Campaign 2008

More
fraywatch
columns

Getting a Little Bit Crazy in Iraq
Watch Generation Kill, read the review.
Moira Redmond
posted July 22, 2008
Fist Jabs, Satire, and the Last Private Places on Earth
What readers know about that New Yorker cover.
Moira Redmond
posted July 17, 2008
All About the Story or All About the Outfits?
Making history less dull with a doll.
Moira Redmond
posted July 7, 2008
Insults, Hopes, and the Future
Searching for the good in humanity.
Moira Redmond
posted July 2, 2008
A Punctuation Nation Speaks Out
There is a Point to all This; it's a Semi-Colon.
Moira Redmond
posted June 27, 2008
Search for more fraywatch articles
Subscribe to the fraywatch RSS feed
View our complete fraywatch archive

fraywatch: What's happening in our readers' forum.

If You Can't Join 'Em ...Postpartum gay parents.

Compiled by Geoffrey Andersen
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 27, 2006, at 4:36 AM ET

Mincing words? How else to describe an essay which dissects the case against Mary Cheney and endorses gay parenthood? Respondents to William Saletan's latest Human Nature cover the field on the "Double Mommy Front" of the Culture Wars.

Speaking up for the status quo, nicekitty adopts a stance too inert to call reactionary:

Deep down inside something in my gut says "two mommies is bad for kids." It may not be logical, it may be absolutely wrong. But all of those Southern Baptist preachers, that military brat upbringing, being in the military, and my grandmothers left an imprint that is hard to shake. But unlike those moralists that Saletan is speaking of, I am not so fervent or for that matter so convinced that my gut is right that I am willing to get out there and make life hell for those who believe otherwise.

Tracker takes umbrage at the suggestion fathers are bad for children:

Every kid has the prima facie right to grow up with his mom and dad. [...] Any kid would gladly take his or her own screwed up Dad over someone else's Father of the Year. It matters to children that they come to be who they are through the training of their biological parents. [...]

Conservatives don't want government telling everyone what to do, but when society gets as screwed up as it has, their last resort is to start urging the making of laws and amendments to keep families sound. Simply because traditional families have problems doesn't mean Mary Cheney is right to get a child by sperm donation, or however she got it, and raise that child in her preferred setting. She hasn't got the right to demean the child's father that way, and her child will most likely resent her deeply for it. [...] Mary has demeaned Fatherhood, and the actual father of her child.

From the perspective of a gay man, uh-huhh is bothered by Saletan's flip conclusion that men are bad for kids:

I was astonished that, in his next to last paragraph, he chose to conclude his piece by attacking gay male parents: "You want to protect kids? Here's my proposed constitutional amendment: 'Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union involving at least one woman.'" That, of course, would mean banning only gay male marriages. WTF?

Was Mr. Saletan just being tongue-in-cheek and looking for a clever close? I assume so, since nothing in his piece supports any claim about gay male parents. [...] To the uninitiated, Mr. Saletan blamed gay men for misbehaviors overwhelmingly committed by straight men (e.g., sexual assault by a mother's live-in boyfriend), validated attacks by the most trite and extreme radical feminists on gay male couples, and reinforced ugly stereotypes that the Family Research Council loves to stoke about gay men as pedophiles and incompetent parents. How clever!

Arguing that single-parent families are unfairly maligned, plusgurl thinks their rise has burnished the luster of the nuclear unit:

I was happy to see this piece until I stumbled onto the portion that states how we all know that 2 parents are always better than one. Is this a neo-con agenda? [...]

Men continue to do diddly squat on the domestic front, forcing many progressive mothers to put these evolutionary relics out to pasture. Children are better in families with one functional person who is not being exploited by a man - especially if she is raising a son and this is his primary role model. [...] One committed and loving parent is preferable to the "thing on the couch" role modeling sexist dysfunctionality.

RMLReturns takes feckless straights to task for enabling "alternative families":

Gay parents have been welcomed with open arms by state child custody services because these people work hard at being parents and will often take kids other parents will not-handicapped or abused or unstable kids. My wife is heavily involved with adoption issues and knows many cases of gay parents taking on the challenge of being parents to kids their own parents wouldn't keep because of serious disabilities. Just imagine being a paraplegic or having some other awful disabling condition and your own mom and dad give you up for adoption......