According to the Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) yesterday, the probability that a Dutch marriage does not endure, is greatest in lesbians. More than 30 percent of the 580 lesbian marriages in 2005, ended ten years later in divorce. This conclusion was published by the Bureau after researching the number of marriages and divorces since the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2001 (click here). A marriage between two men appears to last longer, but after ten years more than 15 percent of same-sex male marriages ended in divorce. With heterosexual marriages the average percentage is slightly higher: 18 percent.

This means that a Dutch child, growing up in a lesbian marriage, has a chance of almost 1 in 3 of having to grow up in a broken home. With heterosexual marriages, this chance is less than 1 in 5. For the child it will mean distress, sadness and more risk of delinquency and substance abuse.

This article

In this article we will look into the way in which radical lesbians blame society for their predicament, thereby taking no personal responsibility for their actions, and the effects that this has for huge numbers of children, growing up in a broken home.

What does it feel like to have to explain in the school playground that you have two mothers, which sounds weird, and then having to explain that they don’t love each other enough, and that you feel sad. We are not really interested in the opinions of radical lesbians, we care about the child concerned.

Hours after the Bureau published its results, the chairwoman of Dutch Gay Lib (COC), Tanja Ineke, was eager to make a press statement that this was probably due to the fact that lesbians could perhaps be more discriminated against in society than heterosexual couples, therefore leading to stress and inevitably divorce. The Dutch mainstream press subsequently wrote in headlines: “Anti-gay discrimination leads to more lesbian divorces”.

Our comments

The chairlady immediately delivers her very predictable victim stance, blaming heterosexual countrymen. That always works. No need for research apparently, she knows for sure. Her quotes were splashed over many newspapers, even including Christian newspapers who took her word for it (click here). No mention of the consequences for kids.

What she cannot explain is, how society can be blamed when there is no discrimination in the Netherlands of same-sex marriage since fifteen years,  a country where people with same-sex attractions enlist in the army since 1974, where every cabinet has three to five gay ministers and where gay guys, who must necessarily also be equally “discriminated” against, even show a lower divorce rate compared to straight and lesbian couples?

We witness yet once again how gay-lib plays its eternal victim card, lashing out to heterosexuals for all personal predicaments. The last thing radical gay-lib lesbians apparently wish to do, is look into themselves and their choices.

Heterophobia

We call this heterophobia, and have written about it before (click here). Had lesbian married couples shown the lowest divorce rate, then the gay-lib chairlady would most certainly say: see how well we are doing, goes to show you what those heterosexuals are really like. Now with lesbians having the highest divorce rate, she rushes in to declare: we are victims, goes to show you what those heterosexuals are really like. This is, in our view, a sign of heterophobia. The homosexual predicament is externalized, that is to say, placed outside yourself; all information is immediately rationalized and turned into the mind frame that was there all the time.

Gay-lib only appears to rely heavily on scientific research when that research can be twisted to fit the own heterophobic world view. But when research, as shown by the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics, turns out to be embarrassing, then no research is called upon, and gay-lib instantly reaches conclusions based on the certainties of their ever-prevailing heterophobia. Straight people are onto us, we are perfect and all woe is due to an intolerant society, even in super tolerant Netherlands. And no, we don’t need to see a counselor. Straight guys need to see a counselor.

 

Effects of divorce on children

What do the experts say? The website Psychology Today writes on this issue (click here):

“Divorce introduces a massive change into the life of a boy or girl no matter what the age. Witnessing loss of love between parents, having parents break their marriage commitment, adjusting to going back and forth between two different households, and the daily absence of one parent while living with the other, all create a challenging new family circumstance in which to live. In the personal history of the boy or girl, parental divorce is a watershed event. Life that follows is significantly changed from how life was before.

Divorce tends to intensify the child’s dependence and it tends to accelerate the adolescent’s independence; it often elicits a more regressive response in the child and a more aggressive response in the adolescent.

The child’s world is a dependent one, closely connected to parents who are favored companions, heavily reliant on parental care, with family the major locus of one’s social life.

For the young child, divorce shakes trust in dependency on parents who now behave in an extremely undependable way. They surgically divide the family unit into two different households between which the child must learn to transit back and forth, for a while creating unfamiliarity, instability, and insecurity, never being able to be with one parent without having to be apart from the other.

Convincing a young child of the permanence of divorce can be harmful when his intense longing fantasizes that somehow, some way, the parents will be living back together again someday. He relies on wishful thinking to help allay the pain of loss, holding onto hope for a parental reunion much longer than does the adolescent who is quicker to accept the finality of this unwelcome family change. Thus parents who put in a joint presence at special family celebrations and holiday events to recreate family closeness for the child only feed the child’s fantasy and delay his adjustment.

The dependent child’s short term reaction to divorce can be an anxious one. So much is different, new, unpredictable, and unknown that life becomes filled with scary questions? “What is going to happen to next?” “Who will take care of me?” “If my parents can lose for each other, can they lose love for me?” “With one parent moving out, what if I lose the other too?” Answering such worry questions with worst fears, the child’s response can be regressive.

By reverting to a former way of functioning, more parental care-taking may be forthcoming. There can be separation anxieties, crying at bed times, breaking toilet training, bed-wetting, clinging, whining, tantrums, and temporary loss of established self-care skills, all of which can compel parental attention.

The child wants to feel more connected in a family situation where a major disconnection has occurred. Regression to earlier dependency can partly be an effort to elicit parental concern, bringing them close when divorce has pulled each of them further away – the resident parent now busier and more preoccupied, the absent parent simply less available because of being less around.

The more independent-minded adolescent tends to deal more aggressively to divorce, often reacting in a mad, rebellious way, more resolved to disregard family discipline and take care of himself since parents have failed to keep commitments to family that were originally made.

Where the child may have tried to get parents back, the adolescent may try to get back at parents. Where the child felt grief, the adolescence has a grievance. “If they can’t be trusted to stay together and take care of the family, then I need to start relying more on myself.” “If they can break their marriage and put themselves first, then I can put myself first too.” “If they don’t mind hurting me, then I don’t mind hurting them.”

Now the adolescent can act aggressively to take control of his life by behaving even more distantly and defiantly, more determined to live his life his way, more dedicated to his self-interest than before. He feels increasingly autonomous in a family situation that feels disconnected. He now feels more impelled and entitled to act on his own.”

If the adolescent is then interviewed by radical gay-lib researchers, he or she will probably say “I don’t give a shit”. To the predictable great relief of the lesbians concerned: “See? He doesn’t mind”.

JB, Amsterdam.