Reality Check: Parents and Children

It's always necessary to think carefully when discussing big issues, and avoid wishful thinking and sweeping generalizations.  Because what sometimes feels like truth isn't necessarily so.  Feelings are not facts.

For example, the SF Chronicle reports on today's Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial happenings:

The plaintiffs presented academic witnesses who said allowing gays and lesbians to marry would benefit the couples and their children and improve the status of marriage without affecting opposite-sex couples.

The ballot measure's defenders said it merely reaffirmed traditional marriage, but their chief witness for Prop. 8's benefits was [historian David] Blankenhorn, who has spent two decades arguing against same-sex marriage. His 1995 book, "Fatherless America," contended that attacks on the traditional family had weakened the bonds between fathers and children.

Scholars overwhelmingly agree, he testified Tuesday, that marriage is "a socially approved sexual relationship between a man and a woman" and that the "optimal environment" for children is with their married, biological parents.

Now look at that last statement:  it sure paints a pretty picture, doesn't it?  An Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It to Beaver, It's a Wonderful Life kind of world.  In fact, the kind of world, and family, that most of us probably wish we'd had when we were growing up.

But is it really true?  For all children?  With all biological parents?  Always?  Really?

Read these two news items and make up your own mind about what the reality of life is.

Father Kills Wife and Twins on Sons' Birthday

Susan Smith Wants New Trial for Killing Sons

Now, if these had been gay parents, oh can't you just imagine what the Christianists and the rightwingers would be saying about all that, and what it "proves" about gay people?