Here are excerpts from today's article by Doug Mainwaring, a gay man who writes on the harm to children of gay 'marriage' and gay 'parenting' - and cops some flack for doing so. In this piece he weighs in on the stoush between Elton John and the gay fashion designers Dolce and Gabbana (see earlier blog posts) after the latter said last week, "the only family is the traditional one" meaning the natural one.
If you would like to encourage Dolce & Gabbana in their stand, you can join a petition of over 100,000 signatures in the last 3 days, aiming for 200,000: HERE
Read Doug Mainwaring's whole article HERE.
What’s at Stake in the Dolce and Gabbana Controversy?
A tidal wave of adult selfishness that overwhelms children’s rights
When a public war of words erupted a few days ago between Sir Elton John and world famous Italian designers Domenico Dolce & Stefano Gabbana, a mostly ignored schism within the gay community was suddenly cast in high relief. Trust me, I know. I’m a gay man opposed to gay marriage.
Dolce and Gabbana are bravely standing against a future of state-enforced genderlessness, against a tidal wave of adult selfishness that overwhelms children’s rights and their best interests, and against the meddling government jigsaw that has continued to split, carve, and slice family life over the last few decades—especially for the poor, minorities, and the most vulnerable. And the most vulnerable and silent minority is, of course, children.
Here are a few quotes from Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana’s interview published in Italy’s Panorama magazine:
- “The only family is the traditional one. No chemical offspring and rented uterus. Life has a natural flow; there are things that cannot be changed.” - “Procreation must be an act of love.” - Dolce: “I call children of chemistry, synthetic children. Uteri for rent, semen chosen from a catalogue.” - Gabbana: “The family is not a fad. In it there is a supernatural sense of belonging.”
The interests of children should always outweigh the interests of adults
Sir Elton John was sixty-three years old when his first child was born through surrogacy and sixty-five at the birth of his second. His partner, David Furnish, was forty-eight and fifty. When their younger child graduates from high school, they will be eighty-one and sixty-eight. At his college graduation, they’ll be eighty-five and seventy-two. Children deserve biological parents—a mom and a dad—not two middle-aged guys approaching old age when the kids are infants and years beyond receiving their first Social Security checks when they are teenagers.
It grieves me to criticize any family. I know Sir Elton John and David Furnish love their children and are devoted fathers, but the point remains: the interests of children should always outweigh the interests of adults who want children. It wasn’t very long ago that Sir Elton John’s views were aligned with those of Dolce and Gabbana. In 2008, he said that civil partnerships—not marriages—were more appropriate for gays. As recently as 2012, John said, “It’s going to be heartbreaking for [our child] to grow up and realise he hasn’t got a mummy.”
Domenico Dolce, in using the phrase “synthetic children,” is drawing attention to the fact that “Life has a natural flow; there are things that cannot be changed.” Complementarity cannot be changed. Natural law, just like the laws of physics, can be neither changed nor suspended—at least not without dire consequences. If we rush headlong into changing this nation’s definition of marriage through judicial fiat, even if we have the very best of intentions, we might once again invite epic disaster for children, whose stories will emerge only as they become adults.
Demographics Conflict with the Media Narrative
Here are some noteworthy statistics from the Williams Institute at UCLA, the nation’s preeminent LGBT think tank. The total LGBT population in the US is about 9 million, or 3.5 percent. Of those, a little less than half—1.7 percent—identify as exclusively gay or lesbian. There are 690,000 same-sex couples in the United States. Of these, 130,000 are married couples. That means that only a little less than 3 percent of the LGBT community has chosen same-sex marriage.
With same sex-marriage now available in thirty-seven states and the District of Columbia, and after having been available in some states for up to eleven years, the number of same-sex marriages is rather small. It appears that many gays and lesbians are not keen on gay marriage as anything more than a symbol.
Another way of looking at the gay marriage statistic is that more than 97 percent of gays and lesbians have not chosen same-sex marriage. Media attention has led the nation to believe that there is a huge, pent-up demand for same-sex marriage. This is a fabrication. Heading into Sunday July 24, 2011—the first day that same-sex couples could legally wed in New York City—officials devised a lottery system to handle the projected 2,500 couples they thought would want to marry on that auspicious day. However, only 823 couples signed up—less than one third of the anticipated demand. The expected massive stampede to the altar by couples dressed in matching tuxedos or wedding dresses has never materialized.
Perhaps many gays and lesbians, like Dolce and Gabbana, sense the surreal nature of genderless marriage. One can only conclude that the narrative presented by the media is incorrect.
(more at The Public Discourse) Doug Mainwaring works with CanaVox, a project of the Witherspoon Institute.
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