The Republic of T.

Pam saw the same news story I did, and had the same thoughts. Right in my back yard, a mother had four dead babies in and around her house.

Investigators were trying to determine Tuesday why a woman accused of causing her baby to be stillborn had bruises on her body when she was found bleeding last week.

Police say Christy Freeman, 37, had bruises on her legs, stomach and forearm. She told police she was not pregnant, but changed her story to say she had given birth to a deformed baby, calling it “gloopity glop.”

A 26-week-old male fetus was found wrapped in a bloody towel under her bathroom sink.

Freeman was being held without bond Tuesday, as investigators continued to excavate the grounds at her home in a search that has turned up four tiny sets of remains, including the 26-week-old male fetus.

There are a whole host of issues we could talk about here, the on that occurred to me was the same one that occurred to Pam.

Of course, the fundamentalists are more concerned about whether gays can adopt or foster children, not whether all children are safe and cared for, regardless of the caregiver’s orientation.

As I’ve said previously, the logic is that while being heterosexual doesn’t automatically make you a good parent, it makes you a better candidate for parenthood than a gay person, because you can’t be gay and be a good parent no matter what the research says. After all, gay parenthood is an inherently selfish and abusive act. So lately, as e I come across stories about some of those heterosexuals who are supposedly better suited for parenthood than I am, I’ve saved them, so I can study them to figure out what these parents are doing that I’m not. Here’s what I gathered last month.

Technorati Tags: adoption, courts, current events, falwell, gay marriage, gay rights, parenting, politics

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When I wrote the previous post, I hadn’t thought about the possibility of it becoming a series. But since posting it, I’ve received a few stories via email and come across more in the news that I thought worth highlighting. Why? Because, there’s still some life — and legislative consequences — left in the assumption that heterosexuals are better candidates for parenthood than LGBT people, simply by virtue of being heterosexual. Case in point, Dana pointed out that Oklahoma’s anti-gay adoption bill — which I’ve blogged about before, here and here— is still churning through the courts.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a state law preventing gay couples from getting birth certificates for children adopted in other states is unconstitutional.

The appeals court upheld a previous ruling by U.S. District Judge Robin Cauthorn.

”We hold that final adoption orders by a state court of competent jurisdiction are judgments that must be given full faith and credit under the Constitution by every other state in the nation,” the court says in its Friday ruling.

I’ll leave it lawyers and other legal minds to figure out the implications re: the Full Faith and Credit clause. The defeat of anti-gay adoption bills in several states, and the passage of the Colorado bill are encouraging. But as long as some people with media bullhorns call gay parenting abusive and selfish, it’s worth seeing how we measure up against some inherently better candidates — because they’re heterosexual — for parenthood .

Technorati Tags: adoption, children, culture, current events, family, gay rights, parenting, politics

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I hadn’t really intended this to become a series, but I keep coming across these stories, and before I can stop myself, my fingers are tapping away at the keyboard. The last time I wrote a “poisonous parenting” post, I got comments attempting to take me to task for allegedly painting all heterosexual parent with the same brush as the parents in that post and the previous post. Well, that was never the point. Of course the parents mentioned in these posts aren’t representative of all heterosexual parents. (Were that the case, I probably wouldn’t be in any shape to write this or much of anything else.)

The point is that there are people who put me and other gay parents in the same category as these parents. The point is that there are people who believe that being heterosexual makes someone an inherently better candidate for parenthood and that being gay makes one an inherently inferior parent, because gay parents are abusive and selfish by definition. It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do to your kids. Being heterosexual doesn’t automatically make you a good parent, but you can’t be a good parent and be gay, according to their logic.

I’ll put it this way. My son’s daycare is having a teacher training day today, so he’s at home with me. I’ll probably take him out to ride his bike this morning, Then probably to Einstein’s Bagels (which he calls “the Bagel Store” for lunch. After that I’ll probably watch his favorite movie with him (and try to get a little work done on the laptop). Then we’ll top off the afternoon with a trip to the neighborhood swimming pool before Papa gets home. Since it’s my turn to put him to bed tonight, I’ll probably sing him three or four of his favorite songs before kissing him goodnight and going downstairs. If I were a heterosexual dad, I’d probably get some amount of approval for spending that kind of quality time with my son. But because I’m a gay dad, it doesn’t matter what I do. Because of the reasons mentioned above, I supposedly belong in the same category as some of these parents; and maybe even a step or two lower, because at least they’re heterosexual. If they clean up their acts, they can still be good parents. Better than me, even.

