"Children's Rights" and Marriage Equality

This is another deviation from the stated themes of the blog~ absolutely nothing to do with Japan. You have been warned.

From WikiCommons

One of my brothers has started writing a blog. We differ on a lot of things, and marriage equality is one of them. He wrote a blog post a few months ago about children having the right to a mother and a father, and therefore no gay marriage.  Now, here's the thing. When conservatives say "children's rights", it's usually code for "we hate gays but it isn't socially acceptable to say that any more, so, uh, think of the children." Usually I just assume that this is what people mean, and I don't bother engaging. In my brother's case, however, I know that he genuinely means what he writes. He supports civil unions. Despite being of the evangelical, creationist, literal hell-fire persuasion he doesn't see homosexuality as a choice or even as inherently immoral. So when he says "think of the children", illogical though it is, I know he must truly believe it. I thought I'd try to write a polite and respectful comment on his blog, but then it got really long so I thought I'd post it here, and then it got kind of sarcastic because a good old reductio ad absurdum is just so damn tempting.

Here's the main body of his argument:

I opposed the Bill simply to uphold the principle that children have a right to be raised by a mother and a father.  Both genders contribute different and complimentary things.  Both are necessary for the raising of well adjusted and resilient children.  While that is not always possible in the messiness of real life, the law should as far as possible safeguard that right.  For that reason it should be unlawful for anyone to access IVF who is not a married heterosexual – and yes, we really do need to stop subsidising a culture of intergenerational illegitimacy.
[...]
Of course some homosexuals can be better parents than some heterosexuals.  Bad parenting and social dysfunction crosses all boundaries of gender, orientation, ethnicity, nationality and religion.  Some kids are better off raised by wolves than by their parents.  That doesn’t change the argument. 

And here is my response:

When you say "both genders contribute different and complimentary things", what exactly do you mean? Should heterosexual couples take a test to ensure that the male is sufficiently skilled in mechanics and the female suitably enthusiastic about baking cup cakes before they can reproduce?  Since your argument is against same-sex parenting, I assume you mean sex when you say gender (no, they are not the same thing). If so, surely the usefulness of having a certain set of genitals is limited in its parenting applications? I mean, I can tell my daughter what my periods feel like, but hers will almost certainly not feel the same way. There is also no reason why she couldn't have the same conversation with her grandmothers, aunts or godmother. She might even feel more comfortable talking to those women. It seems like a very small thing to be put on a pedestal above any other consideration of parenting ability. Don't mistake the stakes in this debate: your argument is that the law should see the very best homosexual parents as less than the very worst heterosexual ones. You acknowledge the flaw in this yourself but then brush it aside as inconsequential. It isn't. It is the very heart of the argument. To support such profound discrimination surely the onus is on you to provide some evidence or explanation for these "different things" the genders/sexes do for children.

The law has in fact been used in the past in Australia to uphold the principle of only married heterosexuals having children. We ensured that children had this "right" by tying unwed mothers to hospital beds and placing pillows over their faces as their baby was born so that they couldn't see it being taken away. If you genuinely believe that children have the right to married heterosexual parents, you presumably want to see a return to this policy? We should also consider legislative approaches to resolving custody disputes after divorce. Obviously custody should be awarded to the parent who remarries the fastest, to ensure the children's right to married parents is upheld. Likewise if a parent dies and the surviving parent refuses to quickly remarry, the State must step in to remove the children from this gross violation of their rights. If a heterosexual couple has children out of wedlock we need coercive measures to ensure their immediate marriage. Perhaps forced readings of Jude the Obscure. It would greatly simplify matters if everyone were fitted with a contraceptive device they could only deactivate after providing the State with proof of marriage and suitably cisgender-normative hobbies. It's the only effective way to really protect the children.

Once we have taken these measures, the child preparing to move to his eleventh foster home or the toddler dying from treatable illness and malnutrition in a third world orphanage can rest easy at night knowing that they are safe from the TRUE horror: having parents with matching genitals.

Further reading: http://www.chicagonow.com/portrait-of-an-adoption/2013/11/you-are-not-entitled-to-your-own-facts/