While the Debate Rages on, Children Pay the Price

January 2007

Dear Friends:

Can you believe that this first decade of the 21st century is more than half gone, and that a brand new year has swept in upon us? I’m still not sure what happened to 2006, but it seemed to be with us for such a brief moment before vanishing like a vapor. Every January, I am confronted anew with the shocking brevity of life and a reminder that we are “just passing through.” King David referred poetically to this impermanence of our lives when he wrote: “As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more” (Psalm 103:15-16, NIV). David’s words have never seemed more valid to me than now.

With the arrival of the new year, it is time to pause and consider where we’ve been as a nation and where we appear to be headed. Specifically, I want to share some thoughts with you about the institution of the family and how it is faring. I’ll begin with the good news: We have reason to be pleased and relieved that despite the political upheaval wrought by the November elections, the majority of the American people still value the traditional family. Voters in eight states considered how marriage would be defined in their constitutions, either exclusively as a man and a woman, or expanding it to include homosexual unions. It could have been a disastrous turning point in our history.

Instead, seven of the eight states voted convincingly to stay the course and to protect the traditional family. Even the state of Wisconsin and others with a more liberal population clearly rejected the revolutionary idea of same-sex marriage. The only exception was Arizona, where the money raised by gay activists and their allies was twice the amount donated to conservatives.1 As the election approached, pro-family forces ran short of funds and could not counter misleading advertising warning cohabiting seniors that they would lose their Social Security benefits if the marriage amendment passed.2 It was a lie, but a convincing one. The mailing sent out by those in opposition to the marriage amendment was illustrated by various photos, each depicting a man and a woman. It included no pictures of two women or two men in romantic settings. One might ask, “Why not?” considering the political implications of the brochure. It would appear that the organizations which paid for the piece wanted voters to consider everything except the fundamental issue of same-sex marriage. It was a classic example of changing the subject to avoid an unpopular message. Even with these distortions, the marriage amendment failed by only two percentage points.3 Fortunately in Arizona, a Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is on the books protecting one man-one woman unions. Thus, nothing will change there or in the other seven states unless another federal judge decides to rewrite the law. Almost none of what I have just told you was reported in the mainstream media.

All told, 27 of the 28 states that have voted on constitutional amendments have opted for the exclusivity of traditional marriages. Without a doubt, this is what the American people want, and that would end the matter if it were not for the concerted effort of gay advocates, the left-wing media and, of course, liberal judges. They work tirelessly to redesign the institution of the family, as you will see in a moment.

The battle to save the family intensified dramatically in 2006, especially in the run-up to the election. Huge campaign contributions were made by mega-wealthy gay activists, including software tycoon Tim Gill. According to campaign financial reports, he gave $2.5 million to assure passage of Colorado’s Referendum I, a measure that would have given all the rights of marriage (except the name) to gay couples.4 Gill gave $670,000 to this campaign in the last six days before the election.5 Nevertheless, Referendum I failed, even while Colorado was turning from a red to a blue state. This was very good news for the traditional family.

Sadly, there were also significant losses in other parts of the country. One of the most distressing occurred at the New Jersey Supreme Court’s command. On Dec. 14,, the legislature, by order of the court, voted overwhelmingly to make their state the third in the nation to recognize civil unions. An article in The New York Times quoted a 70-year-old lesbian woman, Jan Moore, as saying, “We’ve climbed a mountain. I didn’t think I would see this in my lifetime.”6

Nor did I.

Another development last month focused on the announcement by Mary Cheney, lesbian daughter of Vice President Dick and Lynne Cheney, indicating she is pregnant—apparently by artificial insemination. Mary and her lover, Heather Poe, plan to rear the baby as a quasi-married couple. The announcement created quite a stir among political pundits and culture watchers throughout the nation. Time magazine asked me to write a commentary on the development, and my response was published in the Dec. 18 issue of Time. It appears below. (By the way, the headline and sub-heading quoted below were written by the magazine’s editors, not by me.)

TIME
Sunday, Dec. 10, 2006
Two Mommies Is One Too Many
Mary Cheney is starting a family. Let’s hope she doesn’t start a trend.
By JAMES C. DOBSON

A number of social conservatives, myself included, have recently been asked to respond to the news that Mary Cheney, the Vice President’s daughter, is pregnant with a child she intends to raise with her lesbian partner. Implicit in this issue is an effort to get us to criticize the Bush Administration or the Cheney family. But the concern here has nothing to do with politics. It is about what kind of family environment is best for the health and development of children, and, by extension, the nation at large.

