Monday, July 09, 2007

Boston Parents' Paper Normalizing GLBT "Families" - Part I

Same-sex "parenting" is not a biological possibility. It is a twisted social construct of 21st-century secular Western values and IVF clinics.

God's construct is one man/one woman marriage with children. The failure of heterosexual marriage and parenting is the failure of man, not of God's design. (That's called "original sin".) And when it happens, our society used to be quick to label it a failure: the words used were dysfunction, abandonment, desertion; illegitimacy, etc. But now, not only are such judgments (on us all) silenced, but we may not even speak out against a "family" based on parents bonded through sexual perversions.

And worse, the July issue of the Boston Parents' Paper promotes "gay parenting" as legitimate. The very fact that the issue is addressed in the magazine means it's equated with normal parenting. Allowing such illegitimate use of the words "parenting" and "family" for such unnatural social arrangements is the first step to total acceptance of the other, the abnormal as the real thing. Yet the editor of the Parents' Paper [alison.murray@parenthood.com] dishonestly claims in her "Editor's Note" on p. 8:

"... we don't take sides on the issue of gay marriage; instead, we seek to illuminate -- to bring understanding -- to the plight of same-sex couples raising children. They face all of the same obstacles that the rest of us do, and then some. These parents are always mindful that others are watching, and sometimes disapproving, of their childrearing. The solution for many is to build their own communities of support. Read [our] article ... for some enlightening insight into how that's done."

Note the word "plight" -- the magazine clearly sides with same-sex parents. (The "plight" was very consciously chosen by the adults involved.) Anyone who doesn't accept same-sex parenting clearly is lacking understanding, is not "illuminated". The feature article "See Us As a Family" [discussed Part II of our commentary, coming soon] clearly supports and encourages such "families" by giving helpful tips, just as the magazine does for normal families.

But what of the plight of the children being brought up by "same-sex couples"! Last weekend's Boston Globe Magazine ran another article normalizing "two mommies" -- where one of the mommies actually admitted her son's verbalized yearning for a father he'll never really know. See "Two Moms and No Dad -- For Now" ("for now" meaning, that's because the lucky kids might get to meet their sperm-donor "dad" when they get older, and are past all those annoying years when they wanted him to do stuff with them.) If you don't get the heebie-jeebies when reading this, you're ABNORMAL:

When 10-year-old John was 3, he told me one morning as I was driving him to preschool that not having a dad made him feel sad. He has said this on a number of occasions over the past seven years. We do what we can to fill the gap. He's very athletic, and we take him to play baseball, soccer, basketball, and ice hockey, anywhere that men congregate to coach and cheer on their sons.
I have come to love the fathers of his teammates at the testosterone- soaked hockey rink who slap my son's helmet and say, "Way to go, John!" I love his first-grade teacher, who has become his unofficial Big Brother and who takes him to Red Sox and Celtics games, Northeastern hockey games, mini-golfing, and bowling. I love the father of one of my son's friends who takes him camping and teaches him to build rocket launchers.
These men are godsends, but sometimes I wish we could have provided my son with a real live father. The scourge of HIV ended the lives of some of my gay men friends whom I had asked to help me start a family 15 years ago, and the two straight men friends who volunteered were subsequently un-volunteered by their girlfriends. In the end, I scoured the country for donors who would agree to meet the children at a specified later date. When I became pregnant with our first child, I bought $10,000 worth of his sperm so that all our children would be genetically related.
I feel him with us much of the time. He is on the Brookline soccer fields when the mother of one of Katie's friends says, "Your donor must be an Olympian!" Katie runs like a gazelle. I feel his presence when I look at the children and see a wonderful similarity among them, despite two being born to me, and one to my partner. He is there when our Christmas cards go out, and we get back notes referring to "your beautiful children." In six years, when Katie turns 18, John will be 16 and Meg 10.
That is when they can meet him. I don't know what level of interest he will have in them or they in him. I can only hope that it will be mutual, and it will be strong.

Whose emotional well-being are the Parents' Paper and Boston Globe most concerned for -- the children's? or the adults'? And is it just a coincidence that the Boston Parents' Paper and the Boston Globe Magazine both feature articles promoting same-sex parenting in this lazy month of July?

In case you missed our posting from some months back, read this very sad piece by a young woman who was the product of an anonymous sperm donation: "The Pain of Not Knowing Your Biological Parent."

Boston Parents' Paper (offices in Jamaica Plain ... are we surprised?)
Editor: alison.murray@parenthood.com