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With the recent “yes,
we’ve known for years, dear” coming outof Rosie O’Donnell, much
attention has been given to issues
surrounding gay adoption rights and what happens to children who
grow up in same-sex home environments. Focus on the Family, a right-wing
organization dedicated to “preserving traditional values and the
family,” has once again decided to move us all further down the path
to enlightenment by declaring that by golly, queers shouldn’t raise
kids because children need both a masculine and a feminine influence in
their lives. In various articles on their website, www.family.org, the
Focus crew goes into great detail as to what is wrong with gay people,
gay parenting, and all things queer. They should of course be given a
cookie for their efforts, but I wish they would pick a stereotype and
run with it instead of muddying the view from the moral high ground.
Focus and groups like it also note that many homosexuals suffer from
skewed gender expression. Within every gay or lesbian couple, one of
them is the woman and one is the man. It’s true-take a look at
butch/femme couples! Clearly, even those of us trapped in the confines
of perversion seek to emulate heterosexuality because we know that it is
right. I find these positions to be a contradiction.
Take
the lesbian couple Moe and Bethany. Moe is an auto mechanic-diesel dyke,
if you will-and Bethany is an English teacher. They have two young
children, Alice-Gertrude and Quentin. Clearly, Alice-Gertrude’s need
for a feminine influence is filled by Bethany, but what about Quentin
and what he needs to learn to become a man? Focus notes that dads need
to teach their male sons “all of the things that go along with being a
man, such as shaving, working on cars, building things, caring for and
protecting women, (and) defending themselves against bullies.”
I
am amazed that Focus can think that Moe and Bethany are incapable of
teaching these things-being butch, Moe already shaves her face. Bethany,
conversely, regularly shaves her legs, which have ten times the surface
to de-hair than any man’s jaw line. Moe bought Quentin his first tool
set on the event of his birth and is a master carpenter, which takes
care of those two requirements. I might have to write to Focus and ask
them to clarify the whole “caring for women” thing, as I can’t
figure out why lesbians would know nothing about this topic. Or
defending themselves against bullies, for that matter-I was certainly
harassed in high school for being gay. But that was mostly done by
fundamentalist Christians, so maybe being slammed against lockers and
called names is described in the Gospels as one of the paths to Christ.
Further research is needed. Turning their attention to gay male parents,
Focus asks, “And who is going to help a little girl being raised by
two men buy her first bra, understand her first period or prepare for
her first dance?” Richard and Peter-a doctor and fashion designer,
respectively, would like to point out that their daughter Barbara Liza
looked simply divine for her senior prom-she wore one of the lovely
strapless numbers that Peter uses when he impersonates Carol Channing.
Her first bra-buying experience was equally memorable-a group of drag
queens spirited her off to Wal-Mart and even offered tips on the best
ways to “play up what nature gave you, honey.” Richard, despite
being “the masculine one,” even managed to talk to his daughter
about menstruation. I think he could have done it without a degree in
medicine, but one never knows; Focus seems to think that periods, like
the art of making excellent piecrusts, are unfathomable mysteries to
men. I am uncertain as to what damage is done to children being raised
by just one parent of either gender, regardless of their particular
sexual orientation. The impression that I’m getting is that children
of such families will have so much repressed pain over their fathers
buying them tampons and their mothers playing catch with them that they
never even have a chance at surviving in a society where the vast, vast
majority of people are from good and stable two-parent Christian homes
where tradition was strongly enforced and everyone knew their place.
What? In closing, Focus notes that “Fathers do man things and mothers
do woman things.” I hope that I can someday have a child so that I can
forget how to change oil and magically figure out how to knit, wear
makeup, and do all of those other things that are hardwired into my
ovaries. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a soufflé in the oven.
Kristen
Minor, a member of the class of 2004 at Dartmouth College,
is working on a degree in linguistics with a focus in sarcasm.
She can be
reached at kristen@youth-guard.org
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