Co-authored with John Jalsevac
UNITED KINGDOM, June 12, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Despite homosexual activists’ efforts to frame same-sex “marriage” as a pressing “gay rights” cause, a new poll finds that redefining marriage is a low priority for many homosexuals in the United Kingdom.
The poll, conducted by the UK-based polling firm ComRes at the request of Catholic Voices, found that just half of gays and lesbians in the UK consider it important to extend marriage to same-sex couples, while only 27% say they would marry their partner if they could.
A quarter of respondents said there was no need to introduce gay “marriage,” because civil unions already provided all the same rights and privileges as marriage.
The survey also had some bad news for Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, with almost half of respondents agreeing that they believe he is only promoting gay “marriage” “to make his party look more compassionate rather than because of his convictions.”
ComRes notes that homosexuals make up just 1.5% of the UK’s population – the numbers are similar in the U.S. – although the ComRes poll resulted in a higher number, which they speculate is due to the sampling bias involved in respondents to online surveys.
The results of the survey were welcomed by Colin Hart, director of the Coalition for Marriage campaign, who said, “This poll confirms yet again that only a handful of people are pushing the Government to redefine marriage.
“Even amongst those within the gay community, there is no majority who thinks that this is a priority.”
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According to Catholic Voices director Dr. Austen Ivereigh, the survey “explodes the myth that this is an issue of human rights equality and discrimination.”
“Perhaps now we can move beyond caricatures and have a debate about the real issue – which is that the current definition of marriage in law has good reasons and important benefits,” he said.
One of the main benefits cited by true marriage supporters is that children benefit enormously from being raised by their biological parents.
While homosexual activists have tried to dispute this claim by pointing to the findings of a number of smaller studies that purport to show children fare just as well or better when raised by homosexuals, a new study to be published in the July 2012 issue of Social Science Research may prove to be a formidable foe to that argument. The new study found that children raised by intact biological couples scored considerably higher on numerous measures of wellbeing than those raised by a lesbian mother or gay father.
The study has been hailed as a “gold standard” study, due to its reliance upon a large, non-biased sample, and the responses of the children themselves, as opposed to their parents.
Among its many statistically significant findings, the study found that children raised by a lesbian mother or gay father were far more likely to report being unemployed, having contemplated suicide, to be receiving psychotherapy, having had affairs, or having been sexually molested.
While the ComRes poll did not ask respondents why they were uninterested in gay “marriage,” several gay political commentators have offered some clues to the reasons. Libertarian author Justin Raimondo has written that “the imposition of a legal framework” on same-sex relationships would be a “disaster” for gay couples because it would subject their previously free relationships to a host of unnecessary, burdensome rules.
“Marriage evolved because of the existence of children: without them, the institution loses its biological, economic, and historical basis, its very reason for being,” Raimondo writes. “This is not to say childless couples—including gay couples—are any less worthy (or less married) than others. It means only that they are not bound by necessity to a mutual commitment involving the ongoing investment of considerable resources.”
In 2004, nationally-syndicated radio talk show host Tammy Bruce famously argued that the push to recognize gay unions as “marriage” gave government “far too much power over the quality of our lives and effectively eliminates our own responsibility for our happiness.”
However, the UK’s leading homosexualist organization, Stonewall, disputed claims that the ComRes poll showed that gay “marriage” should be low on the political to-do list.
“This small sample sounds as if it reflects the wider gay population and that the vast majority of people want marriage,” said Ben Summerskill, chief executive of Stonewall, according to The Telegraph. Sumerskill said that “it still seems clear that there are plenty of opportunities to go ahead with what the Government are proposing.”