Technorati Tags: child abuse, current events, family, gay rights, parenting, politics

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I guess I don’t need to say it, given the three previous posts, but “Poisonous Parenting” has morphed into a series at this point. And while I’ve heard the criticism about posting these stories in this context, I stand by the point I made in the previous post.

The point is that there are people who put me and other gay parents in the same category as these parents. The point is that there are people who believe that being heterosexual makes someone an inherently better candidate for parenthood and that being gay makes one an inherently inferior parent, because gay parents are abusive and selfish by definition. It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do to your kids. Being heterosexual doesn’t automatically make you a good parent, but you can’t be a good parent and be gay, according to their logic.

…But because I’m a gay dad, it doesn’t matter what I do. Because of the reasons mentioned above, I supposedly belong in the same category as some of these parents; and maybe even a step or two lower, because at least they’re heterosexual. If they clean up their acts, they can still be good parents. Better than me, even.

There’s something actually a bit deeper going on with this line of thinking, but it didn’t occur to me until I re-read “…you can’t be gay and be a good parent.”
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It’s been a while since I’ve added to this series. There are probably a number of reasons, among them that I’ve found myself blogging more about other issues and less about LGBT issues. There are any nmber of reasons, including that my writing at work tends to bleed over to this blog because I have less time to write these days to my interest in what’s happening on the national political scene. But I’ve been keeping up with the latest chapter of the abuse scandal swirling in the Catholic church in the past weeks. And found myself thinking more and more about this series.

Besides the Catholic church scandal, there’s the news of the Boy Scouts covering up abuse. I find it, if nothing else, noteworthy that two organizations that have gone to some lengrhs to defend their anit-gay policies and that have inveighed against families like mine have the same problems with child sex abuse, and the same penchant for covering it up — or, rather, keeping it in the closet.

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It might seem like I’m jumping on the “Bash Britney Bandwagon” here, but I think the reference is valid and the point relevant. Or at least I did when I was standing in line at the grocery store a couple of days ago. And, no, I’m not talking about her VMA performance. (But, as long as we’re on the subject, that’s not something any real diva would ever have done. Can you imagine Madonna doing that? Never. Way too much of a control freak.)

I know I called a moratorium on Britney jokes, because girlfriend clearly has problems she need to work on, but I’m not so much poking fun as I’m still venting over the Maryland Court of Appeals gay marriage ruling, which effectively married the right to marry to the possibility of procreation. I’m remembering that Britney once got married as a joke.

And, by all accounts, her second marriage was a joke, but it produced two babies. That’s bottom-line criteria for marrying in Maryland. There’s got to be at least a possibility of sperm meeting egg for there to be even the possibility of a wedding license. Britney’s met more than met that requirement. But what’s happened after conception and delivery is what’s making news now.

Technorati Tags: celebrities, child abuse, children, current events, family, gay marriage, gay rights, parenting, politics

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My initial reaction to Ross Douthat’s (whose name I habitually mispronounce as “Ross Doubt-that”) recent New York Times column was to roll my eyes.

Fifty years ago, American family structures were remarkably uniform. The rich married at roughly the same rate as the poor and middle class. Divorce rates were low for the college educated and high school graduates alike. Out-of-wedlock births, while more common among African-Americans, were rare in almost every region and community.

That was a long time ago. The intact two-parent family has been in eclipse for decades now: last week, the Pew Research Center reported that in 2008, 41 percent of American births occurred outside of marriage, the highest figure yet recorded. And from divorce rates to teen births, nearly every indicator of family life now varies dramatically by education, race, geography and income.

It wasn’t until I reread the beginning paragraphs that I realized why.

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I’ll just go ahead and admit that it’s going to be a long time before I can let this go and stop going on about the Maryland Court of Appeals ruling on same-sex marriage or stop looking for sharp stick to poke into the heart of the majority decision.

“Looking beyond the fact that any inquiry into the ability or willingness of a couple actually to bear a child during marriage would violate the fundamental right to marital privacy recognized in Griswold, 381 U.S. at 484-86, 493, 85 S. Ct. at 1681, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510, the fundamental right to marriage and its ensuing benefits are conferred on opposite-sex couples not because of a distinction between whether various opposite-sex couples actually procreate, but rather because of the possibility of procreation.”
-Judge Glenn Harrell, Jr.

Maybe that’s because I keep coming across examples of just how far the court has lowered the bar by arguing, essentially, that if you and your spouse can perform the bodily functions necessary to make babies — or even possibly do so if you were not, say infertile or well past child-bearing age — you deserve the benefits and protections of marriage.

I’ve started compiling these examples in a series, and it looks like there won’t be a shortage any time soon. Just this evening I stumbled across one, right in my own back yard, of an enterprising pedophile who reproduced and then put his progeny to work procuring for him.

