God Loves Children
Seattle-based columnist Dan Savage (on left) has an 8-year old son whom he and his partner adopted at birth. His response to the WA and NY Supreme Courts' decisions to keep gay couples from marrying:
Both courts have found that my son’s parents have no right to marry, but what of my son’s right to have married parents?
...The courts ruled, essentially, that making my child’s life less secure somehow makes the life of a child with straight parents more secure. Both courts found that making heterosexual couples stable requires keeping homosexual couples vulnerable.
But he sees hope for the multitude of children of gay parents:
I can’t help but feel that our side must be winning...discriminating against children with same-sex parents may score the other side a few runs, but these strategies won’t win the game.
So I’m confident that one day my son will live in a country that allows his parents to marry. His parents are already married, as far as he’s concerned, as my boyfriend and I tied the knot in Canada more than a year and a half ago. We recognize, even if the courts do not, that it’s in his best interest for us to be married.
Dan and his partner are married in Canada, but here they are still legally and financially vulnerable.
Here's a note to the Christians who are thrilled with the courts' decisions: You will lose. You appear to be winning now because many of the good citizens of the U.S. don't fully understand the awful impact these decisions have on families. But allow me tell you who it will be that finally kicks your ass. That would be God and the hundreds of thousands of kids with gay parents. The kids won't come looking for you, and they won't have to because in case you haven't bothered to read the KJV Bible you club people with, God has a special place in his heart for the vulnerable among us. When God put these children in safe and secure homes, you sought to make them more vulnerable. When these kids who see and hear everything that is happening around them meet the "Christians" who worked so hard to keep their family from being equal to others, you will be lucky if all they do is pity you for being the 21st century desert-breathed Pharisees that you are.
posted by Troy at 1:43 PM
1 Comments:
"21st century desert breathed Pharisees" -- Man! I've got a whole new favorite epithet! But I just really want to say -- that you are right. The voices of hatred and injustice and exclusion have lost...they just don't know it yet. And that is sad. It makes me angry -- but it also makes me feel sad for the loss to our life together when we find ways to paint our own misery over the lives of others around us. Can we really feel so badly about ourselves that we would treat others this way? Unfortunately the answer seems to be yes. But it begs the quesiton for me - how to we bear witness to the "winning side." Troy, you have done that well with the exhibition "WE Do, Too" and with the gracious witness of your faith around your life. The question is more one for me - how can I make such a witness? (That's rhetorical -- not really one for you to answer). I think it can best be done by celebrating the love and marriage between two people whenever we can -- Wendell Berry says in one of my favorite poems of his that we celebrate "with bread and song." So, I suppose that, at church, when a gay or lesbian couple act as communion stewards or have dinner with a young couple preparing for marriage..that is all part of that. But we can do more. I can do more. Thanks for this entry and what it makes me think about...
Mike
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