For the children

I've heard recently that gay folks like me shouldn't be allowed to adopt children. Britain is the latest battle ground in this "culture war." A Catholic Cardinal is fighting for Catholic orphanages to be exempt from a nondiscrimination law that includes sexual orientation. After all, the argument goes, children need a mother and a father in order to be "normal," "healthy" and to understand gender roles. The Catholic Church and other fundamentalist religious groups don't believe the sexually "immoral" have any business raising innocent children. What kind of "queer" role model could those fathers or mothers possibly provide?\nLet's assume opponents of gay adoption are right. Quite frankly they don't extend their arguments far enough. Homosexuals aren't the only threats to our children. If the restrictions are "for the children" then we need to get serious and consistent about child rearing prohibitions.\nYoung black men are statistically more likely to go to jail than get a college education. That leaves us with the crisis of black children running around without a father figure. And in the unlikely event the father is present, he's probably an uneducated, criminal role model, right? Black reproduction must be stopped. It's for the children.\nSome Mormons are polygamists. If two dads or two moms causes psychological trauma to a child, imagine growing up answering to daddy, mommy, mommy and mommy? Those poor kids will never function normally in society. And what terrible lessons will those children learn about wholesome, family values? I say vasectomies for all Mormon men! It's for the children.\nSome parents send their children off to day care from the time the kids are 6 months old. And in many families the father or mother (or both) are absent because he's a lawyer and she's an investment banker and they put in upwards of 90 hours a week. Day-care providers in the midst of germ-spreading toddlers cannot properly raise a child. We must shut down day cares and only allow parents who can care for their own children to reproduce.\nSmokers should have their children taken away. It's child abuse to force an infant to inhale secondhand smoke all day. The poor should be stopped from having children, because they cannot provide adequate food, clothing or education for their young. And since we're concerned about our youth learning "correct" gender roles from a father and mother, any ambitious career-oriented woman who refuses to stay home and raise her young should be automatically banned from the privilege of child rearing. It's for the children.\nIn lieu of preposterous, oppressive restrictions, we could simply stop endorsing ignorant stereotypes and uninformed generalizations; and more importantly, stop imposing our allegedly "universal" moral judgments on the rest of the world. Maybe we'd see that gay parents -- or any other group we see fit to vilify and condemn -- are just as capable, moral, human and loving as any others.\nThat's the value system I'd love to see … for the children.