Comment of the Day for 04/17
A user tells us why she thinks marriage should be between one man and one woman=YIPES
When I started this comment of the day feature, I thought I'd never highlight an anonymous comment. We really don't get very many and...sorry anonymous, but they aren't that good. But yesterday we got one that just blew my socks of. And not in a good way. My socks literally ran for cover, because they couldn't handle it. It's long, you have to go here to read the whole thing, but essentially, here is the part that made my socks peel off my stinky feet and run for cover under the couch:
Marriage is founded in the Sexual Reality based on biological facts
and cultivated by neurological structures forming our minds. That is
Science. Gender is, if used as a term in proper context, the variable
way in which sexual reality and childhood –or adolescent- experience
can come forth in a person’s behaviour. There is no fixed structure for
that bahaviour, but there is such a fixum in the biological, sexual
reality.What does that mean for Marriage and Family? - Simply: that they are
based on the complementary nature of the human species. On that Basis
–in the terms of Karl Marx- we have built a suitable Superstructure
which secures our survival and existence. The wish of secure
togetherness, a haven of safe emotions, showed again and again as an
overwhelming urge, demanding commitment – commitment to one other
person, the spouse.And the children’s secure feeling as ‘belonging’ –not as property,
but as part- to a secure family of their own genetic origin is a
necessary part of their healthy growing up. Which also demands that
children should, unless a disaster has prevented this possibility, grow
up with their creators, i.e. complementary sexual parents, not people
who “bought” them in a “sperm- or ovum supermarket” or from a
baby-factory in some poverty-stricken country – which would be
‘slave-trading’ indeed.
That's right. Anon thinks that marriage=one man and one woman because children should be brought up by their sperm donors and people shouldn't adopt. Let me tell you something. I volunteer my time at a women's shelter. I do a lot of mentoring to women in my community whose sperm donors expressed less interest in them than they would have in my stinky socks. Valuing biological parenthood over actual PARENTHOOD (you know, loving and nurturing your child) is exactly the kind of reductionist thinking that made segregationist rationalize that black people were inferior (it was biology after all). They were wrong. And so is Anon. I just want to say, we live in a country that lets child molesters keep their kids, but argues that gay people can't marry because of the societal "impact." Except, I live in Iowa. YAY! Let the gay marrying begin.
*Steps down from soapbox*
Am I out of line? Or am I right?
Discussion
I agree Lyz, In fact my boyfriend was adopted by a wonderful family and had a great upbringing. When he was in high school he met his biological family who lived in his area (New Orleans).... he has biological siblings who he began a relationship with. His siblings are not really the type of people he wanted to look up to or even be very close with. He stays in touch with his biological mother, and he believes that if he had been raised by her he would either be in jail or on the streets hustlin.
In the foster system, sometimes children are placed in homes that are not super peachy....but as for me, I had a very very tough growing up with my mother who had mental problems and used drugs, we were homeless a lot, and there was lots of abuse, and there had been plenty of times CPS was called on her. As a child I wanted to be taken away from my mother...I wished someone would adopt me. I left my mother at age 14, when I had the legal right to choose my guardian or emancipate myself. I guess the point im getting at is both my boyfriend and i turned out to be wonderful people who look at life a little different than the average joe (or jane)...I don't think science has anything to do with who we should be raised by. I'm a spiritual person and I believe we all have a destiny. Of course society around you and your environment can also be a factor in who you become, but the mind is a powerful thing and some of us rise above stereotypes.
I'm not sure if I even got my point across, as my mind was all over the place lol. But I feel better now :)
Sure, a kid gets a little more balance when being raised by healthy, responsible, GOOD male and female parents. I'm not saying that this mother/father team are the perfect child rearing dynamic duo, but the general concensus is that is the best scenario. That isn't the real case for all "traditional" parent setups. The basic truth is that it doesn't matter if its one parent or two, same sex or mixed, the child needs to be nurtured and cared for. That a man and a woman are raising the child doesn't guarantee it. That the original sperm and ovum providers raise that child doesn't guarantee it. There is no guarantee. Its taken 2 daughters for my brother his wife to figure out what it means to be a good parent for their latest daughter. Not to say he didn't provide for his older daughters, but he wanted sons so badly he treated them as such. In all honesty its surprising that his wife never went to a battered women's shelter. Thankfully things have changed, his older daughters are supportive of how he now nurtures his youngest, and is finally really being a father to her. This wasn't because he was the "original sperm donor". This is because he realized that he really messed up and was being given another chance. Most people miss that or don't even get that chance.
Anonymous was way off the mark.
From Woody Allen's Manhattan:
Isaac Davis: I got a kid, he's being raised by two women at the moment.
Mary Wilke: Oh, y'know, I mean I think that works. Uh, they made some studies, I read in one of the psychoanalytic quarterlies. You don't need a male, I mean. Two mothers are absolutely fine.
Isaac Davis: Really? Because I always feel very few people survive one mother.
Call me old fashioned but I think that there is some good societal conditioning that happens when a child observes male and female behavior in a marraige that contains both sexes.
