Can I vote on YOUR family?

Yesterday afternoon I had a surprise visit from Ev's son, who dropped by to see his sister and stayed long enough to climb up on a ladder in the chilly wind and tack down the tarp on the duck dome for me while I ran to town for a heat lamp to keep them warm. When I got home, he and his sisters were sitting around the living room laughing and discussing Katie's college plans. She's a National Merit Scholar (in case we haven't already mentioned that) and she's being courted by so many colleges and universities that we're hard pressed to find any mail for us in our cram-packed mailbox every day. She recently won the local VFW scholarship for her video essay on patriotism.

We're proud of our kids. As Ev has mentioned before, Carrie is an Executive Chef at the age of 23. Robbie, at 21, is trying to decide between an engineering degree and some entrepreneurial endeavors that interest him. Katie is planning to earn a mathematics degree. My son is moving here to go to college at SIU and get an art degree.

Why am I telling you all that? Because I feel it's my duty to point out that lesbians are perfectly capable of raising healthy, well-adjusted, successful children. In fact, lesbians are perfectly capable of being healthy, well-adjusted and successful human beings.

I feel that it's important to point that out, because, according to Dan Savage's op-ed in the NYTimes today, there are a whole lot of people in a whole lot of places who'd like to have you think otherwise. And, should they be successful in that endeavor, children like ours may go the way of the Dodo.

Most ominous, once “pro-family” groups start arguing that gay couples are unfit to raise children we might adopt, how long before they argue that we’re unfit to raise those we’ve already adopted? If lesbian couples are unfit to care for foster children, are they fit to care for their own biological children?

The loss in California last week was heartbreaking. But what may be coming next is terrifying.

Mustang Bobby, over at Shakesville, has a post up today about the trial in Miami-Dade County that's going on right now to determine whether gay couples should be allowed to adopt children. I'll quote just this part of his excellent post:

Rekers and Schumm argued that lawmakers were justified in excluding gay people from adoption because research shows that they are at greater risk of developing a host of impairments that can harm children, such as mental illness, alcohol or drug abuse, and the virus that causes AIDS.

Schumm testified that, based on research involving 2,847 children, the children of gay men and lesbians are far more likely to also become gay -- about 19 percent of children raised by gay parents, compared with 4 percent of children with straight parents.

Schumm said he was also concerned by a study that said that 47 percent of gay teenagers had seriously considered suicide, and that 36 percent had attempted it. ''If a child is gay, lesbian or bisexual, this is, in some sense, a life-threatening issue,'' he said.

Gay men and lesbians have two to four times the likelihood of suffering from major depression, anxiety or substance abuse, based on several national studies, Rekers testified. Gay men, he said, are four times more likely than straight men to attempt suicide.

It appears, according to Mr. Schumm's study, that Ev and I are failing our children miserably. Not one of them is gay.

I do believe that more children are likely to come out in families where "the gay" is acceptable, but not because it's contagious. It's just easier to be who you are in a non-repressive atmosphere, in a nurturing and accepting family. Mr. Schumm doesn't go on to say what happens to children raised in repressive and unaccepting families, but look around. Who are "the gay" and how did they get here, and how recently have gay families been out and visible? Speaking as the child of a "traditional" family, that's where the majority of gay people who are now old enough to be engaged in the raising of children came from.

I'd also like to point out to Mr. Schumm that it's not "the gay" that causes suicidal depression. It's being marginalized, demonized, harassed, picketed, legislated against, being denied civil rights, being unprotected by hate crimes legislation and being used by people like you to advance narrow-minded bigotry in the name of religion. You, Mr. Schumm, are guilty of both the mental and spiritual abuse of children, and quite possibly physical abuse by keeping them from the very nurturing they need, which makes you the one who is a danger to their well being.