Technorati Tags: child abuse, courts, crime, current events, family, gay marriage, parenting

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On those married death row inmates I mentioned in the previous post, I wanted to add that they’d pass muster with the Maryland Court of appeals too, because of the possibility that they could reproduce if they weren’t on death row. And that — and only that — is what marriage is all about, after all.

It’s not love we’re talking about here, it’s grinding out the next generations. What the Maryland judges remind us is that marriage is mainly the business arrangement to keep baby creation somewhat orderly in humans. That sure takes a lot of the romance out of it, doesn’t it? Not all of it mind you, because reproduction can be pretty damned nice for a few minutes or so, depending on one’s, uh, skill. But again, I digress.

Of course no one has ever come up with a satisfactory answer to why a man and woman who plan to remain childless can legally wed.

Well, they can, but then they usually lapse into reverie of magical thinking, and start spouting about the “symbolic” union of people with a specific combination of genitalia.

What we get instead is something like “Marriage between man and woman is sacred and must be protected.” Period. Funny enough, that’s a battle that’s already lost. Men and women divorce and it’s probably because they shouldn’t have tied the knot in the first place, had they not been shamed or propagandized to doing so. Got to keep those offspring coming after all. Never mind that the kids caught up in the shambles of the breakup suffer mightily while they grow up and get ready to procreate.

That is if the procreate at all. Some people seem to have convinced themselves that if gay couples can get married people might stop making babies altogether.

Technorati Tags: courts, crime, gay marriage, gay rights, homophobia, parenting, politics, religion

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It’s happened again. Another mom drowned her kids in the bathtub.

City prosecutors filed two counts of aggravated murder against Amber Hill, 22, after a coroner ruled the deaths of the girls, ages 4 and 2, were homicides.

Hill had no documented history of neglecting the girls, but had herself been the victim of abuse by their father, Jamie Cintron, according to authorities and court records.

“We never had a call of any maltreatment of the children,” said Jim McCafferty, director of the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services. “The kids were clean and well cared for. It’s just a sad situation.”

Cintron, 23, said Hill called him at work Monday and said their children “are at peace,” police Lt. Thomas Stacho said. He then went to the woman’s apartment and pulled the girls from the water in the

I was actually watching a television show about Andrea Yates when I read this news. And I knew that I’d post about it, though I also knew that doing so would will probably draw some criticism about politicizing or exploiting what’s clearly a tragedy no matter how you look at it. But every time I hear a store like this one, I can’t help remembering that even though the only thing our son has ever gotten in the bathtub is a bath, we’re still in the same category as parents who do all manner of violence to their children.

The series I didn’t intend to be a series is becoming the series that just won’t die. Now, to be fair, there’s a good reason for that. There are, after all, more heterosexuals than homosexuals. That’s the way it’s always been and — despite the fear of various and sundry wingnuts that everyone’s gonna up and go gay and stop reproducing if there’s even slightly less discrimination against gays or anything approaching equal treatment — how it’s always gonna be. Thousands upon thousands of years of human history and human culture, including many in which same-sex orientation was not only tolerated but an accepted part of some cultures, bear that out.

Technorati Tags: child abuse, civil rights, crime, current events, family, gay marriage, gay rights, homophobia, marriage, parenting, politics

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I haven’t had a chance to address the news that Arkansas will have an anti-gay adoption initiative on the ballot if the Arkansas Family Council has it’s way, now that it has the go ahead to start gathering the necessary signatures. (And, no slight to any Arkansans reading this, but my guess is that they won’t have much trouble getting enough signatures.)

Attorney General Dustin McDaniel certified the Family Council’s proposed initiated act, clearing the way for the conservative organization to begin collecting signatures. If enough have been gathered by summer, the proposal will qualify for the ballot in the Nov. 4, 2008, election.

…The measure is the Family Council’s latest response to the 2006 Arkansas Supreme Court ruling that declared unconstitutional the state’s administrative ban on homosexuals serving as foster parents.

After failing to get the Legislature to prohibit gays or unmarried couples from adopting and fostering children, the organization came forward with the proposed initiated act.

It would go farther than the foster parenting ban, also applying to adoption, but the current proposal doesn’t mention homosexuals.

The proposal would ban unmarried sexual partners who live together — same-sex or opposite-sex — from adopting or becoming foster parents. Cox said it wouldn’t apply to single people, whether gay or straight.

He said he’s been told that gay couples in Arkansas are adopting children.

“The door is wide open for that to occur,” Cox said. “What we want to do is close that door.”

