BY MICHAEL KEARNS

FAMILY GUY FAVORS PROPOSITION 8

“I’m a liberal Democrat. And I do not favor same-sex marriage,” begins David Blankenhorn’s overwrought editorial, “Protecting marriage to protect children,” in the Los Angeles Times. In 1992, Blankenhorn was appointed by President Bush to serve on the National Commission on America’s Urban Families. If he’s a “liberal Democrat,” Sarah Palin is a feminist scholar.

Blankenhorn’s pixilated premise argues that “marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood” and therefore Prop. 8, which threatens to destroy same-sex couples’ right to marry, should be passed.

How Blankenhorn uses the rights of children to make a case against gay marriage is utterly without emotional, intellectual, political, spiritual or sociological foundation.

Quoting anthropologist Helen Fisher, Blankenhorn believes that “people wed primarily to reproduce.” Marriage, he says, “is society’s most pro-child institution.”

First off, a large percentage of heterosexuals who wed do not marry simply because they want to procreate. Consider the elderly population, men and women who are handicapped and infertile couples who can’t have children even if they tried.

This argument that the only reason to have sex is to make babies is absurdly archaic. People of all persuasions have sex to connect, explore, play, discover, bond and to feel good.

Marriage is fueled by love—the melding of two spirits, if you will—that might, or might not, result in child-bearing or child rearing.

Conversely, a single person—gay or straight—may choose to adopt and create a family of two. That is also a spiritual connection that doesn’t require a third party to be healthy and functional.

But if children result from a gay coupling, Blakenhorn says: “Every child being raised by a gay or lesbian couple will be denied his birthright to both parents who made him.” (I assume he would apply this to a heterosexual couple who adopts although he doesn’t target them.)

Perhaps it’s the “parents who made him” who are being denied rights to their child for a laundry list of reasons including (but not limited to) incarceration, physical and/or emotional abuse, untreated drug addiction.

What he also naively avoids is the vast number of children raised by gays and lesbians who are blood bound to their parents.

In his misguided article, Blakenhorn poses several questions that I’m more than happy to answer.

“Do you think that every child deserves his mother and father, with adoption available for those children whose natural parents cannot care for them?”

No. The question should be, “Does every mother and father deserve their child?” Simply because a man and a woman are able to create a child doesn’t qualify them for “natural” parenting. Remember the story about the meth-addicted couple who allowed their babies to die because they were obsessively playing video games?

“Do you suspect that fathers and mothers are different from one another?”

No, unless you’re saying that Pa goes to work every day while Ma stays home and bakes cookies. In a world where evolving gender identities are blurring in salubrious ways, the roles that mothers and fathers choose to play are often indecipherable.

“Do you imagine that biological ties matter to children?”

Speaking as the single parent of an adopted 14-year-old who has been given entrée to her “biological ties” throughout her entire life, no. My child has little, if any, interest in her blood relatives. This is not to suggest that she might express interest later in life but all that has mattered during her formative years is being loved by me and a village of friends who comprise her family.

“How many parents per child is best? Do you think that ‘two’ is a better answer than one, three, four or whatever?”

No, two is not a “better answer.” What’s “best” is any number of parents who love their children and care for them responsibly—from one to five or six.

Blankenhorn’s insistence that he rejects homophobia is a lie; attempting to mask his unfair feelings about gays and lesbians by introducing children into his lame thesis about marriage is a disservice to all children, and all adults—gay or straight.