Why Marriage Matters to Children

Ending discrimination in marriage would help families and hurt no one.

• Marriage provides over 1,138 federal (and hundreds more state-level) protections, rights, and responsibilities, along with intangible benefits, to committed couples and their families.

• Same-sex couples are raising children in at least 96% of all US counties.

• Nearly one quarter of all same-sex couples are raising children.

• More than 25 years of research have documented that there is no relationship between parents' sexual orientation and any measure of a child's emotional, psychosocial, and behavioral adjustment, demonstrating no risk to children raised by gay and lesbian parents.

• Ending the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage will provide protections, rights, and responsibilities to all children and families, helping families and hurting no one.

(From Freedom to Marry)

Seeking peace, justice, friendship

First gay/lesbian multi-faith religious conference is an eye-opening experience

By Leanne M. Tigert
For the Concord Monitor

It was a sweltering August night in downtown West Jerusalem. I sat in a gay-friendly restaurant, crowded around a table with 15 other gay, lesbian and bisexual people. It looked like any other club on a Saturday night, but the conversation hinted that this was a unique gathering.

Across the table from me was a woman in her mid-20s. She introduced herself as an "out" bisexual who was closeted as a Christian. "I immigrated from Siberia to Israel," she said. "Coming out sexually is impossible in Siberia, but in order to gain legal status in Israel one must be Jewish, so I am."

Next to me was an Orthodox lesbian couple, dressed in traditional garb, young and in love, happy to be in company with gay and lesbian people of faith.

On my other side sat an African-American, openly gay, progressive Pentecostal pastor from Harlem.

There were no Muslims among us that evening -- with the war, they feel less safe than normal coming to mostly Jewish West Jerusalem.

About half of us were gay and lesbian ministers and rabbis from the United States and England. We were in Jerusalem to participate in the first gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender multi-faith religious conference. The others were connected with Jerusalem Open House, a gay/lesbian resource center sponsoring a series of conferences and vigils.

The evening - and the trip - was arranged to help us seek answers to a common question: Could our experiences of oppression and exile, liberation and hope create an opening for dialogue across lines of politics, religion, race and family that might be instructive for the larger community?

..read on..

Marriage Equality Moves Forward

Evan Wolfson

March 29, 2006

Evan Wolfson is author of Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry (Simon & Schuster, 2004), and executive director of Freedom to Marry, the gay and non-gay partnership for marriage equality nationwide. 

I was wrong.

In my book, Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry, I wrote that our country is divided in thirds.  One third supports the full inclusion of, and equality for, gay people, including the freedom to marry. Another third, I wrote, is not just adamantly against marriage for same-sex couples, but, indeed, opposes gay people and homosexuality, period. This group would, for the foreseeable future, be against any measure of protection or recognition for lesbians and gay men in American law, whether marriage or anything else.

..read on..