Gay marriage will force children to live in condos.
  • Ivonne Wierink/Shutterstock
  • Gay marriage will force children to live in condos.

As you've likely heard, yesterday the US Supreme Court announced that it would not review same-sex marriage cases pending in Utah, Indiana, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Wisconsin, thus allowing lower-court rulings striking down bans on same-sex marriage in those states to stand. Today will no doubt bring a wealth of conservative hand-wringing about activist judges and moral decay and "think of the children!," so allow me to share the most impressive argument against same-sex marriage and all its dangers that I've read thus far: Janna Darnelle's "Redefining Marriage Hurts Women, Children," published in Salt Lake City's Deseret News. As Darnelle writes:

Every time a new state redefines marriage, the news is full of happy stories of gay and lesbian couples and their new families. But behind those big smiles and sunny photographs are other, more painful stories. These are left to secret, dark places. They are suppressed, and those who would tell them are silenced in the name of “marriage equality.” But I refuse to be silent. I represent one of those real-life stories that are kept in the shadows. I have personally felt the pain and devastation wrought by the propaganda that destroys natural families.

Darnelle, you see, was happily married for almost 10 years to a closeted gay man, and when he finally came out and asked for a divorce, her world imploded:

I tried to convince him to stay, to stick it out and fight to save our marriage. But my voice, my desires, my needs — and those of our two young children—no longer mattered to him. We had become disposable, because he had embraced one tiny word that had become his entire identity. Being gay trumped commitment, vows, responsibility, faith, fatherhood, marriage, friendships and community. All of this was thrown away for the sake of his new identity.

As Darnelle notes, her ex-husband and his new gay lover soon married, in a ceremony that involved her and her ex-husband's children, with the newly legal wedding drawing celebratory attention from such outlets as USA Today:

After our children’s pictures were publicized, a flood of comments and posts appeared. Commenters exclaimed at how beautiful this gay family was and congratulated my ex-husband and his new partner on the family that they “created.” But there is a significant person missing from those pictures: the mother and abandoned wife. That “gay family” could not exist without me. There is not one gay family that exists in this world that was created naturally.....Wholeness and balance cannot be found in such families, because something is always missing. I am missing. But I am real, and I represent hundreds upon thousands of spouses who have been betrayed and rejected.

Perhaps you're thinking: Wouldn't all of Darnelle's gripes be just as valid had her husband left her for another woman? So what does this have to do with gay marriage or gay anything? Darnelle explains:

Our two young children were willfully and intentionally thrust into a world of strife and combative beliefs, lifestyles and values, all in the name of “gay rights.” Their father moved into his new partner’s condo, which is in a complex inhabited by 16 gay men. One of the men has a 19-year-old male prostitute who comes to service him. Another man, who functions as the father figure of this community, is in his late sixties and has a boyfriend in his twenties. My children are brought to gay parties where they are the only children and where only alcoholic beverages are served. They are taken to transgender baseball games, gay rights fundraisers and LGBT film festivals.

In a deeply heartening twist, even commenters at the Deseret News—a newspaper owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—are eager to call bull on Darnelle's self-serving conclusions and solipsism. But perhaps we're all fools for expecting logic from such an emotional source. As Darnelle concludes:

My children and I have suffered great losses because of my former husband’s decision to identify as a gay man and throw away his life with us....This type of devastation should never happen to another spouse or child. Please, I plead with you: defend marriage as being between one man and one woman. We must stand for marriage — and for the precious lives that marriage creates.

Thank you, Janna Darnelle, for sharing your story (GO READ THE WHOLE THING), and thank you, US Supreme Court, for putting confused loons like Darnelle in their proper place.