Statement of Sean Cahill, Ph.D., Director,
Policy Institute, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, New York, New York

Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Human Resources
of the House Committee on Ways and Means

Hearing on Welfare Reform Reauthorization Proposals

April 11, 2002

I am the director of the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the nation’s oldest national gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) political organization. I am here to express my community’s concern about certain elements of welfare reform. I recently coauthored a study examining the current and potential impact of welfare reform on gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. I will make copies of this study available to all members of the committee. It’s also available at our website, www.ngltf.org.

Contrary to a widely-held myth, GLBT people are no wealthier, on average, than heterosexual people. Some gay people are poor, and some, especially lesbian and bisexual mothers, depend on TANF cash assistance, food stamps, and other elements of the safety net. Although some would construct “gay” and “family” as mutually exclusive categories, one in five lesbian households on the 1990 Census had a child under age 18. A recent study of Black GLBT Pride celebrations found that 40 percent of the women, and 18 percent of the men, were parents. So we have children, and sometimes we need temporary assistance to make ends meet.

There are many ways in which welfare reform threatens and stigmatizes lesbian mothers on welfare and all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. These include the paternity requirement, which conditions aid upon identification of the child’s biological father, and abstinence-only-until-marriage education, which promotes dangerous stereotypes and misinformation about homosexuality, gay people-including gay youth who are already subject to widespread harassment and violence in the schools-and people with AIDS. Harassment of gay youth and transgender people at workfare sites is widespread, and in states where there are no sexual orientation nondiscrimination laws, lesbians pushed off welfare may not be able to work due to anti-gay discrimination.

Wade Horn recently asked why the Bush Administration’s $300 million-a-year marriage initiative is so controversial. Well, there are essentially two reasons: 1) what we have already seen happening at the state level; and 2) what Horn and other Bush appointees formerly involved in the National Fatherhood Initiative and the Marriage Movement, and their colleagues at influential conservative think tanks, have proposed.

1)     State Marriage Initiatives

Arizona, Michigan, Oklahoma, Utah and other states have earmarked millions of TANF dollars to fund marriage and fatherhood initiatives. West Virginia is offering cash bonuses to those who marry. Florida mandates marriage skills classes, and some public school districts have encouraged role-playing complete with gowns, tuxes, and church ceremonies. Three states now offer covenant marriages, which are harder to enter into and harder to leave. Louisiana’s Commission on Marriage and Family reviews all state laws to ensure that marriage is not “undermined.” Would a domestic partner law which grants rights and benefits to same-sex couples be seen as “undermining” heterosexual marriage? Unfortunately, conservatives have indicated they think it would.

2)     Proposals Advocated by Current Policymakers

While the specifics of the Administration’s marriage and fatherhood promotion efforts are not yet available, the recent writings of Wade Horn and Andrew Bush, both now at HHS, and Don Eberly at the Faith Based Initiative, provide a roadmap. Also worth reviewing are the National Fatherhood Initiative’s “Call to Fatherhood,” the Marriage Movement’s “Statement of Principles,” and the “Call to Civil Society.”[1] Horn, Bush and Eberly have advocated:

• The prioritization of children of married heterosexual parents over other low-income children in the distribution of limited-supply benefits like Head Start slots and financial aid. This would devastate many Black and Latino families with children in particular.
• Offering two-parent welfare benefits only to married heterosexual couples.
• Ending no-fault divorce and requiring mutual consent of both spouses before divorce is granted.
• Effectively banning gay and lesbian couples from adopting children in state custody.

Others close to the administration like Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation and David Blankenhorn at the Institute for American Values have called for 10 percent of TANF funds to be spent for marriage promotion, and have urged Congress to pass a law like Louisiana’s banning any domestic legislation that “weaken[s] the institution of marriage.” This could be interpreted to mean banning any law recognizing same-sex relationships. Blankenhorn has even called for banning access to fertility services to unmarried women, including lesbian couples. We are very concerned about the potential harm such policies pose to our entire community, not only low-income gay people.

There is no credible social science research that shows that failure to marry causes poverty. In fact, many of our European allies have higher non-marital birth rates but much lower child poverty rates. Research also shows that children who grow up with gay or lesbian parents, and even single parents, can have as fulfilling and nurturing a childhood as children raised in married, heterosexual parent homes.

Some GLBT people are poor, some of us have children, and some of us need temporary assistance. We cannot legally marry. Promoting heterosexual marriage assumes every woman wants to marry a man, which is not true of many straight women and certainly not true of lesbians. Given the widespread prevalence of domestic violence among women on welfare, promoting marriage is the last thing our government should be doing. The gay community urges you to reject this misguided agenda and to focus instead on providing people on welfare the work-related skills required to succeed in today’s economy. 

[1] Horn, W., Blankenhorn, D., and Pearlstein, M., eds. (1999). The Fatherhood Movement: A Call to Action. New York: Lexington Books; The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles, at www.marriagemovement.org/html.report.html; Eberly, D. (1998). Civil Society and the Renewal of American Culture. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.