Obama Drops His Family Friendly Mask

Just four years ago, candidate Barack Obama said he believed that marriage was between a man and a woman. “And God is in the mix.” Who moved?

Say what you will about President Barack Obama’s policies, millions of Americans voted for the man in no small part because his family represents a much yearned-for ideal. How much happier Americans would be if all our children lived in a stable, loving, married family with a mom and a dad–like the Obama family. Many writers expressed the hope that having these real-life Huxtables in the White House would turn around many devastating pathologies in America’s cities–and in our rural areas, too.

But that was then. Last week, President Obama dropped the family friendly mask. He sent his Solicitor General, Donald Verrilli up the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court with a simple message:

Dump Dads. Lose Moms.

That’s because the Solicitor General speaks for the President. In the most august and formal way, it is this officer who carries the President’s deepest convictions to lay them before the nation’s High Court. What the Solicitor General actually said was this:

“As an initial matter, no sound basis exists for concluding that same-sex couples who have committed to marriage are anything other than fully capable of responsible parenting and child-rearing. To the contrary, many leading medical, psychological, and social-welfare organizations have issued policy statements opposing restrictions on gay and lesbian parenting based on their conclusion, supported by numerous scientific studies, that children raised by gay and lesbian parents are as likely to be well adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents.”

“The weight of the scientific literature strongly supports the view that same-sex parents are just as capable as opposite-sex parents.”

Actually, the weight of scientific evidence proves no such thing. All the work of the Marriage and Religion Research Institute shows that children do best in a family where mother and dad are married and where the family worships regularly.

As for children raised by two adults of the same sex, the most extensive study ever done was that of Dr. Mark Regnerus. Dr. Regnerus of the University of Texas conducted the largest, most rigorously controlled study in history. Here’s what the U.T. study found:

The results of the NFSS [National Family Structures Study]research revealed that the “no differences” claim–the claim that children raised by parents in gay or lesbian relationships fared no worse and in some cases better than children raised by intact biological parents -was not true. On the contrary, the children of these households, on average, did worse than children raised by their biological, still-married parents.

The weight of scientific evidence–as opposed to Donald Verrilli’s politically correct posturing–shows that his statements before the High Court are “not true. Remember, we are talking about the well-being of the children, not whether the adults in these relationships are well-satisfied with their domestic arrangements.

People around the world are amazed at the casual way some Americans are ready to dispense with mothers and fathers. In France, for example, a young pro-marriage spokesman joined the nearly 800,000 impassioned defenders of marriage who turned out in Paris on Jan. 13th. This young spokesman–Xavier Bongibault–said “everyone needs a mother and a father. It’s only natural.” It is natural. And this young demonstrator is gay.

He understands what the Obama administration refuses to acknowledge: Children need their mothers and fathers. It is their natural right. We can go as far back as 1790 and Edmund Burke and the French Revolution to see confirmation of this. The Rights of Man, wrote the great Irish philosopher and parliamentary leader, include the right to “the inheritance of our parents and the consolations of religion.”

The Obama administration is casting all that away. President Obama promised to “fundamentally transform America.” Few then realized he meant it. Abolishing marriage is what he is doing. Not changing. Not expanding. More than re-defining marriage, he is abolishing it.

Pat Moynihan was a liberal, but a sensible liberal. His was a voice crying in the wilderness when he expressed his alarm for the black family when the out-of-wedlock birthrate rose to 24%. That was 1965. Now, the out-of-wedlock birthrate for the entire country is 42%. Moynihan was right.

“What’s the use of being Irish,” Pat Moynihan said when President Kennedy was killed, “if you don’t know the world will break your heart.” Now, we are all Irish. The world is breaking our hearts. And President Obama is breaking our hearths.

Ken Blackwell is senior fellow, Family Empowerment at Family Research Council. This article appeared in The Patriot Post on March 6, 2013.