This is an interesting speech from a 19 year old who was raised by two women about the subject of gay marriage. As far as gay marriage goes, I feel that's a personal decision and I could care less if two people were straight gay married or just living together. It's not my place to say and it doesn't impact my life one way or other. What I have wondered about on many occasions is the step that comes after that -- children. They the innocents who aren't offered a choice. Which is not to say that gay parents would be bad parents, far from it -- but hard not to ask question about whether society is ready for this step and would the children be unmercifully picked on and discriminated against because of societies views. So with that said, it was interesting to hear this from the perspective of one who lived the experience. Anyhow, thought I'd share and see what your thoughts were.
It's hard to believe that guy is only 19. I can't say that I know exactly how it's like to be raised by a gay couple, but I remember there being similar arguments speculating on how even children raised in a single parent environment could be at some sort of disadvantage or grow up with some sort of social deficit or another. To grow up feeling that you're different from other families - well, you get over it. I mean feeling all different from the world is basically a rite of passage as a teenager. As long as your home life is sturdy and you have a parent or parents that love and care for you, everything else is a merely statistic.
That's a very eloquent and impassioned message which I hope helps to win people over. Though I also hope he's not giving any perspective gay parents false reassurances about how it will never lead to any problems. If a kid is "cool" enough not to get picked on it doesn't matter who his parents are, and it'll never come up. However once someone has been chosen as a target for bullying, stuff like this could totally be found out (maybe even from homophobic parents) and used for the most harsh insults ever! I'm not sure about documented cases of that stuff happening to truly justify my concern; I do remember elementary school really well, and seemingly better than most adults!
Right on. Hard to weigh in on this one, as around here, it is a different issue. Here, where I am, now, it is one of the hot spots in the Northeast United States for the LBGT community. Gay marriage is legal here, and much celebrated. I've had bosses that were lesbian couples, worked in places where I was the only straight man, had gay and lesbian room mates, neighbors, best friends. Here it is just a part of life. Societal norms, they are just totally different here from any other place I have ever visited. If you say the word "faggot", people look at you funny, like there is something wrong with you. I do not know about high school around here today, it has been awhile, and I know what it is like both to be picked on, and also to ridicule others for no good reason at all other than that it is what the cool kids often do. I do not know how kids in school are, I have very, very little contact with school age children. However, I can say that outside of school, there is a vastly supportive community committed to the arts, diversity, and individual liberties. Even if a high school aged child has problems in school, there is going to be some part of society here where they will find a place. That was how it was for a lot of us, the misfits naturally hung out on the street and banded together: punks, goths, hippies, burnouts, artists, musicians, we all looked out for one another when we were younger, whether we were straight, gay, junkies, insane, etc.
Too bad I'm at work, I can't watch the video. :/ That thought crossed my mind too - I wondered if a kid might be at a disadvantage having both parents of the same sex (as in, not having a distinct male rolemodel/distinct female rolemodel). But when I think about it, there are so many "traditional" families out there, with a mother and a father, where the children are abused, neglected and/or unloved. Those are HUGE disadvantages that can affect someone for the rest of their life. There are the possibilites of a kid being teased or bullied by other kids if they do grow up with same sex parents... but kids are bullied for all sorts of reasons that other kids come up with, no matter who you're raised by. The most important thing (IMO) is that a child grow up in a safe home with parents who love them and take care of them (regardless of sex/orientation/etc). If a kid has a stable support system at home, it'll make anything that life throws at them a lot more managable.
How is it courageous? I think you only have the start of a point here. What are you getting at? That we shouldn't worry about it? Or that those kids are fine?
Not that we shouldn't worry about bullying (we've all seen the affects of bullying, particularly in recent years :/), but that the possibility of a kid being bullied shouldn't necessarily be a factor in deciding whether or not a gay couple should raise a child.
