This Rant is, Like, Totally Gay

In the comments thread to the post below on the reintroduction of the Federal Marriage Amendment, Praxxus asks:

Did you see the recent study (done at Tufts University, I think) that found, to paraphrase, "kids reared by queers fare the same as their peers?"

To quote: "The vast consensus of all the studies shows that children of same-sex parents do as well as children whose parents are heterosexual in every way," (Ellen C. Perrin, MD) tells WebMD. "In some ways children of same-sex parents actually may have advantages over other family structures."

So really, why shouldn't same-sex couples be allowed to marry? What's left to be debunked here?

I did see that study, and I can’t even believe it’s news; I’ve got friends with gay parents and gay friends who are parents, and their families are exactly as mundane as my own for exactly the same reasons—no more troubled or fabulous than any other collection of people who eat turkey together twice a year.

Which is why a question like “What’s left to be debunked here?” makes me so sad. The lengths to which the LGBT community has to go to "prove" their fitness for marriage or parenting or anything else is beyond ludicrous; who one loves / dates / fucks has no bearing on whether one deserves equal rights (as I noted in comments, if I believed that it did, I'd be petitioning to have Laura Bush committed to a criminal asylum)—nor does the conference of those rights require, from any other portion of the population, a demonstrable baseline competency of the practice of those rights.

A straight person can, in fact, be a verifiable failure at both marriage and parenting, and yet go on to remarry and have more kids without so much as a sneer from even the most conservative quarters. Their great saint, Ronald Reagan, was married twice and had children in both marriages, yet I’ve never heard his history cited in the repeated denunciations of That Which Undermines the Sanctity of Marriage. Nor should it be, but neither should it be considered anything but un-American to hold to a different standard a select segment of Americans.

It’s truly pathetic that we have to keep pointing to these studies—See? Gays can be good parents after all!—as reason to extend the same rights that are automatically afforded to any pair of nutwits with matched babymaking parts, even if they don’t have the money to properly support a child, or a healthy environment in which to raise a child, or any one of a number of other factors that, if we’re going to preclude people from parenting, ought to make the list of prerequisites.

I’m sick to the teeth of indulging people who want some kind of evidence, some reason, to extend equal rights to gays. Fuck them for thinking some people have to earn rights the rest of us get for free, and fuck them even more for pretending that all the “proof” in the world is going to make a damn bit of difference. Hiding bigotry, hatred, and fear behind a mask that we treat as reasonable each time we indulge their requests for “proof” won’t work anymore. They can shove their condescending bullshit straight up their asses—or whatever orifice they deem acceptable.