In an interview with CNS News on Thursday, former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum invoked race in unleashing a questionable attack on President Barack Obama over the issue of abortion.
“The question is, and this is what Barack Obama didn’t want to answer — is that human life a person under the constitution?” he said. “And Barack Obama says no. Well if that human life is not a person then I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.’”
He also said that “no biologist in the world” would disagree that an embryo is “human life,” which is a really cute way to word that. Of course that is a potential human life. That is not the point, and it does not mean it deserves the same rights as a living, breathing human being.
That being said, I just love it when conservative white men start man-splaining how minorities should feel. They damn themselves with their own pig ignorant words.
Oh, how I hope this clown runs for president.
But we ain’t done yet! Oh, no no no. In the very same interview, he said that keeping gay people from marrying/adopting children is “common sense” and added:
This is nature. And what we’re trying to do is defy nature because a certain group of people want to be affirmed by society.
What does it remind you of? If you said “Southern racists all the way up to yesterday, whether talking about miscegenation or upholding slavery or whatever the hell else,” you win the prize, because his language is the exact same as the language they used. Same poorly educated hick bigotry, different minority, different day.
How interesting. I’m not sure what to make of this, but here goes:
The changes may seem surprising for a city where churches that have long condemned homosexuality remain a powerful force. But as demographers sift through recent data releases from the Census Bureau, they have found that Jacksonville is home to one of the biggest populations of gay parents in the country.
In addition, the data show, child rearing among same-sex couples is more common in the South than in any other region of the country, according to Gary Gates, a demographer at the University of California, Los Angeles. Gay couples in Southern states like Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas are more likely to be raising children than their counterparts on the West Coast, in New York and in New England.
The pattern, identified by Mr. Gates, is also notable because the families in this region defy the stereotype of a mainstream gay America that is white, affluent, urban and living in the Northeast or on the West Coast.
[...]
Experts offer theories for the pattern. A large number of gay couples, possibly a majority, entered into their current relationship after first having children with partners in heterosexual relationships, Mr. Gates said. That seemed to be the case for many blacks and Latinos in Jacksonville, for whom church disapproval weighed heavily.
“People grew up in church, so a lot of us lived in shame,” said Darlene Maffett, 43, a Jacksonville resident, who had two children in eight years of marriage before coming out in 2002. “What did we do? We wandered around lost. We married men, and then couldn’t understand why every night we had a headache.”
Moreover, gay men who have children do so an average of three years earlier than heterosexual men, census data shows, Mr. Gates said. At the same time, there are fewer white women of childbearing age nationally, according to demographers, while the number of minority women of childbearing age is expanding.
If I may hazard an anecdotal guess as to why the numbers come out this way, besides the phenomenon of having children in a straight relationship and then coming out later in life:
Having lived in the South all my life, and having watched friends move Northeast, to the West Coast, etc., one common thread emerges: By 25-30, most of those who stayed in the South are married or close to it, while for many of those who moved away, marriage is still the furthest thing from their minds. Since the gay community is indeed so diverse, and since we don’t exist in a vacuum, but are influenced by the culture around us, it would follow that many of the gay people in the South are simply following the same sorts of cultural norms as their straight counterparts.
I’m surprised by the data showing that gay men have children a few years before straight men, on average. I don’t have an explanation for that one.
Today on his radio show, Beck admitted he knew what it looks like and “doesn’t care” after receiving a healthy amount of joshing from the rest of the Glenn Beck Program team.
Co-host Pat Gray started things off by helpfully reminding listeners that, while (to paraphrase Seinfeld) “there’s nothing wrong with gay parenting manuals,” the book doesn’t actually specialize in parenting tips for gay couples even though its cover features Beck’s son and two men “in Mr. Rogers sweaters.” Beck helpfully explained that co-author Dr. Keith Ablow was added to the image later and that he wanted the cover the way it was because the book isn’t about politics but, rather, about “being happy and finding yourself.”
Glenn Beck and Keith Ablow totally love each other, you know it.
You can now add “father” to Sir Elton John’s jam-packed resume.
He and his partner, David Furnish, became the parents of a 7-pound, 15-ounce baby boy named Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish[-John, according to other sources], born to an anonymous surrogate. Furnish is older than most new dads at 48, but at 62, John is entering fatherhood at an age when others are approaching grandfatherhood.
By the time their son hits 18, John will be 80 years old.
I quote from that piece, because that’s the first thought that came to my mind: DANG, he’s doing the fatherhood thing late in life. Anyway, best of luck!
I don’t agree with every one of his constructions here, as he seems to be talking from the standpoint of “what’s a greater sin? Homosexuality or X?”, but his general point is solid and powerful:
When I told a religious friend about being inspired by Rosie [O'Donnell] adopting four children, he said to me, “How sad that these kids are never going to have a father.” Lost on him was the irony that without Rosie they would not have a mother either.
Now, Rosie has a media microphone and can fend for herself. But I think about all the other gay adoptive parents who are under assault as being ill-equipped to adopt. We’ve heard all the arguments. Gay parents who adopt will make their children gay (offensive and stupid). Every child deserves a mother and a father (I addressed this above). Gay is an abomination, to which I would respond that leaving a child to grow up in an orphanage where nobody wants them might be an even greater act of sacrilege.
But to my fellow straight people I offer the following challenge. You have every right to oppose gay marriage. It’s a free country. We don’t suppress opinions. But aren’t you under a moral obligation to adopt the children in their stead? Surely leaving kids to drown without love is deeply immoral. But to stop others from rescuing them is an abomination.
[...]
