My daughter and I were in Manhattan over this weekend so I could do some research at the Met. Waves of people were coming into the city for Sunday’s big gay-pride march, where they could celebrate the Empire State’s new same-sex-marriage law. We sat behind some of them on the train, three young women with a precious, excited toddler girl in tow. The very evident leader of the clan was the patriarch. Adorned as if she might be an actor portraying a hip-hop teen from Cleveland, she had her meticulous corn-rows tucked under a backwards navy-blue flat-billed ballcap, a matching wife beater revealing a mural of tats on her arms, shoulders, and back. Baggy jeans rode low, leading to her construction boots with untied laces dangling free.
She was the only one of the adult threesome that interacted with the child, mindlessly uttering reassuring words like “Daddy will be right back” or “Sit over here by Daddy.”
You see, this is one of the things that most concerns me about the legal institutionalization of genderless marriage and parenting. We are told that nothing will really change with such laws; people who really love each other will just be able to enter really meaningful, legally protected relationships.
But, to use the language of our women’s-studies scholars, such a turn “does violence” to our concept of sex difference. They would have us believe that their way of looking at the world transcends the “narrow” confines of socially constructed gender difference, but these very folks end up playing to those very confines, usually in comically stereotypical ways. Think drag queen in her everyday clothes, like our Urban Outfitters dad on the train.
And while this adorable little girl on the train got to call one of her parents “Daddy,” did she really have a daddy? Well, her DNA would prove that she does somewhere, but in reality she only has a woman playing make-believe daddy, and like make-believe games, it’s all about the world this woman has created in her mind for her own imaginary fun and games. One problem: There’s a little toddler as one of the props.
Gender does matter for marriage, the family, and society, and those trying to teach us that it doesn’t can’t help but default to the very thing they are trying to overthrow.
This is the primary fallacy of the legislation New York just passed — not in theory, but in the reality of this little girl and her “daddy” on the train at Penn Station.
— Glenn T. Stanton is the director of Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family and a research fellow at the Institute of Marriage and Family. He is also author of the recent book Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity.
You sure the one with the tats wasn't actually a dude? The kids of lesbians couples I know all call their moms "mom." And the kids aren't props, by the way; they are well-loved and cared-for children.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat was an insulting and condescending post. You don't know that family and have no basis to criticize them. If you saw the "daddy" slap the child or trying to score drugs, you'd have a basis to criticize. All you have is someone who doesn't look like you, therefore you feel a right to call them a bad parent.
Frankly, the family values crowd seems to be so rife with divorce and closet homosexuality, that one wonders who the real bad parents are.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThank you for saying what I was thinking. I can't believe that some people care more about the use of correct gender pronouns rather than the love in a family.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDo you really think it is fair to purposely deprive a little girl or a little boy of a father and a monther? Kids need both influences.
My son has a number of young friends who come over to play. The child that lives with his single Mom refers to my husband as Daddy. This despite the fact he also lives with a strong role model in his maternal grandfather. None of the kids from intact traditional families do this. We love all the kids that my son has over (or we wouldn't let them come).
You really think "love conquers all?" What makes you qualified to make that statement?
Are you not aware of the number of kids that were born to mother's who chose a father from a sperm bank that are longing to have a connection to their father? Do you think this is because there was not enough "love" in their homes?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Do you really think it is fair to purposely deprive a little girl or a little boy of a father and a monther?"
It happens every day. It's called divorce. Unless you can show me a two parent same sex couple is more harmful to a small child that a divorced hetero couple, then I don't buy that as an argument to outlaw same sex marriage.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDivorce cannot be predicted in most cases before the child is conceived. The lack of a mother/father in same sex couples certainly can be.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBy the way, not all parents do divorce while their children are under 18. You have chosen the failed heterosexual marraiges to justify same-sex marriages. Are you assuming there will be no divorce in same-sex marriages? What kind of two-parent relationship will those children have, since at least one of those parents will have no biological bond with that child.
I initially fell for your false comparison: divorced opposite sex parents vs. intact same sex parents, but that does it mean it is an appropriate comparison.
Sorry to disappoint you, but some opposite sex couples do value marriage.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell, High Street, instead of speculating, why don't you ask the children of same sex parents for their thoughts on the matter?
I'm sure you won't because you wont' like the answer. The answer they unequivocally give is that they are perfectly happy. In addition, studies show that they are perfectly normal, or at least as normal as the average teenager in American and Britain.
But don't let facts get in your way -- I'm sure you would, under the guise of freedom and limited government, champion some way to prevent people from forming such families.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePlease enlighten us with these studies or where we can find more information about them. Of course forgive me if I am skeptical of research coming out of Britain. The "hide the decline" global warming studies have revealed that today's science is very political indeed.
If these kids are happy and well adjusted, I don't care, but I am not certain we can say that for sure. I think the rights of the kids trump the rights of the parents. But please don't let my willingness to be open to other arguments get in your way of making judgements about me.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"If these kids are happy and well adjusted, I don't care...."
Then why post your original comment?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseCan you not read? I am not convinced they are happy and well adjusted. Why didn't you read my original post about the kids born to sperm donor fathers who are searching out for their dads. Maybe kids want to have a male role model they can call their own.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThose are your words not mine. And they're quite obviously wrong. Your entire argument must be premised on caring whether these children are happy (or not happy) and well adjusted (or not well adjusted).
You've just decided you're a better judge of that then they are. Typical closet liberal.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou know, you had me until this:
"Frankly, the family values crowd seems to be so rife with divorce and closet homosexuality, that one wonders who the real bad parents are."
Why can't folks make a decent point and not slide into purposefully antagonistic rhetoric?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's true though. Look at how much adulation Rush Limbaugh gets from the pro family values conservatives, and in particular here on NRO. Three times divorced, married to a trophy wife thirty years his junior, yet he makes a living going on the radio every day telling people they have insufficient family values. I prefer to focus on my own family, not other people's families, and we would be better off if others did the same.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf only that poor little girl on the train could have a real Daddy, like Bristol had, to teach her right from....oh, wait. Strike that....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseYou know bringing Palin's family into every conversation kind of reminds me of Old Bears fans from when the Bears won the superbowl in the Eighties. They would find anyway to turn any conversation into talking about the Bears. Inevitably people lost interest in speking wiht them. Most of those Bears' fans got the hint.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhereas people who manage to insert their fear of lesbians into the interactions between a little girl and her caring parent, are endlessly fascinating and are invited to all the best parties.
Or are you saying that the Palins are not a good example of American parenthood?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI question your reading comprehension or rather, what you want to see in the words on the screen. He did nto say he say he was fearful of the people on the train. If he was than he would have gotten off the train.
It seems you prefer to endlessly fascinate and anaylze the Palin family.
You asked me to say whether they are good or bad parents. Nice job of trying to pigeonhole me. I don't know enough details of their private lives to be able to say whether they are good or bad parents, but from what I have seen they are good parents, in my judgement.
Again, I think your insertion of Palin in this argument reveals that she seems to occupy quite a bit of space in your enlightened head. Your inital comment brought nothing of substance to the argument, and really was just yet another opportunity for you to slam a family that has been harassed and ridiculed more than any family in recent history.
You just had to get your shot in because you seem to have a problem with her.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDude... why'd you have to hate on Da Bears?
Walter Payton's ghost hates you.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSorry about that.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse