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 This week I’ve been thinking about kids. Poor little darlings. So innocent – except in Hollywood feelgood movies where they have mouths beyond their years – and so easily confused by the big baffling world!
The Australian Christian Lobby has been flexing its busybody muscles in the lead-up to the election. They’re on about same-sex marriage again, and it’s not only those supporting it (like the reviled Greens) who are copping their flack. Even God’s own Kevin Rudd has been in the firing line, merely for associating with people who might think it’s a good idea (Labor libertarians).
I heard the Lobby’s spokesbigot on the radio, Brigadier Jim Wallace. My idea of a Brigadier is a guy who can’t even say ‘looks like rain’ without screaming it at the top of his voice. “You ’orrible little man, what do you fink you’re up to!?” That sort of thing. The perfect type to front a religious lobby group. Wallace turned out not to be a big shouter. He speaks softly and affects a reasonable tone of voice. That’s where it ends, though. Reason has no place in his thinking.
Wallace had two gems to impart on the subject of gay marriage.
1: If we allow it, it redefines the definition of family and makes same-sex families ‘the norm’. Maybe I’m a silly old poof, but I can’t see how this works. Does it mean same-sex legislation would retrospectively dissolve heterosexual marriages? That all straight people would instantly jump into bed with members of the same sex? (Not that I’d blame them. Many do now.)
Or does he mean the family would become so degraded by association with us that it would lose its Christian cred? Well, Brigadier, I’d be looking at the Jesus model before I got on my high horse. Jesus’ family, you recall, were homeless itinerants who squatted in other people’s stables, and allegedly the husband was not the eldest child’s actual father. Tacky.
2. Having two parents of the same sex confuses children. I disagree. A child only wants attention, junk food and accessories. Bubby can happily get all that stuff from two gays or lesbians. By the time he/she’s old enough to understand how foetuses are conceived, I guess he/she can also manage the concept of diversity.
Let’s talk about what really confuses children. How about this: try telling them an Israeli who died 2,000 years ago loves them. Try telling them he died then somehow came back to life, but this was a one-off and won’t happen to their pet. Try telling them their every move is monitored by an old bastard up in the clouds who nobody has ever seen, but he exists because ‘I say so’. Whaaat?
Lesbians and gay men excel at parenting because they have so many obstacles to overcome to get there. I haven’t read reports lately about any gay father shooting his kids or any lesbian mother cramming her three-year-old into a suitcase and chucking it into a pond. Seems to me we’re not the problem at all.
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