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27 Feb, 2013

Expert Testifies Same-Sex Marriage Would Have Negative Effects on Children

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SPRINGFIELD, Ill.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– February 26, 2013 – Coalition to Protect Children and Marriage today said that testifying before the House Executive Committee in Springfield today, Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, a nationally known marriage expert stated: “Marriage is adult society’s institutional structure for protecting the legitimate interests of children. Without this public purpose, we would not need marriage at all as a distinct social institution.”

She continued, “It is a structural injustice to a child, to deprive him or her of a relationship with both parents, without some compelling or unavoidable reason.”

Said Morse, “A recent study finds significant differences between the outcomes for children raised in intact biological families and children whose parents ever had same sex relationships. Our society has been experimenting with a variety of family structures. We have accumulated mountains of data showing that children do need both their mothers and their fathers, and that fathers make distinct contributions to the well-being of children. We already know that every one of these alternative family forms poses real and lasting risks for children. It simply strains the imagination to think that same sex couples will be able to achieve what no other alternative family structure has achieved. Same-sex marriage will commit the state of Illinois to denying these obvious truths. Same-sex marriage redefines parenthood as a side effect of redefining marriage.”

Dr. Morse earned her Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Rochester in 1980. She taught economics at Yale University and George Mason University. She has served as a Research Fellow for the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty and has held fellowships at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, Cornell Law School, and the University of Chicago’s economics department. She authored many scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals and law reviews, such the Journal of Political Economy, the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, and the University of Chicago Law Review. She has written opinion and analysis pieces that appeared in such outlets as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Reason, Policy Review, National Review Online, and many others.

She is the author of Smart Sex: Finding Life-long Love in a Hook-up World, (2005) and Love and Economics: Why the Laissez-Faire Family Doesn’t Work (2001), recently reissued in paperback, as Love and Economics: It Takes a Family to Raise a Village.