American Foundation for Equal Rights

Marriage News Blog

Gay Couples Increasingly Start Families

First comes love…then comes marriage…then comes…

The New York Times on Friday features the growing number of gay couples who—like many other couples— are facing pressure from family and friends to start a family soon after they get married.

At the June wedding of Tom Lotito and Matt Hay, both 26:

One after another, their guests began asking: Are you going to have kids? When are you going to have kids?

….

“It’s another way that I feel like what we have is valid in the eyes of other people,” said Mr. Hay, who married Mr. Lotito in June before 133 guests.

During the 2010 Prop. 8 trial, the Proponents inevitably tried to make the argument that the central purpose of marriage is procreation, and that the optimal environment for children in is with a mother and a father. Their claims ignored research on gay parenting, and the reality of many straight married couples who either choose not to have kids or can’t, in addition to children being raised by single or divorced parents.

AFER attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies called to the stand University of Cambridge Dr. Michael Lamb to talk about gay and lesbian parents :

“[We have] a much larger body of research focused on this question documenting very conclusively that a child being raised by gay and lesbian parents are just as likely to be well-adjusted as children raised by heterosexual parents.”