Christian Actions on Controlling Adoption

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/16/my-take-on-adoption-christians-should-put-up-or-shut-up/

I’ve already touched on the subject of inconsistency among Catholics on family values in relation to IVF, but I should also attempt to confront a general hypocrisy amongst Christians on an issue that is as forgotten as the question of what happens to the children in the supposed global flood. Of course they died, but the question is why didn’t they speak about it in the bible and weep for that loss of basically innocent life, regardless of how corrupt their parents may have been? The issue I speak of is adoption and how this relates to the attitude of many Christians to deny, through legislation no less, the right to adopt of gay couples.

In Arkansas a bill that would have banned same sex couples from adopting orphaned children was struck down by the Supreme Court and many Christians insisted it was more of the gay agenda (whatever that means). It’s painful to think these people are able to resolve the apparent conflict of values an outsider could see. On the one hand, they care about “family” but on the other hand, they think gays have no right to have families by a relatively common option amongst gay couples. Apparently they don’t care if a gay couple hires a surrogate to give them a child through adoption that way, but if they want to adopt a child who has no parents these pro-family and pro life people will outright reject them 50% of the time or more. And why would they do this? Because they apparently think gays are unfit to be parents or they think that gay parenting will corrupt children. And I’d think any sane person who separates themselves from this political and moralizing paranoia would realize how painfully and willfully ignorant of facts these beliefs are.

Firstly, gays are just as fit to be parents in most situations. If you were talking about gay people who had problems apart from their sexual orientation that would make them unfit to be parents in the same way that straight people would be unfit to be parents, then I wouldn’t stop your opposition to their adopting children. But if you think just because they’re gay that they cannot raise a child, support them, nurture them, teach them morals and the like, then you’ve already prejudged all gays in this way as being inferior in terms of a practice, childrearing, that anyone can do, even by themselves, with directed effort. Family doesn’t require either biology or strict standards of sex or gender; it requires love and commitment to raising a child, sticking together as a general unit and community. And the notion that gays will either make children morally corrupt because they see that families can be other than the traditional family or will make the children gay themselves is even more embarrassing to be argued as scientific or philosophical. If I had grown up knowing about gays and same sex marriage, I don’t think I’d cease believing that I shouldn’t steal or murder or willfully deceive. Just because people can break a tradition of one form and yet maintain a tradition that’s as old as the human species in some sense does not mean that society starts to crumble. Like I said in “Gay Marriage Does Not Make Anarchy”, people don’t become less moral because they become more inclusive in one particular area. Just because we allow gays to marry does not mean that murder is suddenly okay and to even suggest it is despicable. The rightness or wrongness of murder has nothing to do with whether you think gay marriage is right or wrong. Why? Because murder violates a person’s basic right to live provided they don’t infringe upon others’ rights to live. Marriage, on the other hand, is primarily a legal issue but is nonetheless not something that should be restricted on the basis of gender specific traditions, but instead on a more basic standard of fidelity to a spouse (or spouses if we’re talking polygamy).

To jump to conclusions about the effects of parents’ sexual orientation in relation to a child’s sexual orientation in the future makes as much sense as suggesting that a child will be a certain religion just because they were raised in it. Children can understand their sexual orientation differently, indeed, but to say that an otherwise common straight child will insist they’re gay because they had gay parents is uncommon, if not unheard of in many cases. Sexual orientation is, for the most part, something inborn within someone, though there will always be confusions due to common misunderstandings we have about arousal and relations to the opposite or same sex. People can confuse infatuation for love, can mistake a natural arousal for actual attraction to a same-sex act or situation, such as showering naked with members of the same sex. To say people would be so confused about their own sexual orientation because people that are confident about their own get married and are also not the normal man/woman pairing gives humanity far too little credit in their ability to distinguish fantasy and speculation from reality.

And most importantly, the fixation of people like David Tyree on marriage as a means to procreate is the same line of thought that leads to kids having pre marital sex and then getting a shotgun wedding to cover it up, or getting an elopement and then buggering to their heart’s content. Marriage is not even primarily about child-rearing from a religious perspective necessarily, unless you focus purely on the physical results of a marriage. There’re also the mental aspects of unity and intimacy between the partners in the coupling and this can occur with same sex couples just as easily. And if marriage was purely about the possibility of having children, elderly couples unable to conceive or infertile heterosexual couples of any general age would not be doing as good a job as an everyday fertile couple of man and woman. To say that the physical nature or the normalcy of a coupling should be the defining point of its acceptability is to exclude even many “families” that have produced respectable citizens, including David Tyree himself. His father left his mother and she raised him herself, so is he any worse for the wear? Possibly in this unfounded fear of gays getting a basic right that he himself has should he want to marry a woman and have a family. I’m more than willing to bet he doesn’t think gays should adopt children either, and I’ve already touched on the correlation of gay marriage to anarchy and put it to rest. Suffice it to say, this man and the groups supporting him are still a decided minority, but also do serve as a general example to those like myself who are politically apathetic. If we don’t vote for and support these movements and legislations, then they’ll deny them and call it democracy. Democracy demands action, and that is what makes it frightening to those in power. So, until next time, Namaste, aloha and “rock the vote” (is that how it goes?)

