Britain’s first same-sex marriages will take place this coming weekend. In May Sir Elton John and his partner David Furnish plan to exchange vows, making them spouses as well as parents to their two sons, Zachary and Elijah. Jubilant campaigners say that fears of an impending social calamity are nonsense.
In The Conversation, a law lecturer at Cardiff University, Leanne Smith, comments: “Ultimately, no institutions, religions, lifestyles or individuals have been harmed … The advent of gay marriage changes virtually nothing – but by validating gay relationships, it will transform lives and spread happiness.”
But something has changed: Elijah and Zachary do not know which of the two men is their father and they do not know who their mother is. The California birth certificates list Sir Elton as the legal father and Furnish as the legal mother. The biological mother and the surrogate mother may or may not be the same person, but they have been excluded from the boys’ lives.
The UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child guarantees both that “a child of tender years shall not, save in exceptional circumstances, be separated from his mother” and that “the best interests of the child shall be the paramount consideration” in all legislation. Same-sex marriage not only violates these rights, but institutionalises the injustice. Children living within these partnerships are cut off from their mother or father, or even from both. Of all the harms flowing from the legalisation of same-sex marriage, this is the first and most inevitable. (more...)
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