And close it quick, because you don’t want any of those kids ending up in safe, loving, supportive, homes with two same-sex parents. After all, if only people who can make babies are fit to be married, only people who can make babies are fit to be parents. Right?
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Donnie McClurkin, the anti-gay “ex-gay” bigot that Barrack Obama is keeping on his South Carolina tour, still think “gays are trying hurting our children.” [Via Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters.]

McClurkin used his personal story to demonize the lgbt community as a whole. During an appearance on the 700 Club in 2003, he accused the lgbt community of wanting to harm children:

From GayWired:

McClurkin has accused gays of “trying to kill our children” and has called homosexuality “a curse”. The gospel singer who says he is a “reformed homosexual” in a 700 Club interview said he was ready to declare war on homosexuality.

Technorati Tags: child abuse, children, current events, family, gay rights, homophobia, parenting, politics

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I tend to repeat myself, and there’s something from that last post that bears repeating. At least I think so, because it’s pretty good lead in to another installment of poisonous parenting.

But I do remember using the word “commitment” — the same one Dr. Height used in talking about our families — when the host asked me what I thought was the most important thing a child needed in a family. I meant more than just commitment to one another between parters or parents, but commitment to making sure a child grows up in a home where he/she knows he/she is loved, wanted, protected, respected, and accepted for who he/she is, in a place where he/she is safe and cared for.

I started writing this post right after I finished the previous one, because it occurred to me the main point made a good jumping off point for another installment in this series.

As I listened to the rest of the show, I was struck that Dr Height and I used the same word — “commitment” — in talking about our families. When the host asked me what I thought was the most important thing a child needed in a family. I meant more than just commitment to one another between parents and/or extended family, but commitment to making sure a child grows up in a home where he/she knows he/she is loved, wanted, protected, respected, and accepted for who he/she is, in a place where he/she is safe and cared for.

“…[C]ommitment to making sure a child grows up in a home where he/she knows he/she is loved, wanted, protected, respected, and accepted for who he/she is, in a place where he/she is safe and cared for.” That’s something that that’s not dependent upon what parts you have, what you do with them, or whether you can reproduce with them. No matter what the Maryland Court of Appeals says.

I’m not sure why my my commitment is worth less and less worthy of protection and support than the family next door or across the street from me. After all, we’re all committed to making sure our kids grow up in homes where they are loved, wanted, protected, respected, accepted, safe, and cared for with love. Nor I sure why some people make the cut for equal protections and equal citizenship just because they can make babies, but can’t manage to bring them up in homes where they’re wanted, loved, respected and — most of all — safe and protected.

Britney Spears — who, you’ll remember, once got married as a joke, and for 55 hours still had more rights and protections in her marriage than I do in mine — had to be court ordered to childproof her home in order to have visitation with her kids. But one almost gets the idea that really making the house safe for children might mean removing Spears from it. Or the kids.

child abuse, courts, crime, current events, family, gay marriage, homophobia, marriage, parenting

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I guess it was the combination of Parker’s fifth birthday and Thanksgiving that brought this series back to mind. After all, it happened that this year Thanksgiving fell on the fifth anniversary of the say we first saw our son and walked out of the hospital with him. (As well as he fifth anniversary of the day I changed my first poopy diaper, which four-day-old Parker presented to as soon as we arrived at the hotel that would serve as our home for our first two weeks as a family, perhaps as my initiation to parenthood.)

Of course, we didn’t conceive him. We couldn’t. Nor did either of us deliver him. But we’ve loved and cared for him for the five years since he was born, as well as protecting and guiding him through his world we didn’t bring him into. According to the Maryland Court of Appeals, though, loving and raising him for the last five years, and being committed to doing so as he grows into adulthood, is nothing compared to being able to make a baby.

Or maybe it was stumbling across an update to a case I filed away as a potential part of this series when I first heard about it. When I first heard about the little girl called Baby Grace, police were releasing sketches and asking for help to identify the little girl whose remains were found in a box.

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This weekend, the hubby and I took advantage of the baby-sitting co-op we joined when we moved into our, got a babysitter and went out to a friend’s birthday party; something we haven’t done in about a year. It was a chance to catch up with friends we hadn’t seen in a while, all of whom asked us how Parker is doing and how old he is now. When we said that Parker is five years old one friend of ours noted how happy and “unstressed” the hubby and I appeared to be the parents of a five year old boy, and implied that means we must be doing something right.

I like to think so. In the five years that have passed since I walked out of the hospital into a cold November night with our son, I’ve discovered that now I never stop being a parent. From the first step I worried that he might get too cold going the short distance between the hospital and the car. Anyone who meets Parker immediately notes what a healthy, energetic, smart kid he is. I like to think we had something to do with that, and that it means we’re doing our jobs as fathers well.

