According to its website, the National Organization for Marriage has announced a major campaign in its fight to deny gays and lesbians equal rights to marriage. This, in and of itself is horrible but one quote in the announcement caught my eye:
“Marriage really matters because children need a mom and dad,” said NOM president Maggie Gallagher.
This is a bold-faced lie.
Biologically, children need a sperm, egg, and a womb. Recent and past research also supports the fundamental needs of nurturing as well as the attachment children form to their mothers even within the womb (The Primal Wound). But more to the point, biologically, children need a few raging hormones to get their start in the world.
But to thrive, children need care. Despite the damages that the current adoption process can do to a child, legions of social workers, politicians, psychologists, adopters, and adoptees agree that children are better off in loving, supporting, stable homes than in foster care or orphanages.
Many of the children in foster care come with a litany of issues, including sexual abuse, domestic violence, drug abuse, neglect, and, at the risk of repeating myself, were all created by a biological father and biological mother. Many of them have witnessed their mothers being beaten, the fathers getting high, or acts of such depravity that they will remain scarred for the rest of their lives, irrespective of the damage bouncing from home to home, school to school, never knowing who will care for you, carrying your belongings in a plastic trash bag will do.
Maggie Gallagher, I must concede one point. It’s good for children to have positive role models for men and women. But it’s also healthy for children to feel that they have an innate value, that they are good and accepted for exactly who they are. And yes, Maggie Gallagher, children are born gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender. Our sexual attraction and gender identity are wired into our brains before we are born, affected by events both before and after conception. These children are not broken, sinful, wrong-headed, or are just making poor choices. As they reach their teens, they are express their identity, fall in love, and learn the same lessons that you seem to think apply only to heterosexual couples.
But I cannot stand by and watch you induce another generation of shame on the children of the world. It is love that makes a family, Maggie Gallagher, not a male, female, and child. It is love that secures a child’s identity. It is love that overcomes the years of abuse in adopted children. And it is love, Maggie Gallagher, for each other, respect for our differences, and the methodical plod of the sciences that will finally banish your homophobia to the annals of history where it belongs.
Posted by: Kate
Categories:
Politics