The great thing about classics is that people can relate to them from many different circumstances. They truly are universal. Just a few days after I connected The Ugly Duckling to Down syndrome, my friend Hevel Cohen pointed to this post, where a Christian gay man quoted the entire original story by Hans Christian Andersen (who apparently was also gay), to show how it is actually about a homosexual individual seeking love and acceptance.
It is interesting, that so many people who use their religion to reach out to orphans, and to children with disabilities, are unable to see homosexuality in the same way. Isn't a "sexual difference" just as much a "special need" worth respecting?
Showing posts with label homosexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label homosexuality. Show all posts
Monday, October 29, 2012
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
What is a family?
I have quite a few friends, relatives and acquaintances who are in same-sex partnerships, either as a marriage where permitted or otherwise. Several of them have children, either by adoption or surrogacy/insemination. There are those who bristle at same-sex marriage, as well as at the notion of same-sex couples raising children. "Unnatural" is a common objection, since these unions are not intrinsically procreative.
Strange, then, that the same fundamentalist perspective that rejects same-sex unions is so enamoured of adoption! Adoption is many things, but "natural" is certainly not one of them! Raising children that are not even remotely biologically related to oneself as one's own does not produce any evolutionary advantage, and is extremely rare in nature -- far more so than homosexuality!
And yet, both same-sex couples and adoptive families expand their understanding of "family" so as to shoe-horn themselves in. New definitions and roles are created in order to seem as "natural" as possible. It is interesting that same-sex couples in fact adopt in great numbers those "hard-to-place" children that mainstream adopters avoid -- older children, special needs, minorities, etc. Having already embraced an unorthodox family make-up, they are more ready to take these other steps.
What is "natural" about "family"?
Strange, then, that the same fundamentalist perspective that rejects same-sex unions is so enamoured of adoption! Adoption is many things, but "natural" is certainly not one of them! Raising children that are not even remotely biologically related to oneself as one's own does not produce any evolutionary advantage, and is extremely rare in nature -- far more so than homosexuality!
And yet, both same-sex couples and adoptive families expand their understanding of "family" so as to shoe-horn themselves in. New definitions and roles are created in order to seem as "natural" as possible. It is interesting that same-sex couples in fact adopt in great numbers those "hard-to-place" children that mainstream adopters avoid -- older children, special needs, minorities, etc. Having already embraced an unorthodox family make-up, they are more ready to take these other steps.
What is "natural" about "family"?
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