Daniel Harrop: Children need a mother and a father
Daniel Harrop writes on the Providence Journal:
. . . As a psychiatrist and a clinical assistant professor at Brown, I am well aware that proponents of same-sex marriage will cite the American Psychiatric Association and other professional organizations to justify their view: There is nothing scientific at all about the view that a child needs his mother and father.
The scientific reality is that there are only a handful of studies on same-sex parenting (less than 50 total) . . .
The point I wish to underscore here is not that gay people cannot be good parents (just as many single mothers and fathers are good parents), but that there is something special and distinctive about sexual unions that can both create life and connect those babies to a mother and father.
But if Rhode Island law teaches that a same-sex relationship is a marriage, that there is no difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples, and only bigotry and hatred explain our state’s historic marriage tradition, then the idea that children need a mother and father, if possible, will cease to be a common-sense social ideal and will become a stigmatized expression of bigotry . . .