Debunking The Christianist "Complementarity" Argument Against Marriage Equality

The Christofascists go to great lengths to fabricate arguments against same sex marriage that help disguise their agenda of forcing their religious beliefs on all of society.  Like so much that comes from the lips of mouth pieces for the Christian Right and toxic "family values" organizations, most of this arguments are, pardon my French, utter bullshit.  Once the veneer is stripped off, it all devolves back to the desire to give their religious beliefs a quasi-established position in American law.  Among the arguments these people make is that one man and one woman are a necessity for the   "Complementarity" of marriage.  A piece at Think Progress debunks this argument.  Here are excerpts:

The Family Research Council has released a new policy analysis about “Complementarity in Marriage: What it is and Why it Matters.” In it, FRC Senior Vice President Rob Schwarzwalder reiterates several trite arguments against marriage equality, but also attempts to flesh out the argument that men and women are inherently different. This, he argues, is proof that marriage between a man and a woman is unique in such a way that it could never be extended to same-sex couples. After citing a variety of studies about how men and women’s brains function differently, Schwarzwalder concludes:

The Journal of Neuroscience and The American Journal of Psychiatry, among many other scholarly publications, are replete with studies about male-female distinctions. These distinctions are not grounded in culture or environment, but genetics. . . .  

Schwarzwalder is drawing two big conclusions without any evidence. First, he is asserting that because men and women have some biological difference, those differences must be complimentary. Extrapolating from that, he then posits that children “need” exposure to these differences, because that’s what they would hypothetically receive if raised by their biological father and mother. But none of Schwarzwalder’s citations, which are mostly theologians or other conservative pundits biased against marriage equality, actually speak to such causation, if they even speak to correlation.

Schwarzwalder’s narrow stereotypes ignore the broad diversity of gender expression among men and women, and of course erases transgender people entirely. FRC does not argue that straight people should not be allowed to marry or have children if they are particularly masculine women or feminine men, only that same-sex couples should be prohibited from the institution. If opponents of marriage equality truly valued complementarity, they would instead recognize that every study that has actually evaluated the parenting of same-sex couples has found that their commitment to each other and to the children they are raising together is what ensures success. Complementarity is not a defining characteristic of straight men and women, but perhaps the most obvious trait of all successful families, regardless of sex, gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation.