Mary Cheney’s pregnancy affects us all
Mary Cheney’s pregnancy poses problems not just for her child, but also for all Americans. Her action repudiates traditional values and sets an appalling example for young people at a time when father absence is the most pressing social problem facing the nation. With 37 percent of American children born to fatherless families, Mary Cheney is contributing to a trend that is detrimental to all Americans who will live with the ramifications of millions of children whose anger and frustration at not knowing their father will be felt in the public schools and communities of our nation.
Important TPRS disclaimer: I do not NOT hate Christians. After all, I’m married to one, OK? What I detest is hypocrisy, intolerance, hatred, bigotry, and the willingness to force your narrow, fear-based agenda on all Americans dressed up as Christianity. Capice?? (He says as pulls up his soapbox, takes a deep breath, and mounts it. An anticipatory, breathless hush falls over the gathered throng….)
Jeebus, people, let just put this as simply as I possibly can: IF YOU DON’T BELIEVE IN GAY MARRIAGE, THEN DON’T HAVE ONE. What gives you the right to believe that you, and only you, have the right to determine how someone else lives their life? If you’re so all-fired-up about the welfare of children, they why aren’t you and people like you lining up to adopt? Oh, right…that means you’d actually have to do some honest-to-God heavy lifting. It’s SO much easier to just toss off broadsides from the sidelines, from whence you can head off to your megachurch in your SUV and your designer outfits, secure in the knowledge that Jesus loves you more than those heathen, unenlightened souls who are scheming to force the HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA upon our beautiful, innocent children.
I have no great love for the concept of homosexuality. It’s not a lifestyle I would choose for myself. I like girls; I always have. Being married to one kinda just fits, know what I mean? However, not everyone is like me. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I kind of like it that way. If everyone was like me, well…this would be a pretty boring and screwed-up place….though there would be a lot fewer Packers fans. (Hmm….)
I do believe that every child deserves to be raised in a loving home. If Mary Cheney and her partner, Heather Poe, can provide that for a child, shouldn’t we be celebrating that? Shouldn’t we be thrilled that one less child will be wondering if he or she will ever belong to a family and be loved? Shouldn’t we be trying to encourage this sort of thing? After all, Poe and Cheney have been together for 15 years; I doubt family stability will be much of an issue. How many straight couples can say that?
Well-educated, professional Mary Cheney is flying in the face of the accumulated wisdom of the top experts who agree that the very best family structure for a child’s well-being is a married mom and dad family. Her child will have all the material advantages it will need, but it will still encounter the emotional devastation common to children without fathers.
So, without the presence of a man in the household, this child is due for years of therapy, anger, and emotional devastation? Give me a break. Surely, someone as educated as Crouse can recognized the logical fallacy of this argument. Or not. In how many straight families is the presence of a man the reason for for years of therapy, anger, and emotional devastation?
One Georgia high school principal reported, “We have too many young men and women from single-mother families that don’t have the role models at home to teach them how to deal with adversity and handle responsibility. They’ve seen their mom work 60 hours a week just to put food on the table; they end up fending for themselves.”
Yes, I suppose this might be true if that single mother is like so many single moms: working long hours at starvations wages, struggling to make ends meet without any child support. The problem here is that Crouse’s argument is total crap: Mary Cheney is a well-paid AOL executive, and while I don’t know what Poe does for a living, I doubt she’s cleaning the deep-fryer at her local Choke ‘n’ Puke.
When fatherless children get to be teens, the girls tend to start looking for love in all the wrong places and the boys tend to find as their role model the bad-boy celebrities of MTV, NFL and NBA.
As they grow older, fatherless children tend to have trouble dealing with male authority figures. Too often children in single-mother households end up angry at their absent fathers and resentful of the mother who has had to be a father figure, too. Typically, the boys who have a love-hate relationship with their mother end up hating all women. Numerous of them look for vulnerable women where they can act out their anger and be in control.
Role models are where you find them. Does Crouse think that Cheney and Poe are not intelligent and capable enough to understand what they’re up against? Is the only answer to this dilemma having a man around? Perhaps Crouse ought to leave beautiful downtown Pleasantville long enough to have that long-awaited operation to remove her anterior from her posterior? This is nothing more than gay-bashing: Good Lord, man! If we leave them alone, they’ll catch Teh Gay!!!
Mary Cheney’s action sets an example that is detrimental for mothers with less financial resources who will start down an irrevocable path into poverty that tends to be generational ‚Äö√Ñ√¨‚Äö√Ñ√¨ children in households without a father tend to themselves have unwed births later in life. Experts from both the left and the right cite a disastrous litany of negative outcomes that are predictable when a child grows up in a fatherless family. Such children tend to get involved in drugs, alcohol abuse, and delinquency; they tend to drop out of school and have teen pregnancies. An assistant principal in a Junior High School said that many of the behavioral problems that teachers face in the classroom stem from households without a father’s influence.
Again, while there undoubtedly instances in which Crouse’s twisted logic may seem to apply, all Cheney and Poe are trying to do is to provide a child with a loving home. If a woman can provide that for a baby, and if she and her partner (whether male or female) are willing to make a commitment to a child’s well-being, then why are we not celebrating that? Why do homosexuals have to “prove” their worthiness as parents (thanks to She Who Endures My Myriad Eccentricities for that one….)? There’s no similar litmus test for heterosexuals; if you have functional plumbing and a willing sperm donor…well, that’s pretty much all you need. It’s not as if heterosexuals have a sterling record when it comes to raising child. Could homosexual couples do any worse? Doubtful, don’t you think?
Heterosexuals in general are no more or less capable of raising a child than homosexuals. Until we have a test in place that forces adults to prove their fitness to be parents, can we stop pretending that Crouse’s argument is anything more than simple, self-righteous gay-bashing?
Mary’s pregnancy is an “in-your-face” action countering the Bush Administration’s pro-family, pro-marriage and pro-life policies. She continues to repudiate the work to which her father has devoted his life. Mary has repeatedly said that “studies” show that children only need a loving home. Her statement is incomplete because the experts agree that for the well-being of children, they desperately need a married father and a mother.
Yeah, like the Bush Administration has done such a bang-up job (how’s that war in Iraq thing working for you??) The conservative theocratic agenda of Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader is one viewpoint. It cannot, and should not, be the litmus test by which the “right” to parenthood is judged.
Each family, gay or straight, heads into the 18+-year challenge of raising a child with baggage and challenges. Why is Janice Shaw Crouse so willing to focus on the baggage and challenges facing gay families while blithely overlooking those facing straight families? Why? Because she hates those who don’t think, act, live, and believe as she does.
There’s more than one way to raise a child, and it’s sad that people like Crouse are so unable to celebrate those who are willing to provide a stable, loving environment for a child. After all, it’s not like heterosexuals have a monopoly on that. For that alone, Janice Shaw Crouse is richly deserving of her DUMB@$$ AWARD. Party on, Garth….
