Every child comes from a man and a woman. But Pennsylvania Democrats want to make sure that reality is scrubbed from state law.
That is exactly what HB 1800 accomplishes. The bill removes the historic definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman from Pennsylvania statute—language rooted not in sentiment, but in the biological and social reality that children come from mothers and fathers.
Supporters framed the bill as a matter of adult rights and cultural progress, arguing it was “time” to update the law to reflect “modern society.” Governor Josh Shapiro said the change was necessary to protect the “freedom to marry who you love.”
But that framing obscures a deeper truth: “equality” for adults necessitates inequality for children.
Marriage is not just a celebration of adult relationships. It is a child-protection institution. The state did not create marriage to validate adult love or “freedom.” It recognizes marriage because it has an interest in children.
Congress said as much in 1996 when a bipartisan Congress passed the original Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA): “Government has an interest in marriage because it has an interest in children.”
Marriage law exists to bind children to their mother and father—and bind those adults to the children they create.
When you remove that structure from law, you don’t just redefine marriage. You redefine parenthood. Ten years of national gay marriage has made one truth painfully obvious: when you make husbands and wives optional in marriage law, mothers and fathers become optional in parenthood law.
This legal “update” is not a slippery slope. It's a civilizational cliff.
If same-sex couples must be afforded the same “constellation of benefits” as male-female couples, the law must accomplish what biology prohibits—making two adults of the same sex the legal parents of a child. That requires removing “mother” and “father” from statutes, falsifying birth certificates, and creating new pathways to parenthood that bypass both biology and the safeguards of adoption.
In the name of “non-discrimination,” the law has been forced to erase every category that once protected children.
Under the gay marriage rubric, there is no mother or father, no lineage, no citizenship requirement, no criminal background check, no cap on the number of children created, and sometimes no limit on the number of adults claiming a child. The only defining feature of “family” that remains is the precise demand of the paying adult(s). That is what adult “freedom” requires.
The law is forced to treat children not as persons with origins and rights—but as objects to be acquired. That leads to predictable outcomes. Just last summer, a registered sex offender, Brandon Keith Mitchell of Chester County, was able to obtain legal parentage of an infant through surrogacy.
That is not a bug of modern family. It is “adult equality” working as designed.
Adoption requires screening because the child is the client. Gay-marriage-driven parenthood treats adults as the clients and children as accessories. And it is the natural outgrowth of a legal framework that severs parenthood from biology and replaces it with adult intent.
Which brings us to what is really at stake in repealing Pennsylvania’s DOMA language.
This is not a neutral update. It is a transfer of power.
When the government moves from recognizing biological parentage to assigning parents through contract, it expands its authority over the most fundamental human relationship. It is no longer acknowledging who a child’s parents are. It is deciding who they will be. What used to be a pre-political natural right is now a function of an ever-expanding managerial state.
If the state can casually assign non-biological adults as the parents of a child, it can more easily unassign biological parents as well. That is not small government. That is a state expansion in the name of non-discrimination.
For centuries, the law operated on a simple premise: wherever possible, children should be raised by the two people who created them. That principle limited the state. It required the government to recognize a reality it did not create.
That is what every step away from society-wide recognition of natural marriage produces. And that's what HB 1800 cements.
Children raised under this state-assigned-parentage rubric are expected to be satisfied with whatever adults are raising them. Missing mother. Missing father. Single men. Double men. Triple men. A stranger. A retiree. A foreign national. A registered sex offender…
Children’s rights and needs don’t matter to Reps. Malcolm Kenyatta, Jessica Benham, their Democratic co-sponsors, and lone Republican providing bipartisan cover, Jamie Flick. What matters is they can signal that they are on the “right side of history.”
A “history” that will produce motherless and fatherless victims. Children who, like every child throughout history, will wonder about the identity of their missing parent. Who will hunger for the maternal or paternal love they were denied. Who will grow up in risky homes.
And when they are finally able to seek answers, they will find that their own government participated in their victimization and gaslighting. There will be no recognition in law, no marker of the wholeness they deserved, no validation of their natural longing. Not even the words “mother” or “father” in state statutes to reflect the missing parent that they now seek.
Equality for adults should not come at the expense of children. But that is the trade Pennsylvania Democrats are willing to make.
Katy Faust is the founder and president of Them Before Us.
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