In Which I Give Too Much Time and Effort to Responding to a Colossal Idiot

Bill O'Reilly wants to know, if same-sex couples can parent as well as opposite-sex couples, why "wouldn't nature then make it that anybody could get pregnant by eating a cupcake?" In other (less moronic) words: If two dads or two moms can parent as competently as a mom and a dad, then why didn't nature make it possible for two dads or two moms to create and birth a baby?

I figure there are four possibilities…

1. Perhaps the answer is evolutionary. Way before the human experience was cluttered with arbitrary regulations governing the sexual behavior of consenting adults, and way, way before human reproduction could be limited with birth control, human females conceivably could have typically had more children than they and their male partners could secure enough resources for. It would have made sense to have some additional adults (it takes a village) to provide childcare and secure resources and who would never have children of their own—guaranteed by same-sex copulation not resulting in pregnancy. Some recent research on the increasing odds of a gay son after a series of straight sons certainly suggests this is a possibility.

2. Perhaps we were intelligently designed that way. Maybe the intelligent designer saw that the world he had provided would quickly overpopulate if humans were left to their dirty devices unchecked, and noticed that sometimes the diseases and natural disasters and droughts and famines he designed to cull our numbers occasionally sometimes just left a bunch of kids without parents. So maybe he figured it would be best to design some folks who could forge loving, lifelong bonds, but couldn't have kids of their own—so they'd want to take in the kids who had lost their parents, or the kids that no one else wanted. That older children, children of color, and/or children with special needs are now most likely to be adopted by LGBT parents certainly suggests this is a possibility.

3. Perhaps it really is just one of those times when we are, as O'Reilly claims, "taking Mother Nature and … throwing it right out the window." O'Reilly calls this crazy, but is it? Seems to me, we throw "Mother Nature" out the window all the time, whenever it suits us. Like, when straight couples don't want to have any more kids, and Mom gets her tubes tied or Dad gets a vasectomy. Or when Little Johnny steps on a rusty nail and he's given a tetanus shot instead of letting Mother Nature grace him with lockjaw. One might even argue that, say, cancer is one of Mother Nature's ways of telling us the gig is up, but most of us happily shove Mother Nature out the way as we rush to the nearest oncologist. Maybe, just like people often decide to duke it out with her over when, precisely, they'll shuffle off this mortal coil, or just like straight couples often decide that they disagree with Mother Nature's determination that they shouldn't have children, or should have more children, gay couples disagree with Mother Nature's decision that they're not meant to be parents. And maybe we should respect that just like we'd respect someone's decision to get treatment against a disease that would otherwise certainly be terminal, left up to Mother Nature's whims.

4. Perhaps Bill O'Reilly is just a dumb shit and should shut his fat fucking mouth and mind his own goddamned business—and be thankful that women don't get pregnant by dirty perverts talking about falafels, or he'd have child support payments to make in addition to his out-of-court hush money. Prick.