A few years ago on my radio show I interviewed two gay men who were in court fighting the government of Florida — my home state, where gay adoption is prohibited — to adopt a five-year-old African-American child who was mentally-handicapped. They had been picking the boy up from an orphanage every Sunday for about a year and now wanted to adopt him. One of the men said, “Nobody wants him. But we want him.” I choked up. The show went to dead air. I could not speak or respond. “Nobody wants him. But we want him.” Here was a child whose skin color for some was all wrong and whose intelligence did not always match up. But to these two men the boy was perfect.
[...]
That some would prefer that unwanted children remain in orphanages rather than in warm and welcoming homes is a sad commentary on the self-appointed morality police of our time.
Pete and Alisha Arnold, both 30, both tech professionals, live in the Minneapolis suburb of Apple Valley and have been married for 10 years. Since September, they’ve blogged about their expected child at birthornot.com, posting health updates about the mother and the fetus (which will be 17 weeks-old tomorrow), and ultrasound pictures and video. But at the top of the blog is a poll hosted by PollDaddy.com. The question: “Should We Give Birth or Have an Abortion?” “Give Birth” has 46 percent of the vote at the moment, with “Have an Abortion” at 54 percent. The poll closes on December 7th.
Pete told us over the phone that on that day he plans to check Polldaddy’s records to make sure there hasn’t been any double-voting or other evidence of fraud and then he and Alisha will use the results to decide whether to keep the baby. They’ll have two days to make a decision before the 20th week of Alisha’s pregnancy ends, and, with it, her last chance to get an abortion.
How utterly strange. Gawker also points out the possibilities we’re dealing with here:
1) It’s is an idiotic prank. Pete and Alisha are intent on becoming famous any way they can, and they’ve hit on an outrageous way to get media coverage. But if this all was a prank, wouldn’t they have gotten the word out before now? They’ve been blogging since September.
2) This is a pro-life stunt. Pete said he’s a non-practicing Catholic, while Alisha is a Methodist. Although the Arnolds describe themselves as political independents with Libertarian leanings, Alisha likes Glenn Beck on Facebook, and a Google search turns up an old pro-Bush comment Pete made on CNN. (Pete said he voted for Bush in 2000, but not in 2004.) Could this site be a confused parable to illustrate the peril of putting an unborn baby’s life in the hands of voters?
3) It’s true. Pete and Alisha are actually going to choose to have an abortion based on an Internet poll.
Regardless of your position on abortion, all of these possibilities suggest these people should never, ever raise a kid.
Uh yeah.
It’s funny, how studies keep coming out which show that on average, kids of gay parents do just as well or better than kids of straight parents, how there’s virtually no incidence of child abuse in lesbian-led homes, etc., and people on the Religious Right just scoff and guffaw and chortle [people makes noises when they can't respond with words], because they’re missing the obvious difference between gay couples and straight couples having children: when a gay couples decides to have children, they DECIDE TO HAVE CHILDREN. It’s not an easy process, for most, so those gay couples who embark on parenthood do so with a full understanding of what they’re getting into, and with a deep desire to be good parents, to bring up healthy, happy children. Straight couples, on the other hand, can, for the most part, make babies at will. Or by accident. But because of the Sanctity of Heterosexual Intercourse, nobody really raises an eyebrow when the most unfit, incapable morons are seen with strollers in the local Wal-Mart.
Oh, but gay couples, though; that’s clearly what people need to be worried about. Seriously.
This new study from the Williams Institute, which is part of the UCLA law school, is fairly remarkable:
The paper finds that none of the 78 NLLFS adolescents report having ever been physically or sexually abused by a parent or other caregiver. This contrasts with 26% of American adolescents who report parent or caregiver physical abuse and 8.3% who report sexual abuse. According to the authors, “the absence of child abuse in lesbian mother families is particularly noteworthy, because victimization of children is pervasive and its consequences can be devastating. To the extent that our findings are replicated by other researchers, these reports from adolescents with lesbian mothers have implications for healthcare professionals, policymakers, social service agencies, and child protection experts who seek family models in which violence does not occur.” On sexual orientation, 2.8% of the NLLFS adolescents identified as predominantly to exclusively homosexual.
Joe points out that the Williams Institute has been following lesbian families for twenty-four years.
What say you, shrill, moronic Religious Righ assumes, ye that assume that the rest of the population is dumb enough to accept “Heh heh, evurbody knows kids need a mother’n'a’father!” as an intelligent answer?
This piece is floating around Facebook today, so if you haven’t seen it, here’s your chance to read it and share it. A mom tells the story of her five year-old son, who decided, due to his love for Scooby Doo, that he wanted nothing more than to dress up as Daphne for Hallowe’en. His mom said “What the heck?”, and found that the real bullies were not the other kids in her son’s class [at a Christian school], but rather their mothers, who expressed their disapproval to her, in front of the child. That’s where the kids learn it, folks: from the sanctimonious twits who, due to their fertility, are able to create little bullies at will, without society raising nary an eyebrow.
It’s a heartwarming tale, though, and I have a feeling that the mom who wrote this piece and her kid will be just fine, regardless of whether her son ends up gay, straight or whatever else. Read it all.
In case you hadn’t heard, here’s a little human interest for you, which will probably make you go “Awwwww!”
It’s a girl and a boy for gay dads Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka.
Openly gay actor Harris tweeted the good news to his nearly 1 million followers on Friday: “Babies!! On 10/12, Gideon Scott and Harper Grace entered the Burtka-Harris fold.”
“All of us are happy, healthy, tired, and a little pukey,” he added.
YAY! Congratulations to the daddies! And also kudos for the fantastic Southern names.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently spoke at PFLAG’s annual dinner and, in light of the awful spate of gay teen suicides and anti-gay attacks in New York and elsewhere, gave a wonderful speech on equality and what all parents should want for their children. David Mixner reprinted the whole thing, and so will I, after the jump.
In case you hadn’t heard, here’s 