Mike Huckabee on GLBT

http://www.aolnews.com/story/huckabee-likens-gay-marriage-to-incest/984268?cid=10



Well, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard Mike Huckabee referring to gay marriage as equivalent to incest or polygamy, but now I have an article to tear apart piece by piece with every quote noted. And apparently he’s a potential candidate in people’s eyes for the GOP in 2012, out of 193%, I might add. (Yeah, apparently Fox News has special math skills)





But let’s focus on his rhetoric for why gay couples shouldn’t adopt and why we shouldn’t give fair and equal treatment on the great “tradition” of marriage. He replies to why gay couples shouldn’t adopt that “children aren’t puppies”. Well, I’m glad he knows the difference, but I fail to see what the point of such an obvious distinction is. He’s making more equivocations by the second; now all gay couples are like kids who want a pet and don’t realize the responsibilities. I can’t speak for any gay couples, but I seriously doubt they’re so immature that they’d just want a kid to fit in, though some might think that’s a reason these days. Though his quote might also indicate he thinks that gay couples would treat a child like a pet, which is equally silly. But I guess he’s mostly afraid they might “turn” the kid to *gasp* homosexuality. As if that’s more than a drop in the water in the long run.

He then proceeds to suggest that not every group’s interests should be accommodated. Initially this is something I might agree with until he qualifies this by saying that we should only accommodate groups that are in what he calls “the ideal”. Now I can’t imagine what he means by that, but I’d have to guess Protestant straight middle/upper class conservatives. But why would he want that? That sounds suspiciously elitist in that he just wants representation of only the groups that he thinks are worthy of it. But couples that just want to adopt kids but happen to be two men or two women in a committed relationship are not in his “ideal”. He only wants majorities, not any pesky minority he’d have to support. The bigger problem here is that he assumes accommodating someone equates to agreeing with them. I can accommodate the practice of praying before Congress meets and the Christian majority’s very existence (in the form of churches getting tax exempt status for instance) to an extent, but that does not mean I agree with them or am in line with them on many policy issues. Similarly, Huckabee doesn’t have to agree with gay marriage, but if he supports any conservative values, such as the limits on the government to not legislate morality for the country, then he will have to swallow his pride and accept that gays eventually will adopt, if only because less and less people are intolerant of them. Incest and polygamy are on a road I won’t discuss here, since my primary focus is on the man’s bigotry towards what is demonstrably a harmless group with few ill effects on society.

He asks an obviously rhetorical question about gay marriage in the vein of "Why do you get to choose that two men are OK but one man and three women aren't OK?" Well, first off, something being OK doesn’t mean it has to be the majority practice. Not everyone practices missionary position only, and just because there are people that are so sheltered they only perform one sex position doesn’t mean that they’re not OK; they’re just different. And likewise with gay and lesbian couples: they have sex in different ways (and like some straight couples, don’t even view sex as necessary to their relationship) but that doesn’t suggest they’re not ok; again, they’re just different.

He then shifts the burden of proof on gay marriage activists to prove gay marriage is successful, while apparently just begging the question from the start that it doesn’t matter, since they’re not the same as straight marriage. "I don't have to prove that marriage is a man and a woman in a relationship for life," he said. "They have to prove that two men can have an equally definable relationship called marriage, and somehow that that can mean the same thing.” There’s just 2 problems here: 1) Yes you do have to prove marriage is only a man and a woman in a relationship for life, because you make a positive claim requiring proof and clearly marriage wasn’t always the case even in so called Biblical times (the woman was for all intents and purposes property in the time of Abraham for instance) and 2) They could prove it if you stopped purposely sabotaging any attempt they have by automatically judging any deviance as failure from the start. Just because a gay couple is not as popular with people doesn’t mean it can’t work in both principle and practice. Continuing to perpetuate the idea that any abnormality justifies exclusion is only further alienating people that can’t always change what makes them abnormal in people’s eyes (including what sex they are aroused by). Sometimes people just have to look past the surface.

