Prepared remarks for
marriage is to attach mothers and fathers to
Minnesota House of Representatives,
hearings on the marriage amendment
Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, founder
and president of the Ruth Institute,
a project of the National
Organization for Marriage
May 2, 2011 St. Paul Minnesota
I am Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse,
founder and president of the Ruth Institute, a
project of the National Organization for
Marriage. My doctorate is in economics, from
the University of Rochester, in NY. I have taught
at Yale and George Mason Universities. I have
had fellowships with the University of Chicago,
Cornell Law School, and the Hoover Institution
at Stanford. I have written two books on the
social purpose and significance of marriage. I
am the mother of an adopted child and a birth
child. My husband and I were foster parents in
San Diego County for three years.
I urge you to allow the citizens of MN
the opportunity to vote on the proposed
marriage amendment. Same sex marriage
redefines marriage. Redefining marriage
redefines parenthood. Redefining marriage
affects the balance of power between the state
and civil society. The citizens of MN have the
right to make up their own minds about these
important issues.
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.
The essential public purpose of
their children and to one another. To see the
importance of this purpose, we must take the
perspective of the child: What is owed to the
child? Unlike adults, the child does not need
autonomy or independence. The child is
entitled to a relationship with and care from
both of the people who brought him into being.
Therefore, the child has a legitimate interest in
the stability of his parents’ union. But no child
can defend these entitlements himself. Nor is it
adequate to make restitution after these rights
have been violated. The child’s rights to care
and relationship must be supported pro-
actively, before harm is done, for those rights to
be protected at all.
Marriage is adult society’s institutional
structure for protecting the legitimate interests
of children. Without this public purpose, we
would not need marriage as a distinct social
institution.
We often hear the objection that some
marriages don’t have children. This is perfectly
true. However, every child has parents.
Depriving a child of relationships with his or her
parents is an injustice to the child, and should
not be done without some compelling or
unavoidable reason. The objection that some
marriages don’t have children stands the
rationale for marriage on its head. It views
marriage strictly from the adult’s perspective,
instead of from the child’s perspective.
Same sex couples and opposite sex
couples are obviously different with respect to
this essential public purpose of marriage. And
treating different things differently is not
discrimination. That is why, in the few cases
where courts have found opposite sex marriage
to be unlawful discrimination, they have had to
come up with purposes for marriage that have
nothing to do with procreation or attaching
children to parents.
For instance, Judge Vaughn Walker,
who overturned Proposition 8 defined marriage
this way: “Marriage is the state recognition and
approval of a couple’s choice to live with each
other, to remain committed to one another and
to form a household based on their own
feelings about one another and to join in an
economic partnership and support one another
and any dependents.”
Under this definition, marriage doesn’t
have anything at all to do with children,
permanence, sexual exclusivity or even sex
itself. Some college roommates could call
themselves married under this definition. The
essential public purpose of marriage has
vanished, and has been replaced with
inessential private purposes. Instead of being a
bedrock social institution, marriage becomes
nothing but a government registry of
friendships, a pointless legal convention that
frankly doesn’t deserve any government
benefits or recognition at all.
But children still need to be attached to
mothers and fathers.
We sometimes hear claims that studies
show that same sex couples make fine parents.
The most recently reported study was in the
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.
June 7, 2010 issue of the journal Pediatrics.1
This study was based upon the self-reported
results of an unrepresentative sample of lesbian
mothers of 78 teenagers, hardly a sufficient
data set for drawing sweeping conclusions. Yet
the headlines went around the world, “Lesbians
make the best parents.” And a 2010 survey of
80 studies admitted that there is very little
evidence about male couples as parents.2 We
simply do not have enough data to draw such
strong conclusions as, “lesbians make the best
parents.”
On the other side of the equation, we
have mountains of data showing that children
do need both their mothers and their fathers,3
1
“US national Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study:
Psychological Adjustment of 17-year-old
Adolescents,” by Nanette Gartrell and Henny Bos,
Pediatrics, 2010, Volume 126, Number 1, July 2010.
2
“How does the gender of parents matter?” by
Timothy Biblarz and Judith Stacey, Journal of
Marriage and Family 72 (February 2010):3-22.
“Comparable research on intentional gay
fatherhood… has scarcely commenced…We located
no studies of planned gay fathers that included child
outcome measures and only one that compared gay
male with lesbian or heterosexual adoptive
parenting.” Quote at page 10.
3
Among the many citations that could be given,
“Why Marriage Matters: 26 Conclusions from the
Social Sciences,” (NY: Institute for American Values,
2005), summarizes some of the most important
research.
and that fathers make distinct contributions to
the well-being of children.4 Mothers and
fathers are not interchangeable. But redefining
marriage will require us to say that they are. In
fact, courts are saying silly things like, “the
traditional notion that children need a
mother and a father to be raised into
healthy, well-adjusted adults is based more
on stereotype than anything else.”5 This
statement by the Iowa Supreme Court in
Varnum v Brien is simply false as a general
statement.
But the impact of same sex parents on
their own children is not the main problem that
redefining marriage presents for children. As of
2005, an estimated 270,313 of the U.S.’s
children are living in households headed by
same-sex couples,6 less than 4 tenths of one
4
See David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America:
Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem, (New
York: Harper, 1996) for the general overview of the
issue. In one study, for instance, father involvement
with children was the biggest single predictor of
having fewer behavior problems, as important as
higher parental education. See “Parental
Involvement and Children’s Behavior Problems,”
Paul R. Amato and Fernando Rivera, Journal of
Marriage and the Family, Volume 61, No. 2 (May
1999), pp. 375-384
5
Varnum v Brien Supreme Court of Iowa, No. 07–
1499, Filed April 3, 2009, pg 54, footnote 26
6
Census Snapshot, US, by Adam P. Romero, Amanda
K. Baumle, M.V. Lee Badgett, and Gary J. Gates, (Los
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.
percent of the total children in the US. 7 The
more significant problem is how redefining
marriage affects other aspects of the legal and
social system.
