Poor Maggie Gallagher. She hired active bigot Louis Marinelli to run the NOM Marriage Tour, and he just keeps screwing up. In his description of the Columbus, Ohio, tour stop he spits in the face of adoptive parents everywhere:
There was one couple (one of those bolder [gay] couples who came into the rally itself) who were particularly disappointing. The two men decided not to just attend the rally but they brought a baby with them. Notice I said ‘a baby” because it isn’t “their baby”. It was clearly adopted. They were white the baby was not.
There you go: Adoptive parents aren’t allowed to say their baby is “their baby.” Seriously, my Mom and Dad adopted my brother before I was born, and if you ever told my Mom that my brother wasn’t her baby — oh lord, even Mama Grizzlies (real ones!) wouldn’t have been able to stand up to that fury.
But perhaps Maggie won’t disavow this comment. She’s not afraid to sacrifice adoptive parents in her quest to ban same-sex marriage. She loves to say that traditional marriage is how children can “love and be loved by their own mother and father” — meaning their biological mother and father.
NOM can’t get away from this ugly disdain for adoptive parents. It’s the only way they can claim our families aren’t really families, worthy of all the rights and protections that “real” families enjoy. NOM isn’t just bigoted against gays and lesbians. They attack a good many straight married parents, too.
H/T to boxturtlebulletin.
Does NOM in any place, any literature, any public rally, at any time, encourage straight couples to adopt children? Ever? Do they lift one finger, donate one dollar, advocate in any way for children who are in the system, to be adopted out?
Or is their ONLY concern with adoption the notion that some gay couples are allowed to adopt the unwanted offspring of irresponsible heterosexual procreation? Would they rather these children remain in the foster care system?
Someone in the press should investigate how (if at all) they advocate for adoptive children and question them.
They need to be called out on this, and publicly. What is their solution – for those children – if gay couples should not be allowed to adopt. Wait until someone gets around to adopting them? Remain in the system indefinitely?
Perhaps Louis’ answer will be that they are not the adopted child’s keeper?
I’ll go further/more elemental than that.
Their organization is called the National Organization for Marriage. “FOR marriage” would suggest to me that even if they were anti-equality, they ought to be FOR things that would support marriage as it is. If they really are FOR marriage, even just straight marriage where are they on social attitudes about the relative importance of marriage? Why aren’t they howling about the 40% of children born to unmarried parents? Whey aren’t they driving around the country holding rallies to decry divorce? Why aren’t they apoplectic over shows like The Bachelor/Bachelorette, which surely do more to denigrate marriage as a meaningful institution than anything else in recent memory, except perhaps Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire. Where are the network boycotts?
And if they want kids to know and be known by their parents, why aren’t they advocating for more family-friendly workplaces? For better parental leave policies? Where are they on child-care and early education standards and benefits?
Sadly, it doesn’t appear that NOM is really FOR marriage at all.
SNC, in answer to your (rhetorical) questions:
they really don’t give a rat’s ass about the fate of hetereosexual couples, whether married, unmarried, with kids, or childless.
They’re not “pro-marriage”. They’re ANTI-GAY.
But on some level they know how ugly that is, so they have to flatter themselves that they’re doing something noble.
Interesting, Rob, many NOMbies have even declared that they don’t regard the marriage of even a heterosexual couple as being valid of they do not conceive a child unless there is some medical reason! Nice, huh?
Maggie is always saying marriage is all about children being raised by their mothers and fathers. I wonder if her oldest child has any relationship with his/her biological father. You know, the child she had out of wedlock before marrying her present husband. You know, the gentleman whose name she did not take and who has never, not once, ever, shown up with her at any NOM “protect traditional marriage” rally.
Says Bill S: “They’re not ‘pro-marriage.’ They’re ANTI-GAY.”
Agreed. Out of curiosity, is this something they’ve been called out on, directly, say, on national TV? I, for one, would like to see someone highlight how narrow–and NOT pro-marriage–NOM’s agenda really is for the general public. I’d love to see an equality activist ask Maggie, Brian, etc. about NOM’s stance on any number of bread-and-butter, easily understood, marriage-related issues. At the very least, I’d like to see how the NOMfolk respond… Do most people understand that there is no there there other than the anti-equality piece? Would it be useful to point that out?
One of the key points of their scare-mongering, is that children need to be raised in a one man / one woman marital / family unit. Louis Marinelli has implied that gay couples should not be adopting children. Maggie repeatedly goes on about children need to have a father and a mother, preferably their biological partners. But if the issue is what’s best for children (and since same sex relations do not lead to irresponsible procreation, as they pointed out in the Prop 8 trial), then, from a NOM perspective, the real issue must be how children end up in a same-sex parent household.
There are only so many ways a child can come into a same-sex couple household, for examples:
a) adoption by a same sex couple
b) surrogacy, in vitro, other medical assistance
c) opposite sex parents split and the child ends up in a same-sex parenting situation
d) birth parent(s) die or are otherwise rendered incapable of rearing their own children
So what is NOM’s solution – from the child’s perspective – to the above situations?
Should adopted children be forced to remain in the foster care system until such time as an opposite-sex parental set decides to adopt them? Even when a same sex couple is willing to raise them today? (“Sorry, kid, you gotta sit there and wait.”)
Should in vitro children not be born at all? Really – their lives would be improved if they had never been born? How does that work?
Should a child always go to the straight parent of one-time opposite-sexed parental couple, and never to the same-sexed parent? (I am talking about the case where one member of the parents comes out later in life, or at least, after having been in a straight, child-bearing marriage)?
If they are so concerned about the children, someone ought to be asking them these questions. And ask for evidence of their solutions and how they – NOM – are helping improve the lives of these children – the ones who are the product of irresponsible opposite-sex procreation or the victim of circumstances beyond their control.
This requires an interviewer who does not rest with their pat, non-answer “children need to be raised by their biological father and mother.” That does not answer the question, which is, “And what do you, NOM, suggest be done with those children where bio mom and dad is not an option?” And do not let them spin it, change the question, or dance around it.
As has been said, they are not pro-marriage, or even particularly pro-children. They are merely anti-gay.
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