There's a lot to like in this piece's analysis, which is the product of the 'daughter of a lesbian raised in an LBGT household.'
The “marriage equality” arguments leverage children.... Not a single same-sex couple can reproduce together. It behooves us to analyze the ways that same-sex marriage demands other people’s children as a “civil right” and in so doing invariably denies both women their own children and children their right to a mother and a father.
That's amazingly strong language, but it's not wrong if we are talking about children who become available for adoption by being 'taken away' rather than 'given up.' It turns out, we are talking about children like that.
These children are never the result of same-sex couples’ accidental pregnancy. In this case, nobody forced them to “adopt” children, so it seems a tad manipulative to use these children to back an argument for marriage. Juxtaposed alongside the description of bad mothers stands the worthiness of the plaintiffs.... [The dissent presents] the birthmothers as horrific... We hear it loud and clear: these mothers did not deserve their own children....
Who could have ever envisioned that the Fourteenth Amendment would become a tool to strip poor and minority women and their children of human rights? A decision from the bench that ignores the questions surrounding children’s rights betrays society’s animus toward women and the poor. Who exactly is being denied “due process” and “equal protection”?
Certainly not the people who have managed to field legal teams to defend their agenda against laws in nearly every state of the union, I expect. Most likely they're much more equal than the sort of people who have to default to public defenders, and who in civil cases must do their best to defend themselves.
I had a difficult time reading that and getting much from it. It seemed to me poorly structured. It was oozing with emotion, and this line struck me odd- "So much for compassion and the milk of human kindness flowing from the bench." It's certainly not flowing from her either.
ReplyDeleteThere were a couple of good points perhaps, but I think the comments that suggested that one could apply these arguments to hetero adoptions as well seemed to me valid.
Adoption, done right, is a powerful and wonderful thing- a saving of a life perhaps. This piece seemed a little too eager to destroy something, and lost focus as a result.
Yeah, the language is indelicate -- but that's typical of some factions of feminism. It's just interesting to see it directed somewhere other than at men like me. I'm pretty sure I don't deserve it (as Captain Jack Sparrow might say).
ReplyDeleteBut I've long ago learned to read that idiom, because I wanted to know just why they were so mad at me and people like me. So I can get the meaning out of it, and there's an interesting few points buried in there.
Ah, yes, you're right. I just wasn't thinking of it in those terms. Now it all makes sense.
ReplyDelete