Do Gay Partners and Parents Have a Place in the Family of Values?

Yes: Family roles aren't automatic or biological. And traditional families aren't a model of success in protecting children.

By Robert Dawidoff

The holiday season always makes me a little queasy, as if I were expecting something that I know I won't get. I think I feel this way because the season is so relentlessly about family and, like so many other gay people, I have to cope with the pain and sadness of growing up gay in an American family. That experience has left a wound that time, therapy and even happiness have not healed.

Gays who want the civil right to marry have many motivations, including the right to raise their children within a socially and legally acknowledged relationship. And it is wrong to think that the history of family confirms the notion that the sexual act that makes a child means that the biological father and mother are best equipped to raise that child. The Hawaii gay marriage decision cited the clear evidence of lesbians and gay men making good parents. We always have, of course, and there is no reason to think coming out and making same-sex unions legal will affect that, except to make us better parents because we are more honest and happier. The claim that it is selfish for us to want to have and raise children makes neither biological nor common sense. It is dangerous nonsense to take a father's love for a daughter and a mother's for a son as a rule for who can and should be parents. Too many of us have been well raised by others than our two biological parents or badly raised by our biological parents to believe that making a baby creates parents in anything but biological fact. The high incidence of suicide among gay teens is evidence of the failure of too many traditional families to protect the children in their care.

What can lesbians and gay men teach American families? First, coming out is a process of self-parenting that enriches family life even as it gives gays and lesbians back our own lives. Sharing your true self and your real life with your family frequently inspires your family to be more honest and caring. It isn't just gays who have to disguise themselves from their families; ours is not the only authentic self unwelcome at home.

Second, gay men and lesbians are good at family. Having lived on the margins of our own families, we have found ways to function within them, suppressed our own lives in order to be devoted parents, uncles and aunts, siblings and children. Most of us have formed our own families, bound by shared experience, values and love. They are there when we return from stressful times with the families that raised us or when we are not welcome at home; too often, they have been the ones to care for our sick and dying. Gay parents in gay relationships can make good families, because we have had to discover on our own how to make family a choice, not a habit.

Third, gays know that family is always a choice, however involuntary it may feel. You don't choose your relatives, but you can choose to make a real family out of the one you have. The proof of family values is how the family treats its own. Perhaps this very holiday season, American families might choose to welcome their gay members home. In time, we will gain our equality as citizens and our rights as human beings. But for now, being welcomed at last into our families as we really are is no more than we deserve. And it is something important that American families can do for themselves.

Robert Dawidoff is the author (with Michael Nava) of Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America.

Article from The Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA, 90053, Fax 213-237-7679, copyright Thursday, December 26, 1996

Do Gay Partners and Parents Have a Place in the Family of Values?

No: Deliberately depriving a child of needed nurturing from both a mother and a father is selfish.

By Susan Carpenter McMillan

Christmas is traditionally the time of year when families come together, people exchange gifts and Christians celebrate the birth of the Savior. From religious services to family gatherings, most people cherish being part of a family unit. But many nonheterosexuals suffer mixed emotions as they join their parents, grandparents, nieces, nephews and siblings around the Christmas table. Gays and lesbians want to bring their mates into the family not as companions or so-called roommates but as a legally recognized marriage partners. The court case in Hawaii means they may soon be able to. And once legally married, many gay couples will naturally want to adopt children.

Being gay and loving another person is certainly not illegal, but uniting that couple in marriage is not only rejected by most of society but also by Judaism, Christianity and Islam. As a Christian, I am opposed to same-sex marriage and adoption. That being said, I have family members as well as friends--some I have chosen, others who have come out after our friendship was established--who are gay or lesbian. I strongly denounce any person who would reject one of his or her own family due to their gayness. But I also believe that two men or two women who believe that they can be an equal yet alternative family unit, able to raise a child in a disapproving society are simply wrong. Recognizing the marriage of two gays who could next legally adopt is not only harmful to the child but also to society.

My dearly loved cousin and her equally loved lifemate have been together for 15 years. The three of us are very close. We laugh, cry and argue together. They know how I feel, and I know how they wish I felt. Both are loved and accepted and an integral part of the family as we sit around the Christmas table, eating turkey and arguing politics. They would love, I am sure, to be hand in hand, sporting wedding bands. But they know that won't happen.

Like it or not, agree or disagree, same-sex marriage that could result in the ability to adopt a baby demonstrates not love but selfishness. Knowingly denying a child the fullness of a mother/father team is placing the wants and needs of the adult above what is best for the child. A little girl learns how to be a woman from her mother, but her sexuality can be fully validated only by her father. The opposite is true for a boy.

I don't believe that gay parents will cause such a child to be gay. But all things being equal, I do believe that that child is being deprived of crucial, necessary two-sex ingredients essential in parenting. That it takes a man and a woman to produce that third person is the most basic proof that a child needs both a mommy and a daddy.

Being gay should never result in being harassed, hated or hurt. But sadly, being gay also should never mean being able to marry or adopt. Everything in life has a price. Being childless is a high price. But a child's basic needs must always supersede the desires of an adult. Children must always come before self.

Susan Carpenter McMillan is a television commentator and spokesperson for the Woman's Coalition.

Article from The Los Angeles Times, Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles, CA, 90053, Fax 213-237-7679, copyright Thursday, December 26, 1996