LifeSiteNews 26 March 2013
I saw an “ALL love is equal!” graphic posted up and down my news feed on Facebook this morning. It’s designed to strike a chord with a person’s sense of justice and compassion, of course; quick and manipulative slogans are the fodder of politics – and fools. …
My whole extended family on my father’s side is for redefining marriage and against anyone who thinks otherwise. I qualify that with “my father’s side” because it is the loss of my father that makes my story just as relevant to the debate as that of the woman wanting to marry her girlfriend. He passed away in 1997 suddenly – a ski accident. I was thirteen; my brothers were eight and four. We were devastated, of course. And, although the youngest was too young at the time of our loss to remember or miss our dad, he joins the rest of us in suffering the absence of a father. Not just a parental unit, a father. Another mother – even two more – would not have remedied what we lacked; we needed a man. My mom did a great job, but she’d be the first one to say that it isn’t a slight to single mothers to say that fathers are needed. Any time she attempted to assume a fatherly demeanor, it backfired. We would either talk back or laugh at her, clearly lacking a healthy fear of “when Dad comes home.” I have a vague memory of what that means, but I’m convinced my brothers have no point of reference. Equally, children need mothers. Mothers and fathers compliment one another in the raising of children. The absence of one or the other (or both) has a devastating effect on children. That is why “ALL love is equal” slogans really rub me raw. Children are poised to suffer a severe injustice – one that I suffered – for pithy slogans and the idea that adults have a right to children. It’s the other way around: children have a right to a mother and a father. If either is absent, the child suffers. My brothers suffered the absence of a father most noticeably in their transition into adulthood.
Not enough people are hearing the stories of the children raised without a mother and a father. It is a serious story with consequences much more devastating than that of same-sex couples not being able to marry or adopt. Throughout history, the human child has been born to a mother and father. It is our design and the means by which human societies have grown and flourished. Therefore, it is an injustice of our fallen world that any child should lose a parent while young, but to say that this loss is no loss at all compounds the damage. This is what redefining marriage does.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/the-terrible-injustice-of-same-sex-marriage-my-story