Same sex marriage redefines
parenthood, as a side effect of redefining
marriage. Up until now, marriage has made
legal parenthood track biological parenthood,
with adoption for exceptional situations. The
legal presumption of paternity means that
children born to a married woman are
presumed to be the children of her husband.
With this legal rule, and the social practice of
sexual exclusivity, marriage attaches children to
their biological parents.
Same sex couples of course, do not
procreate together. What is being called
Angeles: Williams Institute, UCLA, 2007). The
Williams Institute specializes in demographic and
economic research on gay and lesbian populations.
7
According to the American Community Survey,
“General Demographic Characteristics, 2005” there
were a total of 73,131,688 persons under the age of
18 in the US in 2005. (Calculated by subtracting total
number of persons over 18 (215, 246,449 from total
population of 288,378,137.)
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/ADPTable?_bm
=y&-geo_id=D&-
qr_name=ACS_2005_EST_G00_DP1&-ds_name=D&-
_lang=en Dividing the 270,313 children in
households headed by same sex couples by the total
number of children under 18 in the US, yields a
figure of .00369, which is the less than 4 tenths of
one percent figure quoted in the text.
“Marriage Equality” requires a dubious move
from “presumption of paternity” to the gender
neutral “presumption of parentage.” This
sleight of hand transforms the legal
understanding of parenthood. The same sex
partner of a biological parent is never the other
biological parent. Rather than attaching
children to their biological parents, same sex
marriage is the vehicle that separates children
from a parent.
But biology will reassert itself. And in
fact, in some cases, biology already is
reasserting itself. Some women who have
children with female partners find that sharing
the care of their children with another woman
is not as easy as they thought it would be, and
really isn’t comparable with sharing the care
with the child’s father. Some men who agree to
be sperm donors as “friends” find that they
want more of a relationship with their own
children than they had anticipated.8 And some
children are having feelings about their absent
parents, uncomfortable questions about their
origins, and complex emotions about being
partially purchased.9
8
“Gay Irish sperm donor wins visiting rights to
lesbian couple’s child,” Irish Central, December 11,
2009; http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Gay-Irish-
sperm-donor-wins-visiting-right-to-lesbian-couples-
child-79055562.html
9
See Elizabeth Marquardt, Norvell Glenn and Karen
Clark, “My Daddy’s Name is Donor: A Pathbreaking
Study of Young Adults Conceived through Sperm
Donation,” (NY: Institute for American Values, 2010).
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.
Advocates of so called marriage
equality typically respond, “That’s just biology,”
as if biology were nothing. They are asking
people to set aside the natural attachment of
parents to their own children, the natural
difficulties of treating another person’s child as
if they were your own, the natural desires of
children to know who they are and where they
came from. Suppressing all these feelings in all
these people will not be possible indefinitely.
In addition to all these unanticipated
feelings, redefining marriage will have far-
reaching legal consequences. Courts are
awarding parenting rights to individuals who
neither biological parents nor adoptive parents.
Let us call these people “non-parents.” The
courts and now even some legislatures, are
giving parental rights to non-parents. Perfectly
fit parents are having their rights diminished
because they once had a sexual relationship
with someone.10 To do this, the state must
establish multi-part tests for determining
whether a person warrants the status of “de
facto parent.” The court ends up scrutinizing
the minutiae of family life to make a
determination about whether a person meets
the criteria for being a de facto parent.
10
“Court upholds woman’s “de facto” parental
rights,” Delaware On-Line, April 18, 2011;
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110419/
NEWS01/104190347/Court-upholds-woman-s-de-
facto-parental-
rights?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Home|s
 Let us be clear: the alternative to the what happens in their state. The people of
biological principle for determining parentage is Minnesota deserve a chance to vote.
the principle that the government decides who Redefining marriage will have far-reaching
is a parent. Instead of simply recording consequences that ought to be fully aired.
parentage, the state will determine parentage, Putting this amendment on the ballot will allow
not in exceptional cases, but routinely. This is that discussion to take place. Let the people
what “getting the state out of the marriage vote.
business” will eventually come to mean. Jennifer Roback Morse, Ph.D. is an
In short, redefining marriage from the economist and the Founder and President of
union of a man and a woman to the union of the Ruth Institute, a nonprofit educational
any two persons jettisons three foundational organization devoted to bringing hope and
encouragement for lifelong married love.
principles: first, the principle that children are
She is also the author of Love and
entitled to a relationship with both parents,
Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a
second, the biological principle for determining Village and Smart Sex: Finding Life-Long
parentage, and third, the principle that the Love in a Hook-Up World.
state recognizes parentage, but does not assign
it.
These are not insignificant changes.
Please note that these concerns do not assert
that anyone is unworthy of marriage, do not
make anyone a “second class citizen,” and do
not disparage anyone. Changing the law of
marriage changes the law for everyone, and
puts incentives into place that may affect the
behavior of everyone. Redefining marriage is a
radical social experiment.
Previous generations of social
experimenters have caused unimaginable
misery for millions of people. Particular people
advocated the policies that led to today’s 50%
divorce rate and 40% out of wedlock
childbearing rate. None of these people has
ever been held accountable.
The people of Minnesota are sensible
mature people, who want to be accountable for
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.