With all due respect to Cheney and her partner, Heather Poe, the preponderance of more than 30 years of social-science evidence indicates that children do best on every measure of well-being when raised by their married mother and father. That is not to say Cheney and Poe will not love their child. But love alone is not enough to guarantee healthy growth and development. The two most loving women in the world cannot provide a daddy for a little boy—any more than the two most loving men can be complete role models for a little girl.

The voices that argue otherwise tell us more about our politically correct culture than they do about what children really need. The fact remains that gender matters—perhaps nowhere more than in regard to child rearing. The unique value of fathers has been explained by Dr. Kyle Pruett of Yale Medical School in his book Fatherneed: Why Father Care Is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child. Pruett says dads are critically important simply because “fathers do not mother.” Psychology Today explained in 1996 that “fatherhood turns out to be a complex and unique phenomenon with huge consequences for the emotional and intellectual growth of children.” A father, as a male parent, makes unique contributions to the task of parenting that a mother cannot emulate, and vice versa.

According to educational psychologist Carol Gilligan, mothers tend to stress sympathy, grace and care to their children, while fathers accent justice, fairness and duty. Moms give a child a sense of hopefulness; dads provide a sense of right and wrong and its consequences. Other researchers have determined that boys are not born with an understanding of “maleness.” They have to learn it, ideally from their fathers.

But set aside the scientific findings for a minute. Isn’t there something in our hearts that tells us, intuitively, that children need a mother and a father? Admittedly, that ideal is not always possible. Divorce, death, abandonment and unwed pregnancy have resulted in an ever growing number of single-parent families in this culture. We admire the millions of men and women who have risen to the challenge of parenting alone and are meeting their difficult responsibilities with courage and determination. Still, most of them, if asked, would say that raising children is a two-person job best accomplished by a mother and father.In raising these issues, Focus on the Family does not desire to harm or insult women such as Cheney and Poe. Rather, our conviction is that birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples. Traditional marriage is God’s design for the family and is rooted in biblical truth. When that divine plan is implemented, children have the best opportunity to thrive. That’s why public policy as it relates to families must be based not solely on the desires of adults but rather on the needs of children and what is best for society at large.

This is a lesson we should have learned from no-fault divorce. Because adults wanted to dissolve difficult marriages with fewer strings attached, reformers made it easier in the late 1960s to dissolve nuclear families. Though there are exceptions, the legacy of no-fault divorce is seen in countless shattered lives within three generations, adversely affecting children’s behavior, academic performance and mental and physical health. No-fault divorce reflected our selfish determination to do what was convenient for adults, and it has been, on balance, a disaster.

We should not enter into yet another untested and far-reaching social experiment, this one driven by the desires of same-sex couples to bear and raise children. The traditional family, supported by more than 5,000 years of human experience, is still the foundation on which the well-being of future generations depends.

************

Needless to say, the views expressed in this article run counter to everything our liberal, politically correct culture holds dear. It shouldn’t surprise us that my column brought howls of protests from some gay and lesbian bloggers and in the left-wing media.

Perhaps the angriest among them was expressed in an article published on Time’s Web site written by gay activist Jennifer Chrisler. She wrote, “To say that Dobson is misinformed here would be inaccurate. He is simply lying.”7 That was a curious comment considering her opening paragraph, which read: “The strategies of religious and political extremists like James Dobson of Focus on the Family have become more nuanced of late. They have adjusted their language so that it is less vitriolic.” Obviously, Ms. Chrisler has not yet “adjusted” her own rhetoric. As for me, I have never written anything hateful or vengeful about homosexuals. I simply disagree with their agenda, especially that which targets the institution of the family.

As a side note, Time would not allow us to list my credentials as a psychologist. Nor would Time permit reference to my Ph.D. in child development. Only my name and affiliation with Focus on the Family were allowed. Chrisler was identified, however, as “Executive Director of Family Pride, the nation’s largest LGBT family advocacy group, and the mother of twin boys with her wife Cheryl Jacques. They reside in Washington, D.C.” Well, whoever said life is fair?

Maggie Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, responded to Chrisler’s diatribe with these words: “Jennifer Chrisler accuses Dr. James Dobson of simply ‘lying’ when he argues scientific evidence shows ‘children do best’ when ‘raised by their married mother and father” . . . “Here is how Child Trends summed up the research on family structure in 2002: ‘Research clearly demonstrates that family structure matters for children . . . the family structure that helps children the most is a family headed by two biological parents in a low-conflict marriage.’

