Robert Oscar Lopez is the new darling among groups opposed to marriage equality because of his brazen will to deride all same-sex couples as child abusers. In a new post today, Lopez doubled down on his comments, adding that he believes allowing same-sex couples to have children through insemination or surrogacy is a “crime against humanity” because they treat children like “chattel slavery”:
Regardless of the condemnations and attacks, I stand by my point of view, made in recent American Thinker and Public Discourse articles, that same-sex parenting is inherently abusive of children. […]
Same-sex parenting flagrantly violates children’s rights, deprives them of inalienable rights, and risks inflicting grievous emotional distress on them, with no justification whatsoever, other than the whims of adults.
It is abuse. It is abuse. Face it.
Lopez admits that his point of view is not informed by social science, which he describes as “just a means of avoiding the central problem” that “children have a right to a mom and a dad.” Such an assertion is merely a subjective emotional appeal; there is no “right” to any configuration of parents. Protecting such a right would require quite bizarre forms of enforcement that would violate many other personal freedoms, like forcing widows to marry strangers so their kids have a father or imposing orphans upon married couples not intending to have children. The reality is that — for better or worse — children are not guaranteed any particular kind of family or upbringing when they are born, so evaluating what families would be good for children can not be based upon such essentialist assumptions. All social science that has actually studied the outcomes of children raised in same-sex families has found that they do just fine, and the children have said as much themselves.
Moreover, Lopez’s rhetoric accomplishes nothing beyond stigmatizing the gay community. Though his opposition to marriage equality is known, he hasn’t articulated any other specific policy changes, such as banning same-sex adoption, which is actually available in more states than marriage. Likewise, the National Organization for Marriage, which has championed Lopez’s rhetoric and story, is mum when it comes to the children of same-sex couples, specifically stating that adoption is a “separate issue.” Though conservatives claim that they oppose same-sex marriage for the sake of children, they have not taken any recent action against same-sex adoption, and they refuse to acknowledge how the children already being raised by same-sex couples will benefit if their parents can marry.
Perhaps opponents feel that if they just demonize same-sex parents as abusers committing crimes against humanity — echoing age-old stereotypes of gay people as pedophiles — they can win back some level of public opinion in the marriage equality fight. In the end, however, they look more like bullies than ever, stigmatizing the families of the very children they are claiming to protect. (HT: Jeremy Hooper.)