Protect the Children!

Hello everyone...My last article of the week is addressing Prop 8's third point that it was enacted to "protect children". So get out your tinfoil hats to protect you from homosexual brainwaves and lets recite Prop. 8's mantra again shall we?.... "Its all about the children!"...."Its all about the children!"

This is arguably the oldest argument used against gay and lesbian people. Its purpose is to link homosexuality to pedophilia and to cast gays as villians out to destroy innocence and the fabric of American life. It is also the flimsiest of all arguments that the Prop. 8 legal defense has made thus far, in their effort to defend the ban on allowing same-sex marriage. In reality, all that Prop. 8's defense has done so far is reiterate the same thinly vieled homophobic statements that were used during the election to scare the average citizen into voting their way. Their still using the same playbook. However, their argument only has the capacity to move the average person into believing that, somehow kids are in danger, if you first hold a certain set of assumptions. Such as...


That homosexuality is communicable:

Proximity to gay people makes you gay...did you know that? Mere exposure to their ideas is enough to make you a "mo"...a homo that is.

After I came out to my mother, I remember that my she sent my younger brother a letter requesting that he kidnap me in order to get me away from the "homosexual influence" that was causing me to believe I was gay. Its sounds silly to me as I type this...but it happened. Whats worse is alot of people believe in the idea of "homosexual influence".

How this relates to the Prop. 8 case is their assertion that if same-sex marriage is allowed than more children will grow up thinking that it's o.k. to be gay and will see a same sex marriage as a viable alternative to an opposite sex one........excuse me but..../facepalm..........seriously, no child is going to grow up looking at who to marry the same way they do when considering whether to have strawberry or lime jello. To believe this is to completly ignore the fact that your born with your sexual orientation hardwired and to stubbornly cling to the "its a choice" argument. However lots of people do and ignore tons of scientific studies and even the evidence of their own eyes because that's the way they were brought up to believe.

My response to those who argue that I chose homosexuality is to challenge them to go against their own sexuality for a while. I challenge them to really do it, not a half hearted attempt, but with the same level of self annihilating desperation that most gay people feel before they come out to themselves....when we are trying desparately to deny our gayness....that kind of try.  I challenge them to see how much they get arroused kissing someone of the same sex...I challenge them to get excited about seeing that person and to imagine building a life with them. Not surprisingly, no one has taken me up on this. The point of this being, that most of the people who use the "its a choice" argument don't examine their own sexuality or fret about it the way alot of gay men and women have to in order to come to a place of acceptance.....so why in the world would you assume that children would just randomly chose it?

In addition....there are so many gay people everywhere in our society both out loud and deep in the closet. If it was merely proximity to homosexuals that made you gay then everyone would already be gay. Consider that the next time that pretty nurse without the wedding ring is giving you your flu vaccine....it just may contain gay cooties.

Homosexuals recruit and the schools are in danger:

Thank you so much Anita Bryant for this lovely rationale. Bryant said,"As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children."

Newsflash..... even if you got rid of every single gay person on earth, more of us would be born...right into your oh so heterosexual and religious families. We don't recruit anyone and we are just like you. We want to love, build families, have satisfying careers, and exist without fearing for out safety. You will notice that I did not add "swell the ranks" to that list. Thats because it doesn't happen. I don't wake up in the morning with a directive from the gay shadow council to meet my conversion quotas or face expulsion from the order...But there are those that believe that homosexuality has a corosive quality...you know, like the dark side. "Once you start down the path of homosexuality, forever will it dominate your destiny!" While homosexuals don't recruit...certain religious organizations do. Perhaps that bears a bit more scrutiny.

Seriously parents...if your child is heterosexual, they will always be so. If they are gay, thats not likely to change either despite our best attempts to the contrary.(don't even bring up reparative therapy unless you want to really screw up your kids) No amount of convincing is going to change that fundamental trait. You might say...But what about gay teachers and schools and all those impresionable minds? Arent gay teachers teaching kids its alright to be gay? Not in any of the schools my children are attending. They have never addressed homosexuality or gay marriage....ever......and I live in a very liberal portion of California. The instances the Prop. 8 crowd used of homosexuality being taught in schools had nothing to do with teaching kids that they too could join the glorious gay revolution. What they were actually teaching was respect for others. read on...

Schools have come under major fire legally, with regards to bullying. They have been forced to come down hard on it or face liability to allowing it to continue. This I have seen in my sons school. It has become a pretty major theme. If we want to teach little Johnny that its not o.k. to throw rocks at his African-American classmate and call him names...then we have to include those who are also on the "most bullied list". That would include gender, those of different religions, different races, and sexual identies. This is a far cry from teaching them to BE these things. In essence, all they are teaching is one of Jesus's most important rules, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". But this effort by the schools was cast as a homosexual recruitment campaign and it was recieved by a public that was primed to see teachers and judges as "activists" instead of legitmate authorities....or even human beings.

Even if something is tought in schools that we don't agree with, its our job...our responsibility as parents, to set the record straight with our kids. The schools don't teach alot of things that falls on us as parents to teach. Things like, faith, work ethics, ethnic identity, perseverance, resiliency....the list goes on. So why do you think that, just because the school would want to teach something that you disagree with, that your ability as a parent to instruct your children has been compromised? Look at all you teach them everyday without even realizing it.

However, this idea is so connected to the one above it that I tortured myself in considering whether or not to give it it's own category. I feel it deserves it because its tone is different from the one above. This one sets us apart as predators. Inhuman. The kindest interperatation casts us as having a sickness.
Like most of these arguments, they are emotional in nature, and hauling out all the facts and figures that show that the majority of pedophiles are heterosexual and that many are family members to the victims does little to change hearts and minds. All of that falls on deaf ears when danger to children is invoked. Thats what makes this such a malicious and cruel argument. Not only does it cast gays and lesbians in with some of the most reviled people in humanity...it uses children as human shields to hide the ignorance of a group of people that knows nothing about gay people....this is the single mmost damaging argument ever put forth against gay people.

Marriage is a procreative device:

When they used this one in the courtroom I almost fell off my chair. I couldn't believe they had the nuggets to use this one in front of a judge. The idea that marriage is in existance for the purpose of creating and raising children ....while noble a notion it  may be....excludes many from the heterosexual community as well. By their reasoning then infertile couples should not be allowed to marry ...nor the elderly....and if you have had any form of contraceptive surgery...kiss your marriage rights goodbye. If you have no intention of siring children, then why would you want to get married being that is what marriage is for....at least according to them it is.

I'd like for my readers to consider for a moment why social workers have begun to reach out to gays to foster and adopt children. Is it because a radical homosexual lobby pushed for it?.....no, that would never be reason enough. Is it because liberal social workers and adoption agencies are running their own social experiments?.....Hell no! Gay couples often have to fight there way through the system against anti-gay adoption workers and authorities.  and The why follows next. Ignoring California's non-discrimination laws for a moment: The reason same-sex couples are being reached out to by the adoption community is because there are more children that need homes than there are heterosexual couples to place them with. There are thousands of kids in the foster/adoption system and the sad reality is that many of them will age out without knowing any kind of permanent family. In addition, nearly every one of those kids came from heterosexual couples..often married ones.
different-sex families are superior.

"kids need a mommie and a daddy to thrive"

I used to believe this was true myself. Even up to the point that where we had Selena and Daniel, but now I can't believe that anymore. I thought that, In a perfect world, it would be great if all of us got to keep our mommies and daddies and that nothing bad would ever separate us from them. However, if it wasn't for a set of heterosexual parents. Selena and Daniel wouldn't be with us in the first place. Everyday kids are hurt and abandoned by those who they rely on to take care of them and to see them into adulthood. My husband and I know that we are never going to take the place of our kids mom...but we can be the best dads that we can be and I think thats all thats required of any of us.

To those that leave awfull comments on our Youtube channel about how screwed up our kids are going to be when they grow up.....I first count to ten to avoid reaching through the computer and popping them in the nose...then I challenge them. If its so important for a kid to be in a heterosexual family to grow up healthy, then they need to put their money where their mouth is and go foster some of the thousands of kids sitting in the system. What sex  your parents are doesn't matter...you don't even have to have two. Kids just need to have at least one parent who loves them, and gives a dam enough to be present, to give them the boundries and guidance they need. to answer their milliions of questions, to bandage the skinned knees, to go toe to toe with the schools, to give them there time and attention, to give them love. You don't have to be straight or married to do any of these things...you just have to care.

I will say again...that, growing up, I knew a few kids being raised by same-sex parents. I got to see how they grew up and what became of them and, on the whole, they grew up just like anyone else. They had the same triumphs, passages, strengths and weaknesses of kids who grew up in with straight parents.

Plus, doesn't the assertion that you have to have a mommy and a daddy to be healthy relegate children of divorced, widowed, and single-parent families into the "assumed damaged" category? That would include me and a good many of the people I knew growing up. Not many of us made it to our adult years without losing a parent somewhere along the way. As much as those events hurt, they also gave me a core of strength that helps me guide my kids through their emotions and questions regarding their birth parents. What was once loss...became a strength. To assume that any of us are broken because we didn't have two different-sex parents in the home is an arrogant argument.

I refuse to see my kids as broken because they have two dads. I KNOW that they are loved and cherished. They were not something that happened to us one drunken night, we pursued them. We chose them. They will get the best of our time, attention, and our hearts for the rest of their lives. When I watch them sleeping, my heart glows. I feel sad when I see how big they are getting and miss the tiny kids they once were....even at the same moment I am excited for all they learn and become.

So what do children need to be protected from? A world that treats them as if they are not important. They need to be protected from calousness, selfishness, and a life lived without knowing that they are truly and completely loved. Where they don't have to look at adults with fear and suspicion, hiding food under their beds so they can eat tommorow, hiding scars so their friends won't see. That is what kids need to be protected from and it has nothing to do with sexual identity.