I am taking courage, knowing that to stand for heterosexual marriage is to be labeled, name called, and attacked. The truth is that many who stand for marriage between a man and woman are indeed bigots and homo phobias. As one who loves my gay family members and who has close friends who are or have come out of a gay lifestyle, I would like to preface this with the truth that I am neither a bigot or homophobic.
I am a teacher, a Child Development major, and a parent.
I have served as a small group leader for a group that brings Christ's restoration to the brokenness to people who have suffered relationally and/ or sexually in the formation of their self-esteem and gender identity.
And as such, my heart aches for the generation of hurting people from the lack, abandonment, or abuse ( be it sexual, emotional or physical) from fathers and/or mothers. ( Although not the only factor, or the only sources of abuse, these tend to be the biggest and most painful for most.)
I have experienced and seen God restore and heal individuals in the deep places of pain due to lacks in their relationships with both Father and Mother. But it is a deep, painful wound that takes much therapy, prayer, and support to find true freedom and peace. It also takes the power of the Cross and Christ's resurrection to bring life where parts of the personality have been so damaged or even killed.
To say that children don't need the good of a male as father and a female as mother is to deny the reality of the deep woundedness that either of these lacks creates. It is also to deny decades of scientific research and studies in Child Development in which the role of both the Father and of the Mother at various stages of development helps the child to understand who he or she is as a male or female.
This field had been so thoroughly researched as to show the effects of both the Mother and of the Father on the boy and of the girl at various stages of her/his development in relating to the same and to opposite gender parents establishing his/ her identity.
The fact that none of us had perfect parents doesn't mean we condemn a generation to a lack by denying that these needs exist!
I'm tired of the argument that says children are better off in a gay couple's home than in an abusive home. Indeed that would be the case. They are also better off in the Grandmother's home, without a man at all, than in an abusive home.
That does not deny the reality that they suffer from the effects of the brokenness of their biological parents, or lack of a male or female parent in their formative years.
That is throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Marriage as the establishment of the father and mother is the foundational unit upon which what is needed for a child to have what they need to develop in their understanding of who they are in their gender, as persons and in their sense of esteem and belonging. We can't change that just because so many have screwed it up without setting up a generation of children for even more brokenness and confusion than we have now.
There. I've said it. Think of what's best for the kids.
