McMillan on Gays as Partners and Parents

Susan Carpenter McMillan made two serious errors in her arguments against gay marriages (Commentary, Dec. 26). When she asserts that proper child-rearing requires two parents of mixed gender, she effectively argues that divorce should be prohibited when children are in the family. Perhaps she even wants the children of single mothers forcibly taken away because there is no father in the home.

McMillan also asserts that Judaism and Christianity reject gay marriages. As a Christian, she cannot even speak for all Christians. Several Christian denominations--not only “gay churches”--already perform gay weddings.

More important, McMillan cannot speak for Jews on this issue. The largest Jewish denomination in the United States is Reform Judaism. In 1993, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (the lay leadership of Reform Judaism) resolved “to call upon governments to adopt legislation affording lesbian and gay partners spousal benefits.” This year, the Central Conference of American Rabbis (the rabbinical leadership of Reform Judaism) resolved to support civil marriages for gays and lesbians.

DAVID E. ROSS

Oak Park

* Re gay marriage, we should keep in mind that marriage originally had an economic not religious basis, to guarantee the passage of property from father to biological offspring. (If marriage were solely about love, at least 50% of the world’s marital ties would be invalid.)

“Domestic partnership” as a legal entity could substitute for marriage, allowing gay couples the spousal benefits of marriage. The union should be established by an attorney rather than a member of the clergy, although the bond could also be sanctified, if desired, in a religious tradition. I believe this would overcome many of the objections to gay marriage.

BARBARA SNADER

Los Angeles

* McMillan applies a strange and effectively useless yardstick in defining families. She says that “deliberately depriving a child of needed nurturing from both a father and a mother is selfish.” Does McMillan honestly think that all families operate today with both parents fulfilling the narrow gender roles she defines?

What legal sanctions does she propose to inflict on the single mother whose husband “deliberately” ran away with his mistress? Or the father whose wife has died? Or the military man who is gone from the home for months or years?

By McMillan’s argument, the “deliberate” aspect is specious--what does it matter why there are not two heterosexual parents providing “proper” role models. In the end, if these role models are so quintessentially important, then any deviance from them improperly affects the child. And if she supports legal sanctions against gays creating such a circumstance, consistency demands those same rules apply to heterosexual couples.

For myself, I can only imagine that it is love, dedication, hard work and loyalty that create a family.

GEORGE SCILEPPI

Glendale