Bad parenting is bad parenting, no matter who you're boning
My Facebook frienemy is posting links to articles against gay marriage again, but lately it’s been in the vein of “won’t somebody please think of the children!”
These anti-gay-marriage testimonials he’s been posting come from children of same-sex couples voicing their experiences as a reason same-sex couples should not marry and hence raise children. The first instance of his “liking” an article I cannot find, but it was about 4 people who were speaking out as having been in some form done a disservice by their separation from one parent and being raised in a household with same-sex parent figures in a pro-gay environment. My take-away from their testimonials, however, was not that “gay parents are bad” but rather “some of these parents are just bad parents” and “that parent sounds like an angry man-hater” and “divorce makes kids sad.” One young man said his father and his father’s partner took him to events where he witnessed sodomy and pornography - well, that’s inappropriate exposure of a youth no matter who the guardian is. Another said his mother and her partners really hated men, and that he didn’t have any male role models or father figures growing up, which led him to sleep with older men as a desperate ploy for male attention. Uhhhhh… okay? Doesn't seem as though it could be as simple as all that... but anyway. I’ll grant that a lack of positive role models of either gender is not an awesome thing for kids to endure, but it seems as though this could have also happened were this man raised by a single straight mother, or by a father who was not engaged as a parent. One woman described her mother and her partners as good parents whom she loved, but that she always longed for her father to be in her life, for her parents to still be together under the same roof. I imagine there are few children of divorced parents who have not felt this way, regardless of the reason for the divorce, even when parents are heterosexual, and probably even if the parents are amicably divorced and share custody and are generally very good parents.
I’d be willing to bet we can find any number of kids raised by straight parents who had shitty parents too - ones that exposed them to inappropriate things like porn, or were only nominally involved in the kids’ upbringing, leaving an emotional void, or who were prejudiced against you-name-it in a way that deleteriously affected the child’s life.
He actually shared a different article, though, that sounded like a long-form version of the woman who had a loving lesbian mother but who missed her father, who is now married with 4 kids of her own. She asserts that marriage is about having kids, and that the government is only interested in incentivizing and having a say in marriage because they also have an interest in incentivizing procreation - but because same-sex couples cannot procreate alone, their only way to get in on the procreation game is through adoption, surrogacy (cue the cries of exploitation!), sperm donor (in the case of couples containing a cis-woman), or from inheriting kids from a broken marriage. She basically just says how having her father not present was a bummer - well, yeah. Was he not there at all? Was it just that he and her mom didn’t live together anymore that was sad? Of course that’s sad. Should we also end divorce? Outlaw voluntary single parenthood? Wait, strike that, I’m sure that a number of people against gay marriage would say yes to both of those. But what of widows/widowers left behind with the children when their spouse dies? Should they be paired up with an opposite-sex partner tout de suite, before the kids feel too down about the void in their life? Should abandoned spouses be subjected to the same, in the name of “for the children” because to do otherwise is just too selfish? Should we keep children with parents who neglect and/or abuse them, because children have some biological rights to their birth parents, no matter how awful they are at parenting? Should mothers of unwanted children be forced to raise their accidental offspring because adopting the child out would somehow be worse for it than strapping it to a mother who doesn’t want it, or knows she is unprepared or unfit to care for it? None of these situations make sense, and I don’t think any sane person would advocate them. Biology does not trump all other factors when it comes to who raises a child in any number of situations, so why would it do so when it comes to the viability of same-sex couples as parents?
