimination to promote the homosexual agenda. Advocates of civil unions desire not equality, but an ersatz marriage in order to subvert monogamy. As Stanley Kurtz describes gay-marriage advocate Andrew Sullivan's position, "Once gay marriage is legalized, says Sullivan, the monogamous ethos of traditional marriage will be transformed by the sexual 'openness' of gay unions. And that, Sullivan argued at the time, will be a good thing." (Kurtz's excellent piece draws an insightful parallel between how the infiltration of the homosexual ethos over a generation has wrecked the Roman Catholic priesthood and how gay "marriage" will wreck marriage and family.)

In the April Touchstone, Amanda Witt's "Distant Neighbors" paints a poignant portrait of her children's conversation the girl who moves in next door:

My son nodded in the direction of the house across the street, where two women were shifting around furniture and boxes in the garage. “I was going to guess your mom,” he said.

“That’s right,” the girl said despondently. “She’s a lesbian. But I am not a lesbian. No way. But listen—don’t tell your Mom until tonight, okay?”

“Why not?”

“Because then she won’t be able to go yell at my Mom until tomorrow, so we can be friends for the rest of today.”

My kids looked at each other. Here, finally, was a topic my son completely understood.

“Um, listen,” he said to the new girl. “I don’t know much about lesbians, but I know my mother. She is not going to go yell at your mother.”

“But she won’t let us be friends.”

“Why not? The girl who used to live in your house—her parents were divorced, and divorce isn’t a good thing, either, but we were friends with her anyway. And my mother was friends with her mother.”

“It isn’t the same thing. Everybody gets divorced—I mean, like duh, my parents are divorced. It’s not a big deal. But nobody likes lesbians.” We live, mind you, in the left-leaning, religion-shunning Pacific Northwest.

Then the girl began to cry. “Goodbye,” she said. “Nice knowing you. Have a good life.” My children came home, bewildered and upset.

It probably does need to be said that Mrs. Witt allowed her children to play with the new girl:

“Of course you can be friends,” I said. “But you’ll have to agree to disagree about this. Tell her you can be friends, but she cannot keep trying to persuade you that her mother’s behavior is acceptable.” They nodded.

Hopefully the Witt family provides some light to this poor child. But her prospects are unpromising.

So some of [her son's] innocence has been preserved, though a good bit of it has gone for good. I grieve for that. And I grieve for the girl who brought this unwelcome knowledge into his life, for “what chance,” as a Christian friend of mine said, “does she have?” She’s not bright, nor is she pretty; she’s from a broken home, is living with lesbians, is discontented, and “specializing,” as she herself puts it, “in being bored.” She has a lot of strikes against her and, making matters worse, is willing to embrace the role of victim.

It is all too apparent that what this girl needs above all is a father to tell her that she is lovable. Two moms don't make up for an absentee dad.

Apart from the readily apparent damage to the institution of marriage, the invisible victims of same-sex civil unions are the children. As with the Stockholm syndrome, many of these children will seek to justify their the behavior of their "parents", but many more will see the violence done to them in the name of satisfying adult preferences. The hurt won't be apparent for decades.

And then all will see how today's adults abandoned them.