He notes that the country should not "legitimize immorality," although frankly legalizing rape or murder is hardly something any self respecting legislator would do. Gay marriage is hardly agreed to be immoral, thus it is not something that can be presumed to be such. If you interpret a sacred text to say otherwise about gay marriage or homosexual behavior, it does not give you the right to say the country should follow your group, even if it’s in the majority. Otherwise I’d probably be scared for my life since they’d have legislated some policy that suggests I’m less than human because I don’t have any belief in God or have abandoned my church and as an apostate deserve death or exile.

I don’t even need to quote him saying homosexuality is aberrant, unnatural and sinful since that already presumes too many things from the start about how psychology, biology and ethics work. The last thing he says that I’ll quote is suggesting that the government should isolate AIDS patients from the general public to quarantine "carriers of this plague." So then why don’t we just put away everyone that’s HIV positive too if you really don’t like AIDS and believe it’s some sort of “gay disease”? But he’d find out it’s not a gay only disease even if he got his wish to ostracize AIDS patients from the public. Not to mention AIDS isn’t even remotely like the plague. The plague was transmitted through fleas and is bacterial, while AIDS is transmitted through mainly bodily fluid contact and is viral. Please do a little research on immunology before you start suggesting that AIDS is going to kill the world, Huckabee, when it isn’t.

As frustrating as this is, it is something of a relief to find that fewer people seem to agree with Huckabee’s ideas in practice, even if they agree that homosexuality is somehow “bad” or “wrong”. The notion of seeing GLBT people as irreparably damaged or so deviant that they can’t be considered as equals of other individuals in society disgusts me. The fact that I spent time probably every day of the week with GLBT individuals in college made me realize that there is very little different about us in terms of humanity. To bring up the Aristotelian distinction, it is only in accident that we are different, not in essence. We both suffer loss, we both feel happiness and we both seek purpose, all part of the human nature. But I (to my knowledge) only get off on the opposite sex, and they either get off on the same sex or both sexes. And that difference doesn’t bother me, because of one obvious reason: it doesn’t affect my sexuality as to what theirs is. They want tolerance and understanding, not bigotry or willful ignorance, which is little different than stupidity. So if you have a Gay Straight Alliance or some similar group at your high school, college or in your community, go to a meeting. Just talk with them, no preconceptions, just talk with them as a fellow person. Maybe you’ll see things you didn’t think were there before. Until next time, Namaste and Aloha.

The Pro Choice/Life Ad?

While I didn't watch the Super Bowl at all (haven't for a couple of years; never been interested in sports to begin with, particularly team sports), I did get emails from Christian Response (research purposes primarily) emphasizing how pro-life the 30 second ad is. While the point I found amusing was point where Tim tackles his mother (odd, isn't it?), the supposed focus of the ad towards pro life is contested and for good reason.

The only instance where it really gets into pro-life territory is in the beginning where she emphasizes how she persevered even though her pregnancy was hard. The backstory, from my limited research, is that she was infected with a dysentery amoeba and the medicine she took to cure it caused a complication in the pregnancy that probably would have killed her and/or her fetus. While she does demonstrate that it is possible to carry a child to term with this complication, the pro life aspect that is emphasized in the commercial is hardly admirable. To admire someone for persevering against someone's better judgment seems especially troubling when one does not by necessity need to continue having children, in the context of the Tebow family. Tim is the youngest of five, count them, five children. Why the family insists that they must have another child when providing for four as missionaries would be difficult enough, I cannot say.

I can say that while I see the pro choice aspects of the ad, the ad itself is mostly there to get laughs. But in the beginning there is an emphasis by Tim Tebow's mother that he is a "miracle baby" and such things. Last I heard, in a Christian's perspective, all babies are miracles from God. But then, that would make Mr. Tebow even more miraculous. Like there's a hierarchy or some such nonsense. I'm not one for censoring, but I am one for contesting a position that I find objectionable that Focus on the Family holds. Although to continue on this rant would necessitate another blog post entirely.

For now, I will leave it at this: I disagree with Focus on the Family, but it is good that they are exercising a basic right to a free marketplace of ideas. Though frankly, I would think they'd direct their funds towards other modes of advertisement. The Super Bowl attempt recently seems to only demonstrate desperation in trying to push their message when they are in an extreme area of the position of pro life and "family values". Perhaps they will succeed, but perhaps they will realize a fault and try a new approach in the future. Why not, oh, I dunno…advertise on the 700 Club?!