Darkside Rainbow

As we are wont to do around here, before we get down to ranting about today’s topic, let’s take a moment to pause and tip our hats in respect to Tammy Faye Messner. She had the soul of a great humanitarian and the make-up of an utterly fabulous drag queen. What more could anyone want out of a human being?

Rest in peace, Tammy Faye.

There’s a great deal going on in U.S. gay headlines this week, between the assault on two gay men in NJ and Mayor Robo-John inciting another sign that the natives are not only restless, they’re entirely effin’ pissed off. Some things, like the gay take on the CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate, were covered by other, better bloggers. Other things…well, I had a few thought on other issues on the North American front, but they were kind of slapped out of my mind when I read an article crossing the globe into Spain:

Judge Orders Lesbian Mom To Go Straight Or Surrender Children - 365gay.com

(Madrid) A Spanish judge has ordered a woman to either enter a relationship with a man or turn her children over to her former husband after the court was told the woman is a lesbian.

Judge Fernando Ferrin Calamita said that having a lesbian mother would harm the children and “raised the risk” that the girls would also become gay the EFE news agency reported Monday.

“It is understood that [a parent’s] drug addiction, child abuse, prostitution, belonging to a satanic sect or heterosexual affair would negatively affect the children and serve as a reason for a change of custody. Well, it’s the same with homosexuality,” EFE quoted him as saying.”

Everyone say it with me now: no.

I don’t even know where to begin saying how wrong this is - and this in a country that has fully legalized same-sex marriage and adoption, too. Hell, forget adoption issues - these girls are the woman’s own children and she’s being told she’ll lose them unless she runs out and shacks up with the first guy available?

What year is this again? How do people like that judge still exist in civilized countries in the twenty-first century? To compare homosexuality to drug addiction, child abuse, prostitution, and satanism is insulting, bigoted, and more than anything else, downright ignorant. It’s sheer ignorance to continue to perpetuate these views that homosexuality is both a sin and a fatal flaw rather than a result of biology. It’s neither a good thing nor a bad thing; it’s just there. It happens, it’s part of who you are, and it’s no more a positive or negative trait than your bloody effin’ shoe size. The only bad thing about not having the average shoe size is that it can be hard to find nice shoes in your size. The only bad thing about not having the average sexual orientation is that it can be hard to find nice partners in your preferred gender. Get it? Got it? Good.

Furthering that ignorance by thinking that having a lesbian mother will make the children gay is downright preposterous. The only way that her lesbianism could influence the children to be gay is if it’s a genetic trait (it could be, we don’t know) and in that case, you could inundate them with all the heterosexuality that you want and they would still grow up to be lesbians if the genetic predisposition is there. Just seeing their mother as a lesbian isn’t going to do it. Hell, seeing my parents in a hetero relationship (and seeing my sisters in multiple hetero relationships, oi, those girls) didn’t make me straight, did it?

Hell, let’s twist things a bit. I grew up as the only guy in a household of women, since my dad wasn’t around much during my childhood. I spent my life watching my family members get into romantic relationships with men. Who’s to say that that didn’t influence me into thinking that since everyone in my family gets involved with men, I should too?

There. Exposure to heterosexuality in the home as a child made me gay. Seems silly and nonsensical, doesn’t it? So why can’t people grasp that the same argument for homosexuality is just as ridiculous?

Does this judge even realize that he’s basically forcing this woman to prostitute herself? She finds a man, she gets paid - only not in cash, but in the custody of her children. So even while likening homosexuality to prostitution, he’s basically creating a situation of enforced prostitution. That’s great. Bet he thought that one through real well.

And let’s not forget how this is going to impact the children. Is that going to be a happy home, in which those children are forced to see their mother in an involuntary relationship? The man may be a friend, an old lover, or a total stranger, but the end result is still the same: a fraudulent and unhappy relationship that will bring someone into those children’s lives that has no business being there. This man will interact with these children every day, possibly aid in raising them, and who’s to say what kind of person he might be? He may be a great guy, perfect father type, nurturing, sheltering…or he could be some shiftless loser that the mother picked up out of sheer desperation - someone who could harm those girls in many ways. It’s a risk, one that threatens the safety and happiness of the girls far more than the mere “abomination” of allowing them to grow up in a home with an openly lesbian mother.

Good lord, people. I will never understand anyone so hateful and hidebound that they can’t let go of prejudices to see common sense. These sort of people are wont to say that we, homosexuals and our advocates, are blind and if we would only open our hearts to God, we would see the truth of our actions and our sins.

I’m telling you right now that my heart is open. My heart is open not to any god, but to the people around me. And my heart doesn’t need a set of rules telling me who is or is not worthy of my compassion, or who is or is not worthy of my respect for another human being.

And my heart can see, very simply, that homosexuality is not a sin, not an abomination, not a harmful choice such as drug abuse or prostitution…or vile and violent hatred of another sect of humanity on such bigoted and baseless grounds.

I only wish that more could understand that - not only for the sake of this mother and her children, but for the sake of people of all orientations, everywhere.

~Adri

homophobia, homosexuality, judge fernando ferrin calamita, gay parents, lesbian parents, madrid, spain