Children are more involved in gay marriage than most people
know, mainly because many gay couples adopt. So why shouldn’t they be
considered in the decision making of marriage equality? Susannah W. Pallvogt
and Catherine E. Smith, professors at Washburn University School of Law and
University of Denver Strum College of Law, wrote “The Smartest Constitutional
Argument for Marriage Equality That No One Is Making,” an article in which they
argue that banning gay marriage is against the constitutional rights of
children. The article contains logical appeals in their reasons and examples to
support their argument that the state cannot punish children for the acts of
adults. First they point out a few cases in which states tried to do just that.
Either by forbidding children who were born out of wedlock from receiving benefits
after the deaths of their mothers, denying the distribution of worker’s
compensation to “illegitimate” children after the death of a parent, or denying
undocumented immigrant children a public education. However, the Supreme Court
revoked them because “no child is responsible for his birth and penalizing the illegitimate
child is an ineffectual - as well as unjust - way of deterring the parent.” They
used the cases to connect them to how children are affected by the banning of gay
marriage. Which leads to another one of their points, that the children of
same-sex partners are denied benefits, “both economically and psychologically,”
because of the marital status of their parents. Now Susannah and Catherine use an
ethical appeal to draw morals around the belief that banning gay marriage does
not justifies trying to control adults and punishing children in the process.
Lastly, they point out that courts have not used this argument to resolve the
issue because they are not well informed. They say it’s because gay couples
raising children is a new thing but I think the courts are just trying to
ignore that it potentially violates the rights of children.
Yes children do play a big role in gay couple lives. You will think if they are allowed to adopted children they would allowed to be marriage, but they are denied benefit for a child that they are taking care of. That does not make any sense. why would we the state punish the kids for the marriage status of their parent, but they are so quick to give a single mother benefit venus a sample sex couples that willing to provide housing for kids. But I Really like this article. Once again its go back to stereotypes people.
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