But every so often I run in to someone who questions whether we are “real” parents, or just two people taking care of somebody else’s kid; in other words, glorified babysitters. People like the on who left the following comment in a previous post in this growing series.

child abuse, courts, crime, current events, family, gay rights, homophobia, marriage, parenting, politics, same-sex marriage

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The last few months have been eventful ones for our family, as we were devastated by the loss of one baby and then blessed with the arrival of another; Dylan. When I look at Parker—the little boy he’s grown into, and the great big brother he’s already showing himself to be—and I look at Dylan—how vulnerable he is and how he’s changing and getting stronger every day—I’m amazed that some people like the Maryland Court of Appeals would deny my family equal rights and protections because the hubby and I did not and could not conceive either of the two children we will spend the next 18 years or so raising, and the rest of our lives loving.

“Looking beyond the fact that any inquiry into the ability or willingness of a couple actually to bear a child during marriage would violate the fundamental right to marital privacy recognized in Griswold, 381 U.S. at 484-86, 493, 85 S. Ct. at 1681, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510, the fundamental right to marriage and its ensuing benefits are conferred on opposite-sex couples not because of a distinction between whether various opposite-sex couples actually procreate, but rather because of the possibility of procreation.”
-Judge Glenn Harrell, Jr.

Now, the court ruled that my family doesn’t have the right to marriage equality, but basically left it to the Maryland legislature. And even though the proposed gay marriage ban died in the legislature in 2006 and marriage equality legislation won has early support this year, it’s unlikely that anything will pass this year.

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It goes without saying that becoming a parent changes you in countless ways. I’ve heard it described as having your heart walking around outside of your body. I’ve heard it said that you learn to love in a way you never did before, and you learn to fear in a way you didn’t before. I know that becoming a husband and a father made me a lot more emotional than I’d ever been. I can access emotions now that seemed to be permanently walled off. I knew something was up the day I found myself crying while watching an episode of Oprah.

I’ve also developed a kind of “parent radar” or at least that’s what I call it. That is, I don’t just keep up with my own kid. When we’re out at a park, playground or social event. I keep an eye out for other kids too. It’s like I automatically scan the area and figure out which kids belong with which adults. (And which adults, at a playground or a park, aren’t there with a kid, a dog, or their jogging shoes.) And out of the corner of my eye I’ll spot a kid rushing headlong in to danger. Once I saw a toddler about to get hit by a bicycle—neither the bicyclist or his mother saw him in that moment—and pulled him out of the way just in time.

Maybe it’s because I see a little of my own children in every other child I see. Maybe I see that same vulnerability, and I’d want someone to look out for them if I wasn’t there. Maybe it’s not that unusual. No one wants to see a child hurt. Or at least most people don’t. Who wouldn’t try to save a child from harm, even if it’s not their own? After all, not being a parent doesn’t mean preclude anyone from loving or caring a child. And, unfortunately, being a parent—even to children they’ve conceived and birthed—doesn’t make some people any more inclined or equipped to deliver the love and care that comes after conception and deliver. Thus, this series.

child abuse, children, civil rights, courts, current events, family, gay rights, marriage, politics, same-sex marriage

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It’s inevitable that, since the poisonous parenting series started, someone who drops into the the middle of it without reading the previous posts (or perhaps without reading any of it) completely misunderstands the point of it. That’s what seems to have happened with one commenter on the previous post.

I am a black hetrosexual woman who reads your blog often. It is really bothersome that you choose to highlight the worst of the worst of hetrosexual parenting. How can we have meaningful dialogue about our differing views when all you do is degrade and mock hetrosexual parents?????

Of course, the point is not to “degrade and mock heterosexual parents.”
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Alabama’s gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Nina Simone ~ “Mississippi Goddam”

I’ve been so wrapped up in another series that I’d totally forgotten about this one. But then I heard about Mississippi. Goddam.

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I fell down a bit of a rabbit hole yesterday. During a (rare) quiet moment, I took some time to catch up on my news/blog reading. And I finally started reading a collection of news stories that I’d quietly tucked away until I could actually bring myself to read them. I thought that would be a long time, because they were the kind of stories that I usually put out of my mind, because I can’t bear to think about them.

What started me was Katharine’s comment, which linked to Scott’s post about something Felix Fritzl said upon seeing the moon for the first time.

“Is that God up there?” – Felix Fritzl, 5, sees the moon for the first time since leaving the cellar.

And so it began.

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