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02/02/2015
Katy Faust wishes her parents wouldn't have divorced. So gay people can't marry, parent
Katy Faust runs the self-victimizing blog "Ask The Bigot," where she, a Christian who believes homosexuality separates us from God, routinely attacks gay-headed families and our associated rights while pretending that she is under some sort of attack from the actual gay people and gay parents who push back against her work (Because we're only capable of calling people like her "bigots," you see). She is also a child of divorced parents whose mother later entered into a lesbian relationship. Katy writes about it all in a new Public Discourse article that she addresses to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy in hopes of swaying the likely swing vote to move away from his past support of marriage equality. Katy writes:
I identify with the instinct of those children to be protective of their gay parent. In fact, I’ve done it myself. I remember how many times I repeated my speech: “I’m so happy that my parents got divorced so that I could know all of you wonderful women.” I quaffed the praise and savored the accolades. The women in my mother’s circle swooned at my maturity, my worldliness. I said it over and over, and with every refrain my performance improved. It was what all the adults in my life wanted to hear. I could have been the public service announcement for gay parenting.
I cringe when I think of it now, because it was a lie. My parents’ divorce has been the most traumatic event in my thirty-eight years of life. While I did love my mother’s partner and friends, I would have traded every one of them to have my mom and my dad loving me under the same roof. This should come as no surprise to anyone who is willing to remove the politically correct lens that we all seem to have over our eyes.
Kids want their mother and father to love them, and to love each other. I have no bitterness toward either of my parents. On the contrary, I am grateful for a close relationship with them both and for the role they play in my children’s lives. But loving my parents and looking critically at the impact of family breakdown are not mutually exclusive.
Now that I am a parent, I see clearly the beautiful differences my husband and I bring to our family. I see the wholeness and health that my children receive because they have both of their parents living with and loving them. I see how important the role of their father is and how irreplaceable I am as their mother. We play complementary roles in their lives, and neither of us is disposable. In fact, we are both critical. It’s almost as if Mother Nature got this whole reproduction thing exactly right.
FULL: Dear Justice Kennedy: An Open Letter from the Child of a Loving Gay Parent [Public Discourse]
Her parents divorce was painful on her. That's not a surprise. It often is on children. Katy herself cites the divorce as the key issue here. "[T]he most traumatic event in my thirty-eight years of life," she says.
But as I stated earlier, Katy has taken on anti-gay activism as her cause. She, a person who has a religious objection to homosexuality, has joined forces with Robert Oscar Lopez and his crew to file amicus briefs and engage in commentary all geared toward the purpose of stopping equal marriage, adoption, and related rights under civil law. And since her mother did move into a lesbian relationship after divorcing her father, Katy is now using her own story to attack gay parents every where. Or rather "same-sex attracted" parents, as she tellingly calls us:
I am not saying that being same-sex attracted makes one incapable of parenting. My mother was an exceptional parent, and much of what I do well as a mother is a reflection of how she loved and nurtured me. This is about the missing parent.
Talk to any child with gay parents, especially those old enough to reflect on their experiences. If you ask a child raised by a lesbian couple if they love their two moms, you’ll probably get a resounding “yes!” Ask about their father, and you are in for either painful silence, a confession of gut-wrenching longing, or the recognition that they have a father that they wish they could see more often. The one thing that you will not hear is indifference.
What is your experience with children who have divorced parents, or are the offspring of third-party reproduction, or the victims of abandonment? Do they not care about their missing parent? Do those children claim to have never had a sleepless night wondering why their parents left, what they look like, or if they love their child? Of course not. We are made to know, and be known by, both of our parents. When one is absent, that absence leaves a lifelong gaping wound.
FULL: Dear Justice Kennedy: An Open Letter from the Child of a Loving Gay Parent [Public Discourse]
Of course Katy's story is a personal one that she is projecting onto every family. And as I already said, she is taking the pain of divorce, which she admits is the root issue for her, and projecting that onto civil marriage policy for gays and lesbians (who may or may not even become parents). Because that's what commentators like Katy often do.
But here's what really gets me. In truth, Katy's attack lines could just as easily apply to opposite-sex couples who parent the very same way as their same-sex counterparts. For instance, she writes:
When two adults who cannot procreate want to raise children together, where do those babies come from? Each child is conceived by a mother and a father to whom that child has a natural right. When a child is placed in a same-sex-headed household, she will miss out on at least one critical parental relationship and a vital dual-gender influence. The nature of the adults’ union guarantees this. Whether by adoption, divorce, or third-party reproduction, the adults in this scenario satisfy their heart’s desires, while the child bears the most significant cost: missing out on one or more of her biological parents.
Making policy that intentionally deprives children of their fundamental rights is something that we should not endorse, incentivize, or promote.
FULL: Dear Justice Kennedy: An Open Letter from the Child of a Loving Gay Parent [Public Discourse]
"Two adults who cannot procreate" is not a stand-in for "same-sex couple." Many opposite-sex couples cannot have biological children on their own, and many of them ultimately choose adoption. Adoptive parents, be they gay or straight, are not biologically connected to their children. There is no logically consistent way that Katy Faust can use a line about adopted kids "missing out on one or more of her biological parents" and confine that line only to the kids of same-sex parents. There are millions of kids of straight parents who fall into that very same category!
And of course all of Katy's words, which we've established are misapplied to only go after same-sex parents, insist that there is "trauma" involved in a same-sex parenting structure:
The opposition will clamor on about studies where the researchers concluded that children in same-sex households allegedly fared “even better!” than those from intact biological homes. Leave aside the methodological problems with such studies and just think for a moment.
If it is undisputed social science that children suffer greatly when they are abandoned by their biological parents, when their parents divorce, when one parent dies, or when they are donor-conceived, then how can it be possible that they are miraculously turning out “even better!” when raised in same-sex-headed households? Every child raised by “two moms” or “two dads” came to that household via one of those four traumatic methods. Does being raised under the rainbow miraculously wipe away all the negative effects and pain surrounding the loss and daily deprivation of one or both parents? The more likely explanation is that researchers are feeling the same pressure as the rest of us feel to prove that they love their gay friends.
FULL: Dear Justice Kennedy: An Open Letter from the Child of a Loving Gay Parent [Public Discourse]
This is so offensive not only to gay parents like myself, but also to other parties who were involved in our becoming parents. It is especially (and remarkably) offensive to the millions of men and women who make adoption plans for children that they cannot or do not care to parent.
I am an adoptive parent. I can't/won't fully get into my and my husband's adoption story because of privacy rights and respect for other parties, but I can say that "trauma" was not in play. Andrew and I were selected over thirty other couples, all heterosexual, because of our demonstrated abilities. Words like "fate" and "blessing" were thrown our way, and often. From prenatal visits to the moment where I cut the cord, following twenty-four truly cherished hours of talking and laughter and humanity in a hospital delivery room, the process was nothing short of magical—and no one felt this way more than the birth mother, who used words and phrases like this freely and often. While all adoption plans come with raw emotion and obvious difficulties, ours was the dream scenario—and, most importantly, the considered choice—of adults who all had a child-to-be's interest front and center.
The way these activists now go after our families is unspeakably heinous. In a world where we should all be working together to ensure the best chance for every form of family, here in our world that is diversity-rich in its family structures, these folks are literally—literally!—messaging out the idea that those of who give all we have to give and more for the care and well-being of our children, but do so while gay or lesbian, are at best selfish. More typically they portray us as narcissists who are doing lasting damage to our children. It is brutally insensitive in an unparalleled way.
I am truly sorry that Katy Faust longs for a different childhood than the one that was in her cards. I am genuinely happy that she says she is happy with her husband and children. But what Katy is doing right now is an act of bad faith on behalf of actual human children who will grow up finding rhetoric like hers and wondering why they are being told to feel bad and/or broken because of their loving family structure. Rather than limit their political assaults to just adults and fellow commentators who signed up for this fight, these adult activists are now indirectly (or even directly) targeting our children as they come up in this world. It is an amoral thought crime against parents like me and children like mine.
***
In a Facebook post on the wall of the very anti-gay Ruth Institute, Katy claimed that intact gay families do not exist:
[SOURCE]
Again, this is a complete and utter lie! My husband of twelve years and I are the only individuals who have ever parented our daughter, from her first breath onward. Heck, we've only left her with one babysitter in sixteen months! I personally have only been apart from her for less than twenty hours in that same span of time (I'm writing this post at nap time). We are as intact as a family can possibly be—and I will go ahead and confidently say that my solid family will be intact until death parts us.
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