A related article linked on the sidebar describes a woman’s experience being left by her husband after he came out as gay - he and his partner were awarded full custody of the children, and they got married, forcing the kids to participate and also letting them be photographed by news organizations at the wedding, from which the mother was excluded. She goes on a diatribe about how marriage isn’t based on sexual desire, but on loyalty and putting the other person first, and that a married person never lets extramarital attractions (opposite or same sex) get the better of them. She advocates that the marriage is always better intact for everyone, especially the children of that marriage. At the start it sounds as though she’s arguing that if gay marriage did not exist, her husband would not have left her, and at the end it sounds like she’s arguing that the gay marriage her husband currently has only exists because it’s built on the ruins of their previously hetero marriage, and that her daughter and son are being damaged by being raised by gay men, in and around a community of gay men who see young male prostitutes, have May-December romances, dress in drag, etc. This one is probably the one that smells the most of crazy - we have to take her word that she is the victim of a judge who did not think she should be awarded custody of her children, and of her ex-husband who excludes her from their children’s lives, and that said ex-husband and his husband are living in a community unfit for children and are not providing good role models for the kids. It may be that she is grade-A crazy - maybe a risk of absconding with the children? - and the judge and her husband saw this and acted accordingly regarding whether she gets to be around the kids, and that she sees gays through a distorted lens that makes them all licentious and terrible. In the best light, she has been excluded from her children's lives and that is sad and probably not right; at worst, she's spoutin' off crazy about how marriage ought to consist of doormatting yourself for your partner if that's what it takes to keep the marriage together.
I wonder if, with time, scientists will have the chance to study more children of same sex couples who adopted - I’ve heard Dan Savage say it at least a couple times, and it works out logically: same-sex couples can’t ACCIDENTALLY have kids. They have to make special arrangements, meet criteria, sometimes pay a whole lot and just generally put in a decent amount of work in order to have a child to raise together, so they’re got to want parenthood to get there. Heterosexuals, however, can have a drunken fling at the right time in a woman’s fertility cycle and blam, there’s a baby that they never meant to happen. And some of them will choose to have that baby and will step up their game and be good, or even great, parents - and some won’t. That’s not to say that all same sex couples are better parents - just that they are more intentional parents, who prepped and planned and worked for something that many, many sexually active heteroes can just fall into without meaning to.
If I had more energy I’d be raging pretty hard about this, but because I spent last weekend with a fever and I’m still recuperating, it’s just a low smolder that depresses me.
TL; DR - straight parents aren’t automatically better than gay parents. A good parent is good no matter what gender they are attracted to. Simply because some children raised by same-sex couples (all of whom apparently also experienced divorce, which is a whole other factor to account for) had sads at best and were abused at worst does not negate same-sex couples’ ability to parent effectively, and to assume so also impugns the parenting abilities of divorced parents, single parents, and adoptive parents.
Click to viewThese anti-gay-marriage testimonials he’s been posting come from children of same-sex couples voicing their experiences as a reason same-sex couples should not marry and hence raise children. The first instance of his “liking” an article I cannot find, but it was about 4 people who were speaking out as having been in some form done a disservice by their separation from one parent and being raised in a household with same-sex parent figures in a pro-gay environment. My take-away from their testimonials, however, was not that “gay parents are bad” but rather “some of these parents are just bad parents” and “that parent sounds like an angry man-hater” and “divorce makes kids sad.” One young man said his father and his father’s partner took him to events where he witnessed sodomy and pornography - well, that’s inappropriate exposure of a youth no matter who the guardian is. Another said his mother and her partners really hated men, and that he didn’t have any male role models or father figures growing up, which led him to sleep with older men as a desperate ploy for male attention. Uhhhhh… okay? Doesn't seem as though it could be as simple as all that... but anyway. I’ll grant that a lack of positive role models of either gender is not an awesome thing for kids to endure, but it seems as though this could have also happened were this man raised by a single straight mother, or by a father who was not engaged as a parent. One woman described her mother and her partners as good parents whom she loved, but that she always longed for her father to be in her life, for her parents to still be together under the same roof. I imagine there are few children of divorced parents who have not felt this way, regardless of the reason for the divorce, even when parents are heterosexual, and probably even if the parents are amicably divorced and share custody and are generally very good parents.
I’d be willing to bet we can find any number of kids raised by straight parents who had shitty parents too - ones that exposed them to inappropriate things like porn, or were only nominally involved in the kids’ upbringing, leaving an emotional void, or who were prejudiced against you-name-it in a way that deleteriously affected the child’s life.
He actually shared a different article, though, that sounded like a long-form version of the woman who had a loving lesbian mother but who missed her father, who is now married with 4 kids of her own. She asserts that marriage is about having kids, and that the government is only interested in incentivizing and having a say in marriage because they also have an interest in incentivizing procreation - but because same-sex couples cannot procreate alone, their only way to get in on the procreation game is through adoption, surrogacy (cue the cries of exploitation!), sperm donor (in the case of couples containing a cis-woman), or from inheriting kids from a broken marriage. She basically just says how having her father not present was a bummer - well, yeah. Was he not there at all? Was it just that he and her mom didn’t live together anymore that was sad? Of course that’s sad. Should we also end divorce? Outlaw voluntary single parenthood? Wait, strike that, I’m sure that a number of people against gay marriage would say yes to both of those. But what of widows/widowers left behind with the children when their spouse dies? Should they be paired up with an opposite-sex partner tout de suite, before the kids feel too down about the void in their life? Should abandoned spouses be subjected to the same, in the name of “for the children” because to do otherwise is just too selfish? Should we keep children with parents who neglect and/or abuse them, because children have some biological rights to their birth parents, no matter how awful they are at parenting? Should mothers of unwanted children be forced to raise their accidental offspring because adopting the child out would somehow be worse for it than strapping it to a mother who doesn’t want it, or knows she is unprepared or unfit to care for it? None of these situations make sense, and I don’t think any sane person would advocate them. Biology does not trump all other factors when it comes to who raises a child in any number of situations, so why would it do so when it comes to the viability of same-sex couples as parents?
A related article linked on the sidebar describes a woman’s experience being left by her husband after he came out as gay - he and his partner were awarded full custody of the children, and they got married, forcing the kids to participate and also letting them be photographed by news organizations at the wedding, from which the mother was excluded. She goes on a diatribe about how marriage isn’t based on sexual desire, but on loyalty and putting the other person first, and that a married person never lets extramarital attractions (opposite or same sex) get the better of them. She advocates that the marriage is always better intact for everyone, especially the children of that marriage. At the start it sounds as though she’s arguing that if gay marriage did not exist, her husband would not have left her, and at the end it sounds like she’s arguing that the gay marriage her husband currently has only exists because it’s built on the ruins of their previously hetero marriage, and that her daughter and son are being damaged by being raised by gay men, in and around a community of gay men who see young male prostitutes, have May-December romances, dress in drag, etc. This one is probably the one that smells the most of crazy - we have to take her word that she is the victim of a judge who did not think she should be awarded custody of her children, and of her ex-husband who excludes her from their children’s lives, and that said ex-husband and his husband are living in a community unfit for children and are not providing good role models for the kids. It may be that she is grade-A crazy - maybe a risk of absconding with the children? - and the judge and her husband saw this and acted accordingly regarding whether she gets to be around the kids, and that she sees gays through a distorted lens that makes them all licentious and terrible. In the best light, she has been excluded from her children's lives and that is sad and probably not right; at worst, she's spoutin' off crazy about how marriage ought to consist of doormatting yourself for your partner if that's what it takes to keep the marriage together.
I wonder if, with time, scientists will have the chance to study more children of same sex couples who adopted - I’ve heard Dan Savage say it at least a couple times, and it works out logically: same-sex couples can’t ACCIDENTALLY have kids. They have to make special arrangements, meet criteria, sometimes pay a whole lot and just generally put in a decent amount of work in order to have a child to raise together, so they’re got to want parenthood to get there. Heterosexuals, however, can have a drunken fling at the right time in a woman’s fertility cycle and blam, there’s a baby that they never meant to happen. And some of them will choose to have that baby and will step up their game and be good, or even great, parents - and some won’t. That’s not to say that all same sex couples are better parents - just that they are more intentional parents, who prepped and planned and worked for something that many, many sexually active heteroes can just fall into without meaning to.
If I had more energy I’d be raging pretty hard about this, but because I spent last weekend with a fever and I’m still recuperating, it’s just a low smolder that depresses me.
TL; DR - straight parents aren’t automatically better than gay parents. A good parent is good no matter what gender they are attracted to. Simply because some children raised by same-sex couples (all of whom apparently also experienced divorce, which is a whole other factor to account for) had sads at best and were abused at worst does not negate same-sex couples’ ability to parent effectively, and to assume so also impugns the parenting abilities of divorced parents, single parents, and adoptive parents.