Iraq War or Lesbians?
The Pavlovian right-wing reaction to the news that Mary Cheney and Heather Poe are having a child — that Ms. Cheney is pregnant — is predictable, but I thought this was a dangerously slippery slope to head down:
"They're deliberately bringing a child into the world without a father, leaving a great gaping hole. Father absence is the biggest problem we're facing in this country," she said, and "the root cause of all sorts of negative outcomes drug use, juvenile delinquency. You name it."
— Janice Course of Concerned Women for America, on ABC*
since one can easily undermine that position by pointing out that the Iraq war is a far bigger cause of father absence than all the child-bearing lesbian couples in America.
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*Quoted at: Pam Spaulding, "The swift wingnut attacks over Cheney pregnancy", Pam's House Blend, 7 November 2006.
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on Thursday, 7 December 2006 at 20.18
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You make an excellent point, Jeff. Here's another.
What do you suppose the effect on kids who have no father in the home is, when news and talk shows are filled with chatter about how terrible their situation supposedly is? I'm not saying this topic should be off limits for adults. It's just that a great big political hubbub about it is inevitably going to have an impact on some kids — something the right wingers ought to keep in mind.
on Thursday, 7 December 2006 at 21.21
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Certainly talking about how "abused" such children are in same-gender households can have some effect, but these days it largely affects them ironically, generally leading them to wonder what-the-f*** the idiots are going on about. Kids are resilient and able to draw a lot of strength from their loving and confident same-gender parents.
Of course, reactionary predictions that such children will be treated badly by society can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. This is much like the argument, c. 1960, that gays must not be hired by the State Department: homosexuals must not be spies because they are too prone to blackmail. Of course, the only reason they were prone to blackmail was because their employer (the State Department) would fire them in an instant if they were discovered to be homosexual, because homosexuals must not be allowed to be spies because….
However, SW, do not make the mistake of thinking that when the reactionary forces claim that they are concerned about the deleterious effect of same-gender parenting on children that they are really concerned about the welfare of children — it's just a handy, emotional rhetorical device.