Here’s another reaction to Jennifer Chrisler’s editorial sent to Time :

Dear Editors,

Jennifer Chrisler accuses Dobson of “lying” when he claims that children are best when raised by a mom and dad united in marriage.

I think competent sociologists support Dobson and not Chrisler. Thus Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia in several writings has shown that Dobson’s claims are verified by competent sociological studies. He notes as an example that Princeton sociologist Sara McLahanan argues that an intact, two-parent family does four key things for children: 1) children benefit from the economic resources that mothers and particularly fathers bring to the household through work; 2) they see their parents model appropriate male-female relations, including virtues like fidelity and self-sacrifice; 3) because both parents are invested in the child, they spell one another in child care and monitor one another’s parenting; 4) fathers often serve as key guides to children seeking to negotiate the outside world as adolescents and young adults and introduce them to civic institutions, the world of work, and provide them with key contacts in these worlds.8

William E. May
John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family
at The Catholic University of America

One of the most vicious among my critics was Frank Rich, ultra-liberal columnist for The New York Times. He never misses an opportunity to blast evangelical Christians, whom he clearly loathes. This is the man, you may recall, who speculated that the Oklahoma City bombing was probably perpetrated by so-called “right-wing” Christians before the real culprits, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, were arrested, tried and convicted of the crime.9 Though I asked Rich to issue an apology, he wrote back saying he would think about it. He must still be thinking. Now he has written a reaction to the Mary Cheney matter, referring to Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and the American Family Association as “the axis of family jihadis.”10 Rich said we get more extreme every day. He, of course, is always “fair and balanced.”

The debate continued hot and heavy. Dr. Kyle Pruett of Yale School of Medicine, wrote me to complain about my quoting from his book. He said:

Dr. Dobson,

I was startled and disappointed to see my work referenced in the current Time Magazine piece in which you opined that social science, such as mine, supports your convictions opposing lesbian and gay parenthood. I write now to insist that you not quote from my research in your media campaigns, personal or corporate, without previously securing my permission. You cherry-picked a phrase to shore up highly (in my view) discriminatory purposes. This practice is condemned in real science, common though it may be in pseudo-science circles. There is nothing in my longitudinal research or any of my writings to support such conclusions. On page 134 of the book you cite in your piece, I wrote, “What we do know is that there is no reason for concern about the development or psychological competence of children living with gay fathers. It is love that binds relationships, not sex.”

Kyle Pruett, M.D., Yale School of Medicine

Well, let me think this through. Dr. Pruett’s book is called Fatherneed: Why Father Care is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child.11 Something is strange here. Doesn’t the title itself proclaim the significance of fathering in the well-being of children? Of course it does! The phrase that Dr. Pruett said I “cherry-picked” was this, “fathers do not mother.” Incidentally, that is the title of the first chapter of his book! The second chapter is titled, “The Dad Difference in Child Development.”

The final paragraph in Fatherneed reads, “Men are the single greatest untapped resource in the lives of American children. Natural, renewable, and by and large nontoxic, they couldn’t be healthier for the country’s children. We can’t afford to let another one get away.”12 What am I missing here? Isn’t that precisely the point I was making? In what sense did I misquote or take Dr. Pruett’s writings out of context? Is he now changing his position and claiming that fathers are NOT critical to healthy child development? Is he saying that fathers DO NOT create huge consequences for children, or that two lesbians can do the job just as well without them? Apparently so, but that is not what he wrote.

Carol Gilligan, the other author I quoted in my article in Time, also wrote an angry letter accusing me of misrepresenting her views. She did not indicate how I had distorted her perspective, but she demanded that I never quote her again. So I won’t. I might say, however, that writers do not have the privilege of stifling those who would use their work. I understand Ms. Gilligan’s desire only to be quoted by those whom she likes, but that is not the way the progressive world operates.

What we are seeing here is evidence that “same-sex marriage” is supported by a vast bulwark of politically correct ideology, and I can tell you from experience that it rises up like a dragon when challenged. Anyone who dares to disagree with that cherished position, or with the claim that homosexuality is genetic, can expect to incur great indignation from cultural elites around the world. There are beliefs that simply will not be tolerated, and the notion that boys and girls need both a mother and a father is one of the sacred cows. Imagine how the culture would have reacted 50 years ago to the assertion that two lesbians or two gay men could replace a child’s mother or father. How times have changed.

