Picking Battles

I recently read this little article in a magazine I get called The Week. It is called "The making of gay marriage's greatest foe." This is what it says:

Maggie Gallagher has a very personal reason for her fight against gay marriage, said Mark Oppenheimer on salon.com. While studying at Yale in the early 1980's, she became pregnant with her boyfriend's child. When Gallagher broke the news to him, he vanished. "The last thing he said was, 'I'll be back in 30 minutes.' And then he wasn't." If that sophomore had stuck around and helped raise their son, Patrick, her life would have taken a very different path. " I became a writer because I had a baby and had to make money." What she writes and campaigns about is the threat same-sex marriage poses to America. Her problem isn't with homosexuality; it's that "children need a mom and a dad." In 2008, she led the effort to pass California's ballot initiative banning gay marriage, and in 2009 helped repeal a same-sex marriage law in Maine. For Gallagher, gay marriage is the ultimate symbol of the sexual revolution, which she blames for her own unplanned pregnancy and failed relationship. "[As] a girl, I was taught [to] separate sex from reproduction," she says. "Same-sex marriage is the end point, the institutionalization of this view of sex and marriage, and it is false."

Wow. So this woman is taking her anger and disappointment and frustration that resulted from being dumped after being knocked up out on gay people who want to be married? And she is not taking responsibility for her actions that led to an unplanned baby? I am so confused and baffled by her logic I have a hard time even being mad at her for attacking the civil rights of a group of people who ARE NOT a threat to her or anyone else for that matter. She says kids need a mom and a dad. I don't completely disagree; it is best when children have 2 parents; I just don't think they need to be a mom and a dad. My friends Courtney and Katie are fantastic, wonderful, loving parents to their son Atti. I have read many stories about kids who grow up with 2 dads and have balanced, happy lives. I remember watching that teenager a few months ago get up in front of his state's government and give a moving speech about his moms and what a strong, loving upbringing he and his sister had. And then I read stories like the one about Josh Powell murdering (I know, there is no body but...) his wife and then his sons. Those boys had a mom and a dad. Susan Smith's kids had a mom and a dad. Andrea Yates was married to her kids' dad when she drowned them in the bathtub. It isn't the sex of parents that matters; it is their character, their support, their stability (financially, emotionally, mentally, etc), their love, their care, their hugs and kisses, their very presence. Gay or straight does not and should not matter.

Maggie Gallagher blames the sexual revolution, I assume of the 1970s, for her unfortunate situation. I blame her (I realize I do not know the circumstances of her pregnancy ie: broken condom, failed BC pill, no BC?) and her then-boyfriend. I blame her for using her emotions to discriminate. I blame her lack of coping skills. I blame her parents for teaching her that sex and reproduction were separate things. Gay people did not cause her single parenthood; she and her boyfriend and her misunderstood ideas about how babies are made did.

She says she has no problem with homosexuality but it is obvious that she does. Not with the fact that gay people have sex with the same sex but with them being parents. Would she rather foster children who would potentially be adopted by 2 men or women stay in foster care with no parents? Would she rather 18 year old foster kids exiting the system have NO support? I guess she would. Would she wish that on her now-adult son Patrick? I wonder how he feels about his mom's fight against human rights. I wonder if he agrees with her. I hope not.