Today is the Third Annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day, an occasion to celebrate the beauty of non-traditional families. Kate and I are a child-free couple, but we're doting aunts, and completely out of the closet to those we love. It means that nieces and nephews will grow up knowing us without a thought to our orientation, that it's not a dark family secret or a guessing game.
The existence of thriving LGBT families of all shapes and sizes is a grave threat to the Dominionists who see life and love through a very narrow religious worldview, as if morality and good child-rearing is only present in a mother/father parented family. Even though all sorts of configurations of families exist -- grandparents raising children, single parents, etc. -- we have seen an obsessive focus by the right on denying LGBTs the ability to adopt or foster children, and to deny committed same-sex couples to marry, even though these are culturally and socially stabilizing institutions.
It's amazing to think that legislators like
NC State Sen. Jim Forrester (R) are so hell-bent on making legal life difficult for LGBT families here in our state that
one day into the legislative session he introduced his marriage amendment bill -- Senate Bill 1608. Issues that
all families care about -- education, health care, unemployment -- were not Forrester's priority.
That's why the visibility of LGBT families -- and taking time out to honor them -- is what will bring about change over time - the fossils of fear cannot continue to ignore the children growing up who don't see their different families as odd, strange or immoral.