Finally, let me hasten to say that many of the letters I received and the articles it engendered were very supportive and positive. Some of them were from highly respected professionals. Here are three that I particularly appreciated:

To the Editor:

It comforts me as a pediatrician when a health profession colleague of Dr. Dobson’s stature presents the science of child rearing so clearly [Dec.16]. Of course children need a mother and a father, female and male, to optimally guide them through all of their developmental stages to adulthood. This is not new science. It was taught to me in every year of my education through and including medical school. I and my colleagues still teach it to our students today and encourage this optimal arrangement to the parents of our patients. Is every child raised in this environment? Increasingly no, but that does not make the alternatives normative or optimal. Some parents feed their children a fast food diet seated before the TV or video game screen and some of these children do well despite that. Should we encourage this? Of course not! Why then are some so fearful of the real and accurate science of Dr. Dobson’s words about optimum family structure? The American College of Pediatricians applauds those words and adds to them on its website. There too you will find how a medical journal has sought to censor scientific accuracy on this subject. As a past American Academy of Pediatrics President, I join with Dr. Dobson and ask that we clearly support the real needs of children over the selfish wants of adults. Let’s continue to encourage the optimum rearing arrangement for all our children and assist as best we can those who are not so fortunate.

Joseph Zanga, M.D., FAAP, FCPP
President, American College of Pediatricians
Professor of Pediatrics

Thank you very much, Sir. I would like to meet you some time.

The second encouraging letter sent to the editors of Time reads as follows:

To the Editor:

Dr. James Dobson’s critics call him names (“extremist,” “liar”) but actually confirm his central point. Their focus is on the wants and preferences of adults, rather than the obligations adults have as a matter of basic justice to children they may conceive.

Every child has two biological parents—a mother and a father—and though death or other misfortune may remove one or both of them from a child’s life, each child has a deep and abiding need to know and be loved by both his mother and father, and to be nurtured in the context of their faithful, loving and exclusive marital bond. As the anguished testimony of many children who have grown up not knowing their fathers (or even knowing who their fathers are) reveals, boys and girls alike need their paternal progenitor to be more than a mere “sperm donor.” They need him to shoulder the joyful burdens of being a caring and involved husband and father. Similarly, children need the women who conceive and bear them to be mothers—not just providers of ova and wombs.

These truths are common sense to most people. But we lose our grip on them if we slip into regarding the coming to be of children as mainly a matter of fulfilling adults’ desires.

Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence
Director, James Madison Program in American
Ideals and Institutions
Princeton University

And the third:

To the Editor:

Ms. Chrisler argues that recent studies show that children of gay or lesbian couples do just as well as children raised by hetrosexuals. She fails to note that virtually all the studies on which she relies involve very small data sets and short time horizons. Nor do most of them control for variables like the parents’ education and income level. The truth is we simply don’t know how children raised by gay or lesbian couples will turn out.

We can be virtually certain, however, that their outcomes will be less desirable than those of children raised by their married biological parents. I say that because we know with great assurance that children raised in intact nuclear families have better outcomes on virtually every index than children raised in any other setting. This is demonstrated by numerous studies based on large national samples over extended time frames that control for other variables such as parents’ race, education, and income level.

This fact alone demonstrates that Ms. Chrisler’s overt disdain for the traditional nuclear family is entirely misplaced. It is true that our society offers many alternatives to the traditional nuclear family, but if we are concerned about the future of children that should be a cause for concern rather than for celebration.

John F. Coverdale
Professor of Law
Seton Hall University School of Law
Newark, NJ

There is much more that could be said about marriage and the family. If you’re interested in exploring further the overwhelming evidence in support of raising children within the context of a stable, traditional marriage environment, please visit our CitizenLink Web site at citizenlink.org/FOSI/marriage/ssuap/. The debate over homosexual adoption isn’t going away any time soon, and it’s important that those of us who embrace a biblical view of marriage and family are able to articulate and defend our views clearly and gracefully.

As you can see, we’re entering the new year at a full sprint here at Focus on the Family. As the Lord brings us to mind, please remember us in prayer as we endeavor to stand up in defense of truth and righteousness and reach out to those who are hurting. Thanks, too, to those of you who have made financial contributions to the ministry in recent weeks. Your ongoing support enables us to speak the truth, even when it is unpopular to do so. God’s richest blessings to you and your loved ones throughout 2007!

Sincerely,

James C. Dobson, Ph.D.
Founder and Chairman