A lot has been made of the effect gay parents would have on their children, and most of the negative claims are spoken of from a place of ignorance as there is hardly a substantial amount of research that has been done on the subject. To hold the belief that two adults would be unfit to raise a child must incorporate facts rather than political or religious bias, as it must as well take into consideration the wretched state of ‘the system’ in America. The first thing wrong with the system is that it’s extremely overpopulated whether it be foster care or prison, and not enough money is allocated in most cases to ensure that what’s best for the individual actually takes place. A budget cut in Massachusetts over a year ago saw a friend of mine, a social worker, whose caseload more than doubled with one signature from the governor on a document. The effect is not only that he’s working longer and more stressful hours, but also that the children who depend on him are now experiencing a higher level of neglect than they had before. These children who have lacked an advocate their entire lives now find another taken from them. As the living conditions in foster homes go unchecked, the situation worsens, and the odds of a child being able to escape from the system during their lifetime decreases. I think that we as a whole in society need to work on ensuring that the system is funded, and to always work towards reducing the number of children raised in it through adoption. Prevention of a child within the system becoming a future criminal is paramount in terms of the progression of our culture, and the legalization of gay marriage would help to greatly reduce the number of unwanted children who would otherwise run the risk of entering the world unprepared with no one to turn to.
This of course doesn’t mean haphazardly shipping kids here and there without the proper work being done, but consistent data showing the negative implications if children were adopted by gay couples over a period of time isn’t prevalent in arguments against marriage. The fear of these children being hazed is legitimate, but there are many things any individual will have to overcome during their life, and while we’d like to shelter our children against negativity, it is the adversity in life that makes us who we are. I learned early on growing up in a tough town that while you’re going to lose some fights along the way, the important thing is to learn how to stand up for yourself. I can safely predict that bullies will always exist in our society. If it’s going to be too much of a hassle for them to harass one child, they’ll move on to the next one. Administrators and teachers would surely play a serious role in policing this type of thing, and in cases where it happens, treat it as they would a black child being called a ‘nigger’. Raise the stakes, because once gay couples are legal, it’s no longer a choice to discriminate or not.
I could be coming off as less than compassionate when it comes to these kids, but a lot of us grew up hard and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. I found that it was an experience to build on. Once high school is over the world is your oyster, and all these people you’d hope to never see again, in most cases you don’t. An article I read in which an adult woman who was raised by two lesbians feels as if she’d been ‘cheated’, and to that I’d say, ‘get in line’. I’m not for a second going to give this credence over any kid who grew up without parents at all or whose abused alcohol or drugs or them while they were growing up. When you get to a certain age, having grown from your childhood and become your own person as an adult, a lot of the angst felt towards the tough hand you were dealt falls away out of necessity. Some of us choose to look forward, count up the number of people who love us and thank heaven for each of them. Some of us choose to allow ourselves to make excuses for a lack of success in life or general unhappiness, and most often adults such as this have been able to rationalize that everything can be pinned on someone other than themselves. Accountability for one’s own fate is essential in achieving success and happiness during adulthood. Is the child brought up by a gay couple able to function in society as a law-abiding, tax paying adult? If the answer is ‘yes’ for the most part, it’s surely a better alternative than the child having no one.
I dread nothing more in life than for a brilliant child to be discarded multiple times as they’re brought up, only to be dropped off on the street to start their criminal career at age 18. Once they find themselves in the penitentiary, it feels like home. Our system is broken right now, but our level of morality is as high today as it would be should we allow same sex marriages to become legal. As an adult I’m only willing to promote a ‘chicken little’ opinion of things in the world that are truly deserving of it, while giving the human beings we have here in America the benefit of the doubt. Tolerance of gays and their children will not be something we’ll be able to choose for ourselves anymore, but will be expected based on their equal status among us, as happened before with blacks. Will it be perfect? No. Will there be bigots engaging in hate crimes? Absolutely. Politics and religion are naturally entwined when it comes to issues of the day, but ‘one nation under God with liberty and justice for all’ states what we’re really all about. Leaders before us decided for it to be this way, and their wisdom has paid off enormously.
America can and never will be inclined to discard or prevent the rights of it’s own in lieu of prejudice or politics. The fundamental right of every citizen to live equally under the law must conger up grateful feelings within us all as we have been truly blessed in this life to have it this good. Christianity will of course move forward, with certain denominations allowing gay leaders to preach, enrich lives, and make decisions as is the case already. The extreme sects will reject it every election cycle from now until the day they come to realize that politics are less important than people. While their beliefs and leadership kept the masses under control for hundreds of years, the religion has a greater mission now in instilling a level of morality in how we choose to treat one another in the coming generations than it ever will in shaping our political positions through fear of damnation. Christianity is moving dangerously close to becoming more about the politics than anything else. The Catholic Church appears in this election year to be exclusively preaching exclusion, all the while ignoring abhorrent sexual abuse within its own ranks. Cardinal Law was even rewarded in the end for the part he played in covering up the abuse. They’re also cutting out of their agenda the fates of our soldiers who surely need and deserve support. Perhaps our disenfranchised soldiers deserve even more support from them than does George W. Bush Jr. Parishes close across the country, yet millions are spent to promote a Christian political agenda. The end result doesn’t bode well for people however you slice it.
In the coming years protests will take place, and baby boomers will grow old resenting the fact that gays were ever allowed the chance for equal rights under their watch, but at some point it’s in the destiny of this country to allow all tax paying adults to live a free life within the limits of the law. The law currently discriminates against a facet of society that has lived through the AIDS epidemic when President Reagan allowed the problem to exponentially grow for five years without mentioning a word in public about it. It wasn’t until tainted blood was finding it’s way into the national blood supply, instead of the virus only killing gays, that proper attention was paid to it. In this instance a segment of our society were treated by our government as less than human, and as much as one would like to look past it, the numbers don’t lie. In 1980-81 the CDC was hot on the AIDS trail, yet had no backing from the government when it was time to educate the public on how to prevent it from spreading. In those two years 422 cases had been reported and 190 deaths had been caused by it. President Reagan did not mention the epidemic publicly until 1987 when as I said, the straight community began contracting it through blood transfusions. By the time he chose to do something about AIDS in 1987, 71, 176 cases had been diagnosed and 41,027 people, mostly gay, had died from it. From 1985 until then the numbers had grown at a rate of over 250%. There was an effort then to fund programs and research to stop it, but by the time the money was finally provided, it was too late. Had the AIDS virus not been seemingly exclusive to the gay community, it wouldn’t have taken seven years to get the resources allocated to fight it.
This segment of our society has been oppressed. Aside from handing over polio-infected blankets to the Native Americans, this atrocity has to be the only case in modern history that I know of where the federal government has participated in the potential eradication of segment of people living on the continent. The public will be slow to get behind this idea that a tax paying gay person should have equal rights as a tax paying straight person, but here in the land of the free we’ve always been capable of doing the right thing. It may not happen right away, but that may not be such a bad thing. My generation is beginning to move up in the world, and the generation behind is more aware of our government’s historical indiscretions than I or my parents ever were in school. My brilliant younger cousin Katie who’s now in high school was tasked to write a paper on whether or not Columbus Day should be a holiday or not based on the amount of Native Americans he slaughtered way back when. When I was in high school not even 10 years ago, such topics were still not discussed. While I had to seek out such truths on my own, the effect wasn’t lost on me, neither was growing up in a state who’s motto read, ‘Live Free or Die’. To bigoted baby boomers who are seemingly in control of everything for the time being, that motto has been adapted to now read, ‘Live Free or Die Unless I Don’t Like You’. It’s typical for a generation that had so much so easy to now feel justified in taking claim to ideas that made our country what it is by focusing only on how it applies to themselves and not how it applies to others, but that’s what we’ve got now. The future generation is now starting to get their hands dirty, as this article is indicative of. Those in charge now, will not be in charge forever, and judging by the state of politics and the quality level of leadership in this age of infinite unaccountability, that’s a good thing.
Gay marriage as it pertains to children will surely be included in stump speeches against it in the coming years. The speeches will be made by individuals who have not lived a single day in the system, let alone their entire lives. Intolerance will be justified to many, and representation of the negative will be harsh, politically religious, and as bigoted as Strom Thurman was as a younger man. It’s a fight many lesser folk throughout our history have had to engage in, but as I mentioned earlier, America will do the right thing in the end. Restitution will finally be paid for ignoring the AIDS epidemic, and numbers of unwanted kids in the system who’d have been living off of our tax dollars for life most likely, will now have a chance to help make this land of ours a better place. I have as much faith in the ability of human beings, regardless of race or sexual preference, to enrich a child’s life with love and wisdom as I do in our ability to screw them up. Neither the ability to positively affect a child’s life nor the ability to poison it, is exclusive to race or sexual preference, and I truly believe that in the upcoming years, the closer a family is to the poverty line will prove to be the main factor towards how successful American adults can be as parents. To simply assume that a group of fellow Americans are any less capable of raising children who grow up to contribute positively towards society is typical, but it’s happened before, and we’re all still here.
Religion and government have to co-exist in this world, and I’ve always believed that when it came down to it, the flag has to win or else we become what our forefathers aimed at escaping. Both religion and government are here to help all of us in our individual quests for happiness and success. While our government was designed to adapt itself to fit the times and the needs of it’s people, religion has been much less successful overall in accomplishing this necessary goal. Whatever religion one may belong to, we are all Americans. I’m on the same team as Dick Cheney who’s on the same team as an unwanted orphan now turned crack addict at age eighteen whether any of us like it or not. The issues have always taken control of our minds, especially in an election year, but one mustn’t forget that we’re all in this together. Married gay couples adopting unwanted children is an important aspect to consider. When you vote on it either way, remember that while your own comfort is important, someone else’s survival may be at stake. You wouldn’t want the system preparing you for life, so don’t force someone else to and call it ‘morality’.