“The desires of adults should not trump the needs of children.”
This is the talking point that is bubbling up on the Sunday talk shows right now by the folks who are upset about the Supreme Court rulings this week that struck down DOMA and then kicked back California’s Prop 8 law to the state court that had already invalidated it.
And I love that quote because it is such a duh statement in general but also such an outrageous statement (because it is often stretched to be used in the context of abortion). And this statement — uttered by people who would rather see children sit unadopted in foster homes than be adopted by gay couples — is laughable and disingenuous. (Not to mention that it is also being uttered by people who deny that climate change is real, much less a problem for future generations.)
Using the children angle for a “defense” of “traditional” marriage is slimy. The ability or desire to have children is not a prerequisite for heterosexual couples to get married, nor is having a happy, loving marriage a requirement for keeping your children. Children of loving gay couples fare as well as children of loving straight couples. Saying that marriage has always been one-man-one-woman and has always been about bolstering the nuclear family is a lie. The definition and purpose of marriage has been constantly evolving. And there is nothing wrong with that. We evolve.
I was a homophobe (like so many others) in my country-ass high school and managed to come around to the idea of gay men and lesbians as nondeviant when I was college. (Phew.) I remember wearing my ugly little pink CafePress Marriage For All T-shirt back in 2006 and even then actual marriage equality seemed like a cultural impossibility in America. And now it’s a real thing and it’s really happening, and it’s really being held up as the standard in so many places. But I’m with the others who know that we can’t get comfortable, who know that progress isn’t an easy inevitability, that there will be many states (including the one I live in) that will fight this rising tide with much wailing and gnashing of teeth that is going to affect and hurt real people. We will see many more attempts to codify fear and hatred and we will have to endure endless complaints about how our insistance that intolerance not hijack our laws is itself a form of bigotry.
It’s not.
Don’t let them get away with saying that.