The children pay the price

Each week, The World and Everything in It features a “Culture Friday” segment, in which Executive Producer Nick Eicher discusses the latest cultural news with John Stonestreet, president of the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Here is a summary of this week’s conversation.

This week, a New York state appeals court effectively changed the legal definition of a parent, expanding the rights of adult caretakers of children. In a custody battle between a same-sex couple—one the child’s biological mother and the other not—the court held that a caretaker who is unrelated to a child by birth or adoption could still be permitted to ask for custody and visitation rights.

John Stonestreet said the redefinition of parenthood flows inevitably from the redefinition of marriage and the sexual revolution that preceded it.

“We’re having to legally arrange new definitions of reality,” he said. “It started with what counts as a husband and a wife, now it’s what counts as a parent.”

Now that marriage has been legally redefined, everything connected to it is up for grabs, Stonestreet added.

“Historically, marriage has been that thing which has contextualized and justified sex,” Stonestreet said, citing an argument by Princeton Professor Robby George. “Now, sex is that which justifies marriage. So marriage will bow its knee, and so will parenthood, so will children. … Everything has to be changed.”

The sexual revolution resulted in a number of social experiments, the victims of which were children.

“We’re re-legislating reality and expecting children to adjust. It’s cruel,” Stonestreet said. “We were told back in the no-fault divorce days that children need happy parents, not married parents. They were absolutely wrong.”

Listen to “Culture Friday” on the Sept. 9, 2016, episode of The World and Everything in It.