Family Research Council: The Kids Are Not All Right

The Kids Are Not All Right

From
http://www.frc.org/updatearticle/20150130/the-kids-are-not-all-right

It's almost a foregone conclusion that researchers who compare children raised by heterosexual parents to those raised by a homosexual one will be vilified, harassed, and professionally targeted. An amicus brief filed with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals might explain why.

In their own words, four of these adult children are breaking their silence in an official court document about how growing up with s changed their lives. At a time when the Left is desperately trying to prove that all families are the same, these stories -- from the powerful to the painful -- speak for themselves.

With moving testimonies, the "quartet of truth" bravely pulls back the curtain on the grief and confusion that marked their childhoods without a mom or dad. B.N. Klein remembers growing up "with a parent and her partners in an atmosphere in which gay ideology was used as a tool of repression, retribution and abuse." In a house where the bedroom was more like a revolving door, she felt more like a "prop to be publicly displayed to prove that gay families are just like heterosexual ones. While I do not believe all gays would be de facto bad parents, I know that the gay community has never in my lifetime put children first as anything other than a piece of property, a past mistake, or a political tool to be dressed up and taken out as part of a dog-and-pony show to impress the well-meaning."

For Robert Lopez, feeling loved wasn't the problem. Finding a connection with a father figure was. "My upbringing," he says wistfully, "represented the best possible conditions for a child raised by a same-sex couple," but the lack of an adult male role model led him down a harrowing path of homosexual prostitution in a desperate effort to compensate for the dad he never had. "I experienced a great deal of sexual confusion. I had an inexplicable compulsion to have sex with older males… The money was not as impactful as the fact that I needed to feel loved and wanted by an older male figure."

Now, as an adult, he says his story isn't all that different from dozens of others who have similar scars from the deep longing for the parents they never knew. For him, just opening up about his experience was a big step because of the retribution that awaited him. "Children raised by same-sex couples face a gauntlet if they break the silence about the 'no disadvantages' consensus." At work, he was targeted and harassed: "In such a climate, I must conclude that placing children in same-sex couples' homes is dangerous, because they have no space or latitude to express negative feelings about losing a mom or dad, and in fact, they have much fear if they do."

Katy Faust understands that all too well. "The label of bigot or hater has become a very powerful and effective tool to silence those of us who choose not to endorse the marriage platform," she writes. "For many years, those devices kept me quiet… But I have come to realize that my silence, and the silence of others, has allowed for the conversation to be dominated by those who claim that only animus, ignorance, or indoctrination could lead one to oppose 'marriage equality.'"

Now, she says, "we are normalizing a family structure where a child will always be deprived daily of one gender influence and the relationship with at least one natural parent. Our cultural narrative becomes one that, in essence, tells children that they have no right to the natural family structure or their biological parents, but that children simply exist for the satisfaction of adult desires."

"Your childhood," Dawn Steanowicz agrees, "is divided to please adults." Dawn, who was immersed in the homosexual and transgender subcultures, spoke with raw transparency about being exposed to "sodomy, nudity, pornography, group sex, sadomasochism," and even watching helplessly as her dad propositioned a male high school friend for sex. These are the truths the Left doesn't want you to know. Like the other three, the anguish Dawn felt was because "there's a missing biological parent," not because her fathers couldn't get married. There are "two rights" every child should share, Katy told the court. "First, the right to live. Second, the right to have a relationship with his/her father or mother."

Love matters, the four concluded. But, as Mark Regnerus's research made painfully clear, it isn't enough.