Earlier today, my mail slot was rather firmly penetrated by this wonder of wonders. “Stop!”, it commanded. Apparently the Prime Minister is destroying Britain’s families! As you can imagine, I was quite alarmed by this. After all, we all come from some sort of family, no matter how broken. I wouldn’t like to think that there would be more breakage.
I read on, wanting to know exactly how this destruction would be caused. Supposedly, it’s down to same sex marriage proposals. Hmm. Starting to get a bit confused here. If marriage is a civil partnership that is designed to give rights to couples and promote the ‘family’ environment, I would think that enabling more people to get married would actually create more families. I’m not sure that I can see Mr Jones leaving his family just because he can now officially marry Julio the pool boy, rather than just take him to Tijuana as a close and personal friend.
I’m then greeted by the traumatic picture of someone destroying a happy family photo with a hammer. It’s interesting to see they’ve gone with a black stock family photo, just to make the point that same sex marriage is bad but they aren’t racist or anything.
Of course, now I want to know who is behind this claim. As you can see, these people are the ‘Society for the Protection of Unborn Children’. Next to their name is the rather tragic drawing of a foetus that sort of looks like it’s crying. I did a bit of looking into this, and there is a suggestion that a foetus can ‘cry’, in that it shows the same characteristics as a crying infant, but you won’t hear it because of lack of air. The foetus also has a red heart in the shape of the symbol on a playing card. I’ve also done some looking into this, and it appears that this is not possible.
“Real marriage protects children, born and unborn.”
That’s quite a claim there (or rather, two claims). I’m assuming they are referring to same sex marriage as ‘fake marriage’. So let’s have a look at some ‘real marriages’ then. According to the Office for National Statistics, 42% of marriages in England and Wales end in divorce. Obviously, there’s no guarantee that any kids would be harmed by this specifically. But a dependent child in that situation might face some emotional as well as financial hardship. Of course, an unmarried couple with a child could also split up. But in this case, it doesn’t seem like ‘real marriage’ has done much protecting. In fact, can you imagine if two people who had a child but clearly didn’t get along were married and therefore stayed together way past their sell-by date? I’d imagine things could get rather stormy in that household.
Looking at the data a bit more closely, around 38% of married couples have dependent children but only 4% of same sex couples and 4% of civil partnerships (the official term for ‘fake marriage’) do. That’s around 4.5 million ‘real marriages’ with dependent children in them, compared with just 4000 same sex families.
Suppose that after it became easier to get married, all the same sex couples and partnerships got some dependent children. That would still be just 96,000 families. I think it’s pretty easy to hypothesise that there are likely to be far more children in ‘real marriages’ that are in need of supposed protection.
And that’s even assuming that all the children in these ‘fake marriages’ need protection. Sandi Toksvig, the comedian who has a female partner and three children, once told a story on a episode of QI about her son. Apparently, when asked how he felt about having two mums, he replied that it was great because if one isn’t there, you still have the other do stuff for you. Seems like a good deal to me.
The protection of ‘unborn’ children sounds a bit like Minority Report where they are preventing crimes before they happen. That sounds really cool. Especially if they have the whole Kinect style ‘control the computer with your hands’ thing at SPUC HQ. I’d be really interested to see how they’re planning to protect something that doesn’t actually exist yet. I mean, if they’ve actually figured out how to protect a non-entity, this should surely be in Science at the very least, and probably should be in the running for a Nobel. Unfortunately, all I’m getting from their leaflet is that they aim to do this by the prevention of same sex marriage. Oh… wait, I get it! It’s a red herring! They’re actually pretending that they have some preposterous idea of two guys or two girls completely destroying a future child by some sort of chromosome exposure deficiency/excess for fear of plagiarism! Don’t worry guys, I won’t tell anyone.
Anyway, I wanted to hear more from SPUC about how family portraits might be shattered with a hammer. So I turned the leaflet over:
Well, this is just what I was looking for! Some really great scientific evidence showing us exactly how same sex marriage will damage families!
Children and teenagers at school will quickly learn about “gay marriage”, as teachers will have to teach them the new definition of marriage
Yes, I can see how this would be an atrocity. I mean, children and teenagers having to learn new information in school! It’s absurd and must stop now. Imagine what strain this must put on teachers. And dictionaries! Language never evolves, surely.
Gay relationships will be promoted to primary school children via storybooks
I’m sure that legalisation of same sex marriage will lead to torrents of new children’s books like ‘Jack and John Roll Down the Hill’ and ‘Mary Had a Little Pussy’, in the same way that civil liberty created stories forcing me to befriend Tayshawn and Yao. Honestly, not a whole lot of storybooks I remember really promoted any kind of relationship, aside from just getting along and being nice to everyone. But my memory may have failed me.
NHS-endorsed websites, which promote high-risk sexual practices, will be mainstreamed in secondary schools
What next? Are they going to endorse textbooks that have theories about animal evolution and the origins of the universe in them? Out of interest though, I’d like to see which of these websites actively ‘promote’ high-risk practices. I have yet to see an NHS affiliate enticing you with the delights of condom-free anal sex.
Being male or female will be meaningless, if any combination can get married
Yep, if I can legally marry a guy, we will all immediately become neutered and asexual.
Marriage won’t be about commitment to bearing and raising children
Marriage is surely about commitment to bearing and raising children. You can see this quite clearly from the ONS 2010 statistics that show 49% of married couples have no children.
Marriage will be reduced to gratifying your own personal desires
God forbid marriage should be something that is satisfying in any way instead of being purely about arguing who should be doing the washing up every evening. Interestingly, prostitution has always been pretty strong worldwide. This suggests either a) that unmarried people can actually gratify their own personal desires or b) that married people aren’t getting much gratification of their own personal desires.
Children will lose out, because society will no longer prioritise their main need, which is to be brought up by the people who conceived them
This is true. Out of all the toddlers I had full and frank discussions with about their needs, I discovered that none of them cared about the pack of Oreos on the table, wanting to become like the football players on TV or playing Mario Kart Wii. Instead, they all told me how concerned they were that they may not be being raised by their biological parents. Honestly, I was quite impressed that they knew what a ‘biological parent’ was. Some of them also argued that the Prime Minister’s questions session should take place after school so they can watch it and take notes to their next debate session in the school playground.
Traditional family networks, which bind society together, will be fractured
Not a fracture! No! Same sex couples will clearly have no social networks at all. Barely anyone knows who Stephen Fry or Elton John are.
This is like the new definition thing again. Everybody knows change is bad, and that traditions must be upheld until the end of time, no matter how illogical. In fact the religious guys know this better than anyone.
Motherless and fatherless families will be institionalised
Too late, I’m afraid. There are 2.9 million single parent families in the UK. Same sex marriages would clearly make things worse for the children by having two parents instead of one. Wait, what?
What you can do to save real marriage
- Remember that marriage is an artificial institution and therefore, technically, no form of marriage is more ‘real’ than another
- Visit www.spuc.org.uk and tell them just how much you love their charlatanism
- Form a ‘pre-crime’ organisation that protects children against hardship before anything actually happens. Invent hover cars and wrap-around computer screens. Win Nobel prize.
Win.
… I’d have more to say except you fairly well covered it here 😉