OK, well, I was a little annoyed yesterday when I made my last blog entry. I've had a day to think things over, and I have a few more things to say about it.
First, I'm not retracting what I said. I meant it, potty words included. That ridiculous tweet was offensive, it was snotty, it was at least as condescending as the remark it purported to address and was even more mean-spirited, and given the organization that posted it, was a pretty big plateful of hypocrisy.
And I should say a few words here about the organization. The Catholic League is NOT the Catholic Church. It's an organization founded, in its words, to protect the rights of Catholics (clergy and otherwise) to participate in the public sphere without fear of discrimination. For my money, particularly with its current man-at-the-helm Bill Donohue, it's a church-based PAC. It has without doubt in recent years become highly politically visible, politically active, and distinctly right-leaning. So, goes without saying I don't like it much, but I'm not going to quibble with the right of any citizen to engage in the public arena. But it isn't the Catholic church and doesn't represent Catholics at large (whether or not it purports to). So I should clarify that any and all potty words were directed at that organization and the jackass who posted the offensive tweet (I assume either Donohue or a staffer).
And the tweet has not been taken down, and to my knowledge, said jackass has never apologized for it. Even the RNC came out and condemned the remark, making the rather obvious point that as fiercely anti-abortion an organization as this is, it should be praising adoptive parents and not sneering at them. Jackass's response? This tweet, posted this morning: So the RNC is now lecturing me to "encourage adoptions." I do but kids deserve a father and a mother. RNC is a joke anyway.
This brings me to the next point that I wanted to make, and to emphasize perhaps more than I did in my post yesterday: the vitriolic, HATE-FILLED snarling directed at gay and lesbian parents. I am one of those folks who is, as the bumper sticker says, straight but not narrow. Happily married to a guy, thank you very much. And to the extent that I'm a good parent, the fact that I'm physically attracted to men doesn't have the first thing to do with it. It seriously doesn't. And, I daresay, same with Chris. The fact that we're reasonably good and reasonably successful parents probably at least 8o% of the time (which is about as good a percentage as most folks are going to manage) is utterly unrelated to our status as het folks. Chris would be just as good a dad, and I would be just as good a mom (and we'd both have the same shortcomings, too), if we preferred same-sex partners. I happen to know a number of parents in same-sex relationships and they're all great at it. They'd have the same strengths and shortcomings if they were straight. I'd have no problem with any of them raising my kids if my husband and I were hit by the same bus some day. Comments like the Catholic League's are simply nothing but snarling, hate-filled bigotry. Bigotry is always ugly, but it's never uglier than when it flies from the pulpit claiming the mantle of God.
And did you like that second tweet? Like "Oh, sure, I love adoption, but not THIS woman." But absolutely no apology for the tone of the original tweet, or even the slightest acknowledgement that some folks might justifiably have seen some douchebaggery in it. But when you say that someone "had to adopt her kids," and contrast that with another person who "had kids of her own," you just right there have pretty obviously said that adoptive parents aren't really parents. We adoptive parents tend to be pretty sensitive to that sort of horseshit. We all involuntarily stiffen a little when someone asks us if we have kids of our own, or if our children have ever met their real parents. I'll make allowances (a bit) for folks of a generation who grew up using that terminology. But not in this context. Not in a boxing ring like this, especially when it's clear that aforementioned douchebag isn't the slightest bit sorry and doesn't see anything wrong with what he said. In this context, fuck that guy.
Finally, I feel the need to close with this very cogent observation on the whole Rosen/CL flap, from the always-reliable TPM. He quotes one anonymous Republican staffer, opining whether this is a precursor of things to come over the next seven months, "Dear God I hope not. This presidential campaign makes me want to start doing drugs." Seems like as good an excuse as any.
No comments:
Post a Comment