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A Family is a Family - Love is All That Matters
What makes a family? Many of us in the GLBT community at large have children or we are with partners that have children or we have chosen to become parents. Whatever our unique experience, many of us have kids.
Even though I am an openly out and proud member of the GLBT community, I still struggle with internal homophobia from time to time. Growing up in a heterosexist society can take its toll. I realize I have internalized some of the negative stereotypes and beliefs that surround me. I have to consciously challenge and examine some of my thoughts to stay healthy-minded and self-accepting. Two recent stories brought this challenge up for me.
1. Catching Rosie O Donnel's HBO documentary about the changing definition of family in today's society.
2. Reading an article that I will post lower on the page about a Florida judge that went above Florida law and allowed a lesbian couple to adopt a child becuase the child was THRIVING since being in the custody of the couple, and how a christian rights group reacted by publishing an article with a phony photo of the couple to encourage fear and negative stereotypes.
So back to Rosie, I am not normally a fan of hers. I find her to be obnoxious and sometimes just wish she would fall off the public scene and leave representing the LGBT community to Ellen. However, I have to give a high five and thumbs up for her recent documentary. If you haven't seen it and need a little lift, catch it on HBO! It's full of different families: gay, straight, bi-racial, single parent and adopted. The film features the KIDS of these families providing their perspective of their family. "A Family is a Family is a Family" spreads one message...kids are happy in the family stucture they grow up in, be it gay, straight, one parent, two parents, parents of different races, or adoptive parents. It doesn't matter to them as long as they are loved.
This challenges the old stereotype that a kid's happiness is dependent upon growing up in a traditional nuclear familiy made up of a mom and a dad. The documentary really provides a different perspective reflecting that today's definition of family is dynamic and diverse and always full of love.
Copied here is the article on the custody case in Florida:
"As anyone familiar with sexual stereotypes knows, there are two kinds of lesbians: the hot kind who secretly just want a good boning, and the scary, ugly kind who are ruining America. And dissing the latter for not being feminine enough is of course a classic homophobic move (see also: The Daily Caller's well-documented ragging on Rachel Maddow). So when the cheerful, normal-looking Melanie Leon and Vanessa Alenier were awarded custody of a relative by a South Florida judge recently, perhaps they weren't sufficiently terrifying for the conservative Florida Family Policy Council of Orlando.
Alenier and Leon, who despite Florida's 33 year-old ban on gay adoption had the audacity to tell the truth about their relationship when applying to adopt their son, were awarded custody of the one-year-old boy last month. In ruling for the couple, Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Maria Sampedro-Iglesia called the Florida law "unconstitutional on its face' and said, " There is no rational connection between sexual orientation and what is or is not in the best interest of a child. The child is happy and thriving with [Alenier]. The only way to give this child permanency... is to allow him to be adopted.'
This didn't sit well with Florida Family Policy Council, who promptly shot back with an alert about the "arrogant judicial activism." "FL judge violates law, places child in homosexual adoption," ran the headline, accompanied by an image of a pale, plus-sized, bespectacled – and most horrifying of all – mullet-rocking female duo. Ooga booga!
Their inaccuracy, however, was picked up by the Orlando Sentinel's Scott Maxwell, who wrote a blistering column stating that "These extremists wage their campaigns of intolerance based on deception and misrepresentation. And they have the gall to do it in God's name."
In a follow-up post, Maxwell noted a response from John Stemberger, the head of the Florida Family Policy Council, about the incorrect image. Stemberger explained, "A day after the e-newsletter was sent out it was brought to my attention by one of my own staff members that this was not a picture of the actual couple in question in the Herald story but was a photo which was associated with an earlier story on a different gay adoption story." He continued: "I would be happy to issue a correction and an apology if you or someone else felt it was warranted. I have received no complaints on this till now. If you are going to do a piece defending the position that Florida’s law on homosexual adoption needs to be changed that is fine but do not focus on the straw man of our admittedly boneheaded mistake."
Ah, well, if nobody complained, what's the big deal?
Lending ever less credibility to the explanation, by the way, the image accompanying the earlier story that Stemberger cited is obviously itself not representational of the case it describes -- one involving a 47 year-old-man.
At least Stemberger stepped and apologized, though, right? On the Florida Families blog, however, he was somewhat less gracious, referring to the Sentinel story as a "name calling hit piece" and an "irresponsible and judgmental rant." Frankly, if your name is Florida Family Policy of Orlando, I think you forfeit your right to call anybody else "irresponsible and judgmental," but maybe that' s just me. And while Florida Families insists that "Optimal human socialization involves a child understanding the proper working relationship between a man and a woman, a father and a mother and a husband and wife," new mothers Alenier and Leon are busily adjusting to parenthood. "We strongly wanted to be a family," Vanessa Alenier told the Miami Herald in January. "It's the most amazing thing that ever happened to us." And that's the true picture."
