Carolyn Moynihan introduces the Jennifer Johnson article Family diversity and its children: the next equality debate in the following way:One of the most tedious words in the English language is “equality”. Racial equality, gender equality, marriage equality, economic equality – the chatter about these pious goals is endless. Yet all the while, new inequalities are born.
The subtitle/synopsis to the article reads:
In our lead article today Jennifer Johnson talks about the real and distressing inequality that she, and many like her, experienced growing up in a broken family – and that many children continue to experience in ways undreamed of at the beginning of the sexual revolution that made it all possible. Until we begin seriously to address this inequality, which causes children so much suffering, we should cease and desist from talking about any other.Changes in marriage and family life result in inequality for children.
The article then commences with another short introduction by the editor:
The diagrams provide a better view of the relationships than the verbal descriptions, and I would suggest it is worth accessing the full article in order to fully understand Jennifer’s childhood pain – the pain of inequality in a system designed to give adults a chimera of “equality.”
Marriage, family and sexual equality are subjects that have all been extensively aired. Ironically, the discussion is often led by people who are creating another form of inequality, that foisted upon the children of new versions of the family.
In a special report for the Ruth Institute, Marriage and Equality: How Natural Marriage Upholds the Ideal of Equality … for Children, Jennifer Johnson describes her own experience of the inequality of a broken home, and challenges society to face the injustice that children suffer when only adult desires are taken into account. The following are slightly edited excerpts from her essay.
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I was not raised with my own married parents. My parents divorced when I was three and went on to subsequent marriages, divorces, different children, a lot of back and forth between “two homes,” and a lot of chaos.
Reflecting on this experience in the light of the “marriage equality” debate I have come to understand better one of the fundamental flaws in the argument for same-sex marriage, and at the same time the flawed arguments for divorce, donor conception, surrogacy and other departures from natural marriage: the inequality these create for children.
I define “natural marriage” as life-long marriage between one man and one woman who are open to procreating their own children through their lovemaking.
Diagrammatically I represent these relationships as an inverted triangle, with the couple’s child or children at the third point of the triangle. This triad, I argue, in line with social science evidence, is the family structure that best ensures equality for children – equality of love, belonging, identity and security.
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