The article’s bottom line (according to Dobson): “The best environment for the health and development of children, and, by extension, the nation at large”, is a family led by one penis and one vagina, joined together in a Christian ceremony called marriage.
And then Dobson backs it all up with a bunch of psycho-babble:
A father, as a male parent, makes unique contributions to the task of parenting that a mother cannot emulate, and vice versa.
***
… mothers tend to stress sympathy, grace and care to their children, while fathers accent justice, fairness and duty. Moms give a child a sense of hopefulness; dads provide a sense of right and wrong and its consequences. Other researchers have determined that boys are not born with an understanding of "maleness." They have to learn it, ideally from their fathers.
Ok, I was able to manage my gag reflex pretty well with that, but I lost it when Dobson, as Andrew says, started translating divine law into civil law:
… our conviction is that birth and adoption are the purview of married heterosexual couples. Traditional marriage is God's design for the family and is rooted in biblical truth. When that divine plan is implemented, children have the best opportunity to thrive. That's why public policy as it relates to families must be based not solely on the desires of adults but rather on the needs of children and what is best for society at large.
I honestly have to wonder what planet Dobson is on. He knows the perfect little world he describes just does not exist for everyone. There are many families that by all outside appearances seem to fit his “ideal family” template, but behind closed doors are anything but perfect. The family in which I grew up was a good example. We were the family that everyone oooooh’d and awwwww’d over at church, dressed in our Sunday best and for the most part behaving like perfect angels. My father appeared to be the perfect daddy (he at least had a penis), and my mother was the perfect mommy (thank God), and my 4 beautiful little brothers and I appeared to be the perfect children. But circumstances beyond anyone’s control took over and our “perfect” little family basically imploded. Daddy had a major breakdown, mommy for all intents and purposes became both mommy and daddy, and we children adjusted accordingly and grew up to be well-adjusted, confident, contributing adults. And what got us through it all was NOT the fact that we had a penis and a vagina as head of household (because we didn’t), but that we had an incredibly strong and loving mother. It was the unconditional love that got us through it all, not this “sh*t” Dobson is spewing.
James Dobson is basically having a panic attack. His worst nightmare is coming to fruition: a very prominent and visible lesbian is having a baby with her partner, and the whole world is watching, and what the world will see is every one of James Dobson’s bullsh*t theories proven wrong. James Dobson knows damn well that families come in all shapes and sizes, and most will never meet his specs for “ideal”. This is not a perfect world. Sh*t happens, I know because I learned it at a very young age myself. Sure it would have been great if my dad could have been there for us as a functioning and loving dad, but life doesn’t always work out the way we think it should. And sure children do well with a loving mommy and a loving daddy. But Dobson is lying through his teeth when he says that society will go to hell in a handbasket if children don’t have a mommy and a daddy. The real bottom line is that children do best when they have plenty of unconditional love from a parent or parents who are there for them. The genitalia of that parent or parents are just not the issue, no matter how much James Dobson wants it to be.
James Dobson is losing this battle and he knows it. In another 10 to 15 years the choir to whom he is preaching is gonna start dying out and this up and coming generation is much more enlightened. To them James Dobson comes off as a shill little old man running around screaming about the sky falling. I took my daughter out to dinner tonight so that we could talk about the Christmas dance she went to this past weekend (now mind you she goes to a Catholic school) and in casual conversation she mentioned that her best friend's date had 2 mommies. She said it so casually that I actually had to stop her mid-sentence and ask her if I heard her correctly, she said I had, and continued on with the point of her story, which had nothing to do with the 2 mommies, but everything to do with what a great guy he was.
Yep, Mary Cheney and Heather Poe are going to be James Dobson’s worst nightmare.
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