And speaking of gay couples…
Writing by treason on Sunday, 30 of April , 2006 at 11:29 am
Actually, this has been bugging me for a long time. There’s a push for adoption, but some groups are opposed to homosexual couples adopting parentless children. They actually prefer a single heterosexual parent over two homosexual parents.
There are plenty of arguments on both sides of this issue and I can’t say people don’t have valid reasons for their positions. But truthfully, if it were up to me…well, based on what I’ve seen over the years, I don’t see how a single parent is always superior to a gay couple.
As I’ve mentioned, my first job out of college was in a Bay Area bookstore and the majority of my coworkers were homosexual. At the time I thought they were the most dysfunctional group I’d ever encountered in my life. Eventually, though, it occurred to me that my gay coworkers were no more screwed up than my heterosexual coworkers. Their problem was that they were all smart, creative, well-educated people who were stuck in a crappy work situation - overworked and underpaid. And worse, they were in their twenties. Sexual orientation had little to do with their angst. Sex was a problem, orientation was not.
My next job put me in an environment with a lot of older, more settled people. The younger employees regardless of sexual orientation, race, religion, or anything else were screwed up because they were…well, young. The older women liked me so I gravitated away from the younger workers and spent more time with the older ones. And maybe that was because they could go to restaurants and drink. We’d gather for cocktails and after they’d have a few Manhattans the truth would come out.
“I love my kids - really I do. But if I had to do it all over again…”
Their voices would trail off…they’d order another drink. Again, I’d made the decision not to have children on my first day of kindergarten when I was just four. These women convinced me I’d made the right choice. I still stand by my decision to not have them and perhaps one day regret that, instead of having and regretting them. Honestly, I can’t imagine anything worse. So I’m still waiting to regret my decision. And waiting. And waiting. Uh, gee, don’t think it’s gonna happen.
But I understand there are people who genuinely like children and want to be around them and, in many cases, those people aren’t parents. The parents I worked with at the “corporate” job never saw their kids. Both parents worked long hours and stuck the kids in daycare or with their parents. After putting our two dogs in doggie daycare when they were youngsters, I won’t have another dog if I can’t stay home to raise it myself. A parent should be home to raise the puppies. If you let them mix with other dogs unsupervised, they develop these…uh, habits. Habits that cannot be broken, and that’s unpleasant.
So, to make a long story short, I’ve seen dysfunctional relationships and infidelity and unsuitable environments for children with all sorts of people. Straight, gay, married, unmarried, black, white, brown, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, atheist. All this means is that 1) some people just can’t get along with other people and 2) just because some people are capable of breeding, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they should.
I’ve lost touch with Jack over the years and I do regret that. He left the Bay Area even before I did, but before he moved he’d been involved with a woman who had kids. Personally, I would have loved a parent like Jack. He was so wonderfully domestic - happiest when he was wearing an apron, cooking and cleaning. He could sew, bake, garden, decorate - and he was smart and had common sense and a sense of humor. We worked with this woman - and she made the little hairs on the back of my neck stand up - but he was willing to “straighten out” for her and her kids. The problem was that she was the wrong woman. But it became abundantly clear that he needed to find someone to settle down with and raise a family. No matter how little money Jack had, he always gave a big portion to his church. He was responsible, had a tremendous work ethic, and could move a refrigerator all by himself. Jack, quite frankly, was excellent parent material.
I don’t know if he ever met the man of his dreams, but I’d hate to think that he isn’t somewhere, living in a shoe, with so many children, knowing exactly what to do. He was great with dogs, too, by the way. That some agency would prefer a single woman like me over a gay man like Jack to adopt a child just gives me the heebie jeebies.
Comments Off
Category: Uncategorized
- Add this post to
- Del.icio.us -
- Digg -
