This is a comment by Justin Cascio on the post “Really Rupert Everett? Nothing Worse Than Two Gay Dads?“
Justin Cascio said:
“Parenting isn’t a right limited to those people who are somehow ‘ideal’ parents. This is just the way the world is. We have babies all over the damn place, and sperm and ova just don’t wait around for the ideal circumstances. People with disabilities, people in poverty, people with drug addictions, people with all kinds of challenges that make it hard or impossible for them to be ideal parents.
“While it would no doubt give a child an expanded view of the world to have adults close to hir of both/all sexes, why stop there? Shouldn’t children also have exposure to adults who believe in science, and ones who believe in a religion, and adults who have different orientations, and people with all kinds of differences? It begins to sound like the ideal situation for raising a child is within a Benetton ad.
“I was raised by a man and a woman, but it wasn’t an ideal situation. Plenty of others who can tell you about their non-ideal upbringings by a man and a woman. It doesn’t mean that one man and one woman can’t do a good enough job raising children, just that it’s not the only model that works. Julie and Tiff have different kinds of families that work. You get to make the kind of family you think works. The Duggars get to have theirs. It’s one of the rights of humanity, and of all living things. We get to express our natural behaviors and live, and that includes having children and raising them. Any way that it happens, is natural, even if it involves frozen sperm and hormone treatments, and a group marriage arranged by a priest of a church you don’t recognize.”
Photo credit: Flickr / FightHIVinDC