When you emphasized how important the voices of children with gay parents are, you probably anticipated a different response. You might have expected that the children of same-sex unions would have nothing but glowing things to say about how their family is “just like everyone else’s.” Perhaps you expected them to tell you that the only scar on their otherwise idyllic life is that their two moms or two dads could not be legally married. If the children of these unions were all happy and well-adjusted, it would make it easier for you to deliver the feel-good ruling that would be so popular.
I identify with the instinct of those children to be protective of their gay parent. In fact, I’ve done it myself...
I cringe when I think of it now, because it was a lie. My parents’ divorce has been the most traumatic event in my thirty-eight years of life. While I did love my mother’s partner and friends, I would have traded every one of them to have my mom and my dad loving me under the same roof. This should come as no surprise to anyone who is willing to remove the politically correct lens that we all seem to have over our eyes.If you weren't politically correct, you'd see how Faust suffers! (She also tells us, "many are of the opinion I should not exist," just to up the victimization ante.) Anyway, gay unions like the one Faust grew up in may look nice, and Faust has many kind words to say about her own blended family (perhaps to decrease the tension at holiday get-togethers), but they're really evil, because "the adults in this scenario satisfy their heart’s desires, while the child bears the most significant cost: missing out on one or more of her biological parents." Really, they prosecute football players for whipping a kid, but they let parents separate? How does that make sense?
As for the so-called "studies" that say gay parents are great, Faust's got this compelling counter-argument:
Does being raised under the rainbow miraculously wipe away all the negative effects and pain surrounding the loss and daily deprivation of one or both parents? The more likely explanation is that researchers are feeling the same pressure as the rest of us feel to prove that they love their gay friends.Just like them climatologists! In a few years, the only scientists conservative will not have accused of making it all up for the Politburo will be the guys who come up with new boner pills.
The big thing that jumped out at me, though, was this: She's 38 years old? Isn't it about time she stopped whining about this?
Yeah, we should pass a law against divorce. Get Newt Gingrich to push it, he's good at that stuff.
ReplyDelete~
SANCTITY OF MAWIDGE!
ReplyDelete(/petercook)
Her last name is "Faust"? Is it me or does anybody else start questioning whether we are just hapless pawns in some giant computer simulation when a character by the name of Faust is busy selling her soul - and selling out her parents - in exchange for influence and notoriety?
ReplyDelete[T]he adults in this scenario satisfy their heart’s desires, while the child bears the most significant cost: missing out on one or more of her biological parents...If it is undisputed social science that children suffer greatly when they are abandoned by their biological parents...
ReplyDeleteLike me, you mean? Go on, tell me how damaged I am. Don't worry, all the knives are at the other end of the room. It's worth noting that Faust's profile mentions a child who "was adopted from China." Stellar. I hope no one ever gets in your face and starts going off on foreign adoption - and for once that's not sarcasm. It's really shitty when someone insists that you've committed a crime by the mere act of being a parent (hint, hint).
A few years back, there was an incident where this religious group was brought in to speak at a high school, and a number of students actually left in tears after their presentation veered into anti-gay territory with extended rants against in vitro fertilization and adoption. Bloggers were shocked - the vitriol against IVF is nothing new, but adoption? I wasn't shocked, it was the logical conclusion of their arguments. When you spend years and years suggesting that it's illegitimate for people to raise non-biological parents, you're not going to stop with divorce, "test tube babies" or same-sex adoption.
Incidentally, and regarding both Faust and those family scholars people from earlier; My biological mother died right before I was thirteen and my biological father is God-knows-where right now. The odds of me meeting any blood relatives are very slim. Are you assholes going to give me any comfort if it means that you can't use it to bash gay couples?
Fuckers.
You know they are Christians by their love.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CobNWUXb1M
~
Being the child of a divorced heterosexual couple is ever so much better than being the child of a divorced homosexual couple?
ReplyDeleteI clicked over. It sounds like an argument against adoption, not gay marriage. And the kicker?
ReplyDeleteKaty Faust serves on the Academic and Testimonial Councils of the International Children’s Rights Institute and writes at asktheBigot.com. She is the mother of four, the youngest of whom was adopted from China.
No, no, no! Being the child of heterosexuals who don't love each other but who stay together "because of the child" is the BEST! That way, it's all about HER.
ReplyDeleteThe Faustian bargain:
ReplyDelete"While I did love my mother’s partner and friends, I would have traded every one of them to have my mom and my dad loving me under the same roof."
So many questions: Does she hate those bitches now? Did they kill the sperm donor so she couldn't live with him? Did she ever give a fuck about anyone except herself?
And Rush Limbaugh can lead the media blitz.
ReplyDeleteAnd she must be consulted at all times before the adults make a decision, so she can remain the center of the universe.
ReplyDeleteShe must spend a lot of time wishing people into the corn.
Imagine every child of a broken hetero-marriage decided to rationalize their frustration the same way...
ReplyDeleteSeparately, the Jebus-freaks really fucking destroy what is a legitimate debate to be had about sperm-bank babies. My wife has a pretty weird family-tree... short explanation, her biological father is off the wall. But I remain extremely mindful that our kids, when they grow older, might be interested to learn about their genetic lineage. They might want to know about their biological grandfather.
I don't know the answer, but I don't get entirely comfortable with the position that sperm-bank kids should never be permitted to find out who the donor was. Really don't know the answer, it's got nothing to do with snowflakes and God's will, just seems a tad unfair to tell someone they have no right to know - I guess if you put me in their position, I can see myself wanting to know, and being pretty pissed off if I were told the donor had an unqualified right to privacy. Don't know the answer, but I guess I empathize with people who want to know "where they came from", and would not want to be the person telling them they have no right to find out.
The soulless one made it absolutely clear that the entire world is all about her.
ReplyDeleteDo not fall prey to the false narrative that adult feelings should trump children’s rights. The onus must be on adults to conform to the needs of children, not the other way around.
Her feeling are far more important than her parents' and although she says they were both good parents and she seemed to have enough love and support to satisfy almost anyone, she is not satisfied. She had to go through the pain of divorce and instead of everyone sucking it up and living a lie for her sake they went ahead and did what *they* wanted.
So gay families are bad even though her gay family was good and adoption is bad even though her children, including the adopted one no doubt, are perfectly happy. True, their happiness is based on being with their biological parents and one is not but the adopted one must be perfectly happy as well, as long as she does not listen to her new mother tell her how miserable she is.
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
ReplyDeleteLeo Tolstoy
But that doesn’t mean we can’t take the example of one unhappy offspring of one gay family that eventually became unhappy and legislate based upon their singular unhappy example.
Because…..ick!….that’s why….
The mind boggles; the poon withers.
ReplyDeleteEspecially when the parents make it clear to the children that they've made themselves miserable because of the children. So the children will know that they're loved. Their parents' bitter misery is proof.
ReplyDelete"many are of the opinion I should not exist,"
ReplyDeleteNo, honey, au contraire: If you didn't exist, we'd have to invent you. For the laffs, you see.
Does being raised under the rainbow miraculously wipe away all the negative effects and pain surrounding the loss and daily deprivation of one or both parents?
ReplyDeleteWell, no, of course not, but the point is that same-sex marriages should be treated exactly as other marriages are.
All Supreme Court decisions should be based on Katy Faust's personal feelings. That would simplify things.
ReplyDeleteAnd I would have traded my hula hoop for a pony.
ReplyDeleteListen, you nitwit --- you got what you got. Grow up.
They might want to know if there's a family history of genetic predisposition to certain ailments.
ReplyDeleteIf she incorporated, she'd have a good chance of making this happen.
ReplyDelete" Isn't it about time she stopped whining about this"
ReplyDeleteNo, no, it's (forgive me) like saying, "Tom Brady is 37. Isn't it time he retired?" Whining about this is what she DOES. Well, that, and fearlessly demolishing whiny-teenager/straw-man arguments ("Does being raised under the rainbow miraculously wipe away all the negative effects..." etc.).
Shorter Katie: My life has been subject to negative effects. Let's blame somebody, if not everybody.
Not everybody, just those icky 'mos.
ReplyDeleteThere's clearly that too.
ReplyDeleteThis. It's amazing it's not the primary reason for allowing the adoptee to know his/her bio parentage. Then again, if he/she had a genetic predisposition to contracting measles, the child would have to be vaccinated. And nobody wants that.
ReplyDeleteTrust me, once the homos go into the furnace and things don't improve, Ms. Faust will consult her list.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, you're on it.
I'm always more than a bit amused by these people (Robert Oscar Lopez is someone else who bangs that drum loudly and often), simply because what they're really arguing is that, although they speak frequently of how they really wanted a daddy who presumably would have kept them from being unhappy and making mistakes, what they're really arguing for is that her lesbian moms shouldn't have made the choice that they did; in other words, they're arguing for their own nonexistence. And who am I to say nay to them?
ReplyDelete:lol:
ReplyDeleteI know there's not point but this strikes me as just so weird. I mean--truly, truly, weird. She didn't lose her father at all--he just wasn't living under the same roof with her. No doubt he could have sued for full custody if he'd wanted and given her a stepmother, if he'd wanted. Why does her mother and her mother's partner come in for all the hate when daddy dearest absented himself? Furthermore what does gay marriage have to do with her situation, which is the product of divorce. Is she under the impression that all gay marriages result from a prior divorce? Or that the Supreme Court is going to prevent gay marriage in order to prevent divorce? That's quite a bank shot, if so.
ReplyDeleteI have in my immiediate social circle two tragedies--the father of two adolescent girls, in a happy marriage with a friend of mine, died right before thanksgiving. Last week a dear woman friend, the same age as me with a daughter and a son the same age as my children died of a brain anyeurism. Two bizarre medical events left four children, in two families: one without a father and one without a mother. A widowed woman, a widower in the other case. Could Katy Faust just get up off her ass and realize that tomorrow is promised to no one and that families break up and lose parents (and children) all the fucking time? Is she advocating for the government to promote remarriage to opposite sex partners so that those poor kids can know the appropraite amount of parental supervision from now on?
And yes I already made the grim joke to Mr. Aimai: "Perhaps I should introduce the new widow to the new widower?" within 48 hours of the second death. But I didn't think it should be a new government policy.
Her biggest complaint seemed to be that no one in her mother's new circle of women friends spent enough time sympathizing with her childish grief and her rage at not having everything turn out the way she wanted. That they celebrated what they saw as her maturity and her resilience. Instead, I guess, she wanted a village of angry old women and men to attack her mother and the new partner and dunk them like witches until they recanted and gave her back to the imaginary perfect family of mommy and daddy together 4 ever.
ReplyDeleteAs the person who has to give the family history for my two children--since I'm point person for medical care in our family--in my experience people don't really know their own family medical history, or forget the medical issues of people who are genetically close to them but socially far away (half siblings, grandparents who got divorced and moved away). Given the new science of genetic testing in a short period of time this kind of "need to know" directly from the sperm donor is just going to be irrelevant. People will just have their genome done and inspect it for weaknesses and predispositions. I'm pretty sure this makes more sense than calling up some guy who donated twenty or thirty years ago and trying to find out from him what his genetic history is. People are just not reliable reporters.
ReplyDeletebeing raised under the rainbow
ReplyDeletei smell a wingnut welfare pseudo-science text...
Its another variant on "my abortion was moral, yours was because you are a slut." Here --her adoption did not destroy a pre-existing relationship with the biological parents while someone else's adoption of course did so.
ReplyDeleteNot to minimize her pain and anguish, but I'm totally going to minimize her pain and anguish. She had the support of two loving parents in her childhood. Lots of us don't have the childhood we wanted. No one earns martyr points for that. I was an army brat and my fondest wish was to live in one place for more three years at a time. I didn't get that until college. I still had a great childhood, it wasn't a perfect childhood, but you show me a kid that's had a perfect childhood, and I'll show you one that hasn't been out of the womb for 24 hours. At 38 it might be time to realize that any remaining childhood issues (genuine tragedies not included) might better be dealt with in a professional setting with a therapist. Seriously, everything we ever loved will die, and we will have to deal with that unless we die first. Everyone we ever loved will let us down. Because we are all flawed in our own special snowflake ways. She needs to grow up and give her parents the same amount of love and attention she gives to her own hurt feelings and maybe she will be able to forgive, if not forget the pain her parents' divorce caused her.
ReplyDeleteThe onus must be on adults to conform to the needs of children, not the other way around.
ReplyDeleteSo heterosexual parents must respect and love their gay children, right?
The Right's notions of meaning are different from other language possessing peoples.
I identify with the instinct of those children to be protective of their wingnut parent. In fact, I’ve done it myself...
ReplyDeleteI cringe when I think of it now, because it was a lie. My parents’ descent into imbecility has been the most traumatic event in my fifty-three years of life. While I did at one point love my parents I would have sold them to a white slaver rather than have them embarrass the shit out of me in front of my literate friends.
I thought it was a new novel in the Fae series where an Elven Princess meets and marries a Keebler.
ReplyDeleteMindlessly lashing out at strangers for perceived childhood slights (or even pain) seems perfectly logical to me.
ReplyDeleteWhen the adopted girl grows up no doubt Faust will blame communism for their bad relationship.
Assuming that she remains unaware of the identity of her genetic paternal unit, there would be no way for her to know whether father might have been a colossal and abusive asshole, who might have left far more lasting and damaging scars in his wake.
ReplyDelete...
Is she advocating for the government to promote remarriage to opposite
ReplyDeletesex partners so that those poor kids can know the appropraite amount of
parental supervision from now on?
Call it the Brady Bunch act.
...
Because RELIGION> Check out her blog. Or not.
ReplyDeleteShe found Christ in high school, married a pastor and now is passionate about how same sex marriage is wrong because BIBLE. But she does purport to practice her belief in denying homosexuals equality in a nice way. So there's that.
Philip K. Dick agrees with you.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXeVgEs4sOo
I don't know if her complaint would have been exactly the same, she seems to think there's something magical about being raised by people with different parts. But I'm quite sure she would have found something to complain about.
ReplyDeleteThere's a delicious opportunity for a blog post satirizing this deluded woman and her dissatisfaction with her Faustian life but she's just too pathetic to warrant the effort. Besides, today's internet chatter is rightly focused on THAT BONE-HEADED CALL AT THE GOAL LINE!
ReplyDeleteHeh.
Sorry Mr. Gruber, clean out your desk, your services are no longer needed.
ReplyDeleteChildren raised by parents who place them on a pedestal are invariably the snottiest. When I meet obnoxious shitheads I often ask enough questions to ascertain their upbringing and, surprise!, guess how a lot of them were raised?
ReplyDeleteBog weeps.
Hasn't she already come out strongly against bastards, even the small good hairy ones?
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry to hear about your friend.
ReplyDeleteThey're arguing for something about which they have absolutely no fucking experience.
ReplyDeleteI mean, I grew up without a pony - so what? I'm going to whine about my childhood because I didn't have a pony? It's all fucking relative, fercrissakes. I celebrate what I did have, not whinge and bitch and moan (where some have real reason - poverty, abuse, etc., etc.) about what I didn't.
She's garden variety BIBLE stupid. Nothing more, nothing less.
A lot of theocons have discovered that their 90s-era arguments against no-fault divorce are easily remixed into arguments against gay parenting.
ReplyDeleteI think she's going to stick with blaming gay marriage. It's where the money is.
ReplyDeleteBut Mr. Brady is queer as a two dollar bill and Mrs. Brady is shagging his eldest boy.
ReplyDeleteIf I'd known the subtext I might have enjoyed that show.
This "parents must sacrifice for children" thing is very reminiscent of the blog Cedar Generation which, when I read it years ago, was full of images and memes built around the idea of the mother duck who plucks her own duckdown from her own breast to feather a nest for her children. Without pain and self sacrifice, motherhood just wouldn't be worth it.
ReplyDeleteShe can't even follow her own thinking, because nothing in her complaint actually has anything to do with gay marriage.
ReplyDeleteYou might have expected that the children of same-sex unions would have nothing but glowing things to say about how their family is “just like everyone else’s.”
ReplyDeleteThere's someone who knows nothing about families.
I still consider The Brady Bunch the height of inclusion shown by any television episodic, ever. It challenged us all to think about certain issues; to slide a hand past the waistband of comfort and scratch at acceptance, and laugh at the foibles of those less us.
ReplyDeleteI mean, when Carol (formerly Carlo) marries Mike, the dope-smoking octogenarian with a shady past, well, you knew fireworks were strapped to ducks all lined in a row.
And the children! Greg rebuffing the advances of, then killing, the high school quarterback Chad was a twist many of us tied a half-hitch in our panties over, especially when it was revealed that Chad’s mother was a Jewess from Potsdam! Of course Marcia was no slouch in the surprise department either, what with her secret affair with Henry Kissinger and love of doing "it" in the War Room.
And poor Jan. So desperately wanting to out-do Marcia but born without genitalia. Is it any wonder she turned to the Lord and his works, burning down clinics that provided medical services for
women who actually had female private bits? Her discontent made her a true martyr.
What was Peter doing, exactly, when he was spending all that time in the tree fort and how, exactly, did Tiger end up in the Great Kennel in the Sky? And Bobby’s heartfelt storyline as an
altar boy at Schism Deep of the Holy Soakers brought forward the complicated bare-skin connection between sacerdotal and repellent the country had yet to wrestle with.
Plucky little Cindy certainly seemed content, though, always fussing about with Alice (played with elan by a dragged-up Edgar J. Hoover.) Her cleft lip and speech impediment never seemed to register when this sprite was on screen, and our warm acceptance of her and the rest of this wacky, wonderful family is a happy reminder of a time when America was truly great. Exceptional, even.
That is the weird thing about it. She's complaining about divorce. If her mother had remarried to a caring and loving man with an extended family, her complaint would have been the same.
ReplyDeleteMy guess is that having one at the end of your biological/fertile period is part of the same thing. First you are fertile and multiply, the you adopt.
ReplyDeleteHe couldn't bear to think of a life without her magic oven anymore, and wasn't ashamed to let everyone else in the hollow tree know about it.
ReplyDeleteDepending on her religious background, it may be part of the "save the little heathens" thing that's been popular in some evangelical circles for the past decade. Probably not, though, if she stopped with the one.
ReplyDeleteRight? She seems to be making a case that two people should stay in love forever. What kind of case is that? "The world would be better if it was a fairy tale. But only the very last line of the fairy tale -- not the parts where wolves eat children. And I can prove it!"
ReplyDeleteI wish my parents were alive and divorced rather than dead, but maybe that's just me. Does that make me "politically correct" or just not a fucking asshole?
ReplyDeleteGods of all tribes, make her read this comment if no others ever. My mother, in her 80s, has just asked me for resources to deal with sexual abuse she endured in her childhood. My father absented himself from me when I was 5 by crassly dying in an auto accident, and my stepfather was an alcoholic. This is what life is. Every single person on this planet has problems, the difference is the grace with which we carry them, and ideology does not dictate that.
ReplyDeleteIf Faust thinks life would be better for her if her parentage had been different, she desperately needs to leave her solopsistic kitchen and learn that the shadows moving outside her head have lives and histories of their own.
I don't know if you would have unloaded them, coozledad,, those white slavers can be pretty cagey negotiators...
ReplyDeleteWhere is Jenn of Ark when you need her?
ReplyDeleteDo you do parties?
ReplyDeleteThanks Gromet, I appreciate that. She was a tough, funny, unique kind of person--very hard to get to know, very fierce but also an (unpublished) poet of real merit. She just dropped dead a weekend ago while planning on baking a cake and making soup with her daughter for the coming storm. Its a great way to go except for the people grieving after you.
ReplyDeleteThis just demonstrates once again that gay marriage opponents should, by their own logic, argue that divorce should be made illegal. After all, it's the divorce Faust is whining about, not the subsequent gay parenting.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I think that if her parents had never divorced, she would be a shallow, self centered professional victim with happily married parents.
ReplyDeleteI imagine it would look a little bit like The Ransