Millennial parent values bonds of traditional marriage
Jeff Janssen, 27, is a student at Drake University Law School who told his story to reporter Josh Hafner. He graduates in May.
I just finished a six-day trial pursuing full custody of my children, and I've seen the effects of a broken home, or at least a home where there's not a mother and father to provide strong parenting.
Your kids need both. When you don't have that natural mother-father relationship where you're building and raising the children, I don't believe they develop like they should.
My kids are ages 6 and 9. I'm not together with my children's mother, and I was never married to her. I came to know Christ in 2009, and I married my wife three years after that.
We've had four foster children since August of last year. The home they came from was not good at all. It was a dysfunctional marriage on multiple levels, and they had multiple, random people living with them. The children were confused as to what was going on.
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It takes a man and a woman to create a child. And that's how God created it. We've had one of our foster kids since he was 2 months old. He's gone through a phase where he was really bonding with my wife, his mother figure. Then, at 9 months, he started to really bond with me, his father figure. I expect this to change back and forth as he grows and develops.
I'm not saying that parenting can't be done in a nontraditional family. But I think the best way to provide those things is through the traditional family, where the child can have the relationships and bonds needed to thrive and develop. I think marriage, in and of itself, has the connotation and has been globally defined for centuries as between one man and one woman, and includes a covenant with God. And I believe it should stay that way.
A nontraditional marriage doesn't fit that description, and that's why I believe civil unions should be created with the same benefits as married couples. But there's a lot of things to sort out: There's tax consequences, death benefits, retirement, health care benefits, and other things that happen that you gain and benefit from when married.
I never condone discrimination against anybody. I validly see the argument that there's discrimination there.
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Even though I don't condone the behavior, it's their right, and if they're going to be discriminated against, that has to be remedied.
I have multiple friends who live homosexual lifestyles. I care about them. It doesn't mean you can't support them and be their friend. It doesn't mean you have to alienate them. You're not going to win anyone over — as a friend or otherwise — when you're not loving them. But if you think I need to believe your convictions to love you, then the flip side of the coin would be that you need to also believe my convictions to love me. If I condone and accept your convictions and lifestyle, are you really loving me and my beliefs? No.
Therefore, on issues like this, you just have to agree to disagree. But either way, you still love that person.
To mark Tuesday's historic arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, The Des Moines Register asked two millennials, whose generation has helped America redefine its attitudes toward same-sex marriage, to share their perspectives on the forces that shaped their opinions.