had to be fingerprinted.
Biological parents
Second Class
Parents?
“Domestic partnerships make us second-
class citizens. We want marriage, just like
everyone else.”
This is the constant refrain of the marriage-
redefinition advocates. Drawing a legal
distinction, any legal distinction, between
same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples
is unfair and amounts to ill treatment of the
same-sex couples. But does this argument
really hold up?
I am reminded of a time in my life when I
felt the law was treating me as a second-
class citizen.
Back in the late 1980s, my husband and I
were confronted with infertility. Powerful
feelings of inadequacy and deprivation
swept over us, threatening to sweep us
away. The world, we felt, had dealt us a raw
deal.
It was unfair. Why couldn’t we have a
child? We were every bit as worthy as
people who conceived naturally and easily.
Why were we being cheated?
Going through the process of adoption only
intensified the feeling of being less than
everyone else. We had to undergo a criminal
background check. We had to be
“investigated” through a home study. We
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
don’t have to endure these indignities. We
felt like second-class citizens.
But then, during one interminable day at the
immigration office, it finally occurred to me
that all these requirements — so unfair,
onerous and offensive — actually weren’t
about me at all. We had to jump through all
these hoops for the benefit of children, and
not just the particular child we would adopt.
We had to go through all these extra steps
because it really is a big deal to bring a little
boy halfway around the world to give him to
someone other than his natural parents.
The legal requirements are in place to
protect children who cannot protect
themselves. The forms, the fingerprinting,
the investigations: These minimal
inconveniences really do nothing more than
weed out the worst and most obvious of the
bad actors among prospective parents. And
complying with these rules conveys a tacit
but unmistakable message: Giving a child to
an unrelated adult is not something to take
lightly.
That day in the immigration office, it finally
dawned on me that adoption exists to give
children the parents they need, not to give
adults the children they want. Any benefits
to adults are strictly incidental. The basic
way children get parents is that they are born
to them. Adoption handles the exceptional
cases of children whose biological parents
cannot take care of them — without
undermining the general rule that biology
determines parentage.
I resolved to let go of the self-pity as a first
act of love for a child I hadn’t even seen yet.
What does this have to do with same-sex
“marriage”? The plain fact of the matter is
that same-sex couples cannot have children
together. Any child born to one of them has
another biological parent somewhere outside
the couple. Parental rights have to be
detached from that person. Parental rights
have to be attached to the nonbiological
parent within the same-sex couple. These
are not insignificant steps. The legal system
does not, and should not, automatically
compress those steps into one by trying to
treat same-sex couples the same way as
opposite-sex couples.
Once we think about this from the child’s
point of view, we can see that it actually
makes more sense to have two different
systems: biology for the ordinary case of
natural parents and adoption for everyone
else. Marriage supports the biological
principle in the case of opposite-sex couples.
The husband of the mother is presumed to
be the father of the child because, more than
90% of the time, he is. But changing the
“presumption of paternity” to a
“presumption of parenthood” actively
undermines the biological principle in the
case of same-sex couples.
The “presumption of parenthood” separates
the child from his or her natural parent in
100% of the cases of same-sex couples.
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse • 663 S. Rancho Santa Fe Road Suite 222 San Marcos CA 92078
www.jennifer-roback-morse.com • email: drj@jennifer-roback-morse.com • 760/295-9278
©2007 No part of this document may be reproduced or disseminated in any way without the expressed written consent of the
Ruth Institute.
So, no, I don’t believe that domestic
partnerships make same-sex couples into
“second-class citizens.” The differences
between marriage and the other legal
arrangements are tracking substantial real
differences, not mere prejudice.
Likewise, I don’t believe my husband and I
are “second-class citizens” because we had
to get fingerprinted before adopting our son.
I learned to put up with this mild humiliation
because I came to see that it serves a greater
good: the good of keeping the biological
principle intact even while allowing for
exceptional situations.
Whatever security same-sex couples may
claim for the children they raise can be
obtained some other way than same-sex
“marriage.” Redefining marriage to be the
union of any two persons, instead of the
union of a man and a woman, certainly
undermines the general principle that
biology determines parentage.
We should not allow ourselves to be misled
in redefining marriage, “for the sake of the
children.”
Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is an
economist and the Founder and President of
the Ruth Institute, a nonprofit educational
organization devoted to bringing hope and
encouragement for lifelong married love.
She is also the author of Love and
Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a
Village and Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long
Love in a Hook-Up World.