Should California Pass Prop 8?

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As a pediatrician, I strongly agree with Focus on the Family that civil marriage is a legal status that promotes healthy families by conferring a powerful set of rights, benefits and protections that cannot be obtained by other means. It is for exactly this reason that Proposition 8 is so very dangerous to families headed by gay and lesbian couples and the children they are raising together.

What Focus on the Family, and others who support Proposition 8 seem to intentionally choose not to address is that there are tens of thousands of children in California being raised in loving and nurturing homes by their gay and lesbian parents. Civil marriage is good for all couples and the children they raise. This is the case whether the parents are straight, gay or lesbian. Proposition 8 does not dictate who can, and who cannot, raise children in California. It dictates which of those families will have access to the rights, protections and benefits that only civil marriage can provide.

Proposition 8 intentionally jeopardizes the health and welfare of tens of thousands of California’s children by taking away the right of their parents to marry.

I am greatly saddened, and disappointed by anyone who would support legislation that intentionally hurts tens of thousands of children in California by taking away the right of their parents to marry. My job as a pediatrician is to support all children in all families. There are no exceptions.

It is the duty of pediatricians to work to ensure that all of the children they care for have safe and secure homes. That’s why the American Academy of Pediatrics passed a resolution in 2007 in support of the right of same gender couples to marry. No one’s marriage is diminished or endangered by ensuring that everyone is equal under California law. Speaking out to ensure that gay and lesbian families are as safe and protected as possible, and speaking out to ensure that heterosexual families are as safe and protected as possible, are not mutually exclusive enterprises. All of the families we care for need our support. None need our rejection.

Pediatricians have an obligation to be part of this discussion and to oppose what we know is wrong. Consequently, the California District of the American Academy of Pediatrics, representing over five thousand board certified pediatricians throughout California, strongly opposes Proposition 8. The need for the legal protections that marriage affords these couples and their children is not some interesting intellectual topic of debate. It is a very real roadblock to the security of the families of tens of thousands of the children we care for in California.

Gay and lesbian people have been raising children in loving and nurturing homes for many years and will continue to do so in the future. The issue before us today is whether these children will be raised by parents who have the rights, benefits and protections of civil marriage.

No same gender couple conceives a child accidentally. Every one of the tens of thousands of children in California being raised by their same gender parents was wanted by their parents and welcomed into the family. These families are everywhere. They don't just live in San Francisco and West Hollywood. They live in Tustin and Lodi, Barstow and Weed, in cities and towns of every size and political complexion – and deserve the same protections enjoyed by their heterosexual neighbors.

Proposition 8 will hurt the tens of thousands of children being raised by their same-gender parents in California by eliminating the right of their parents to marry.

Vote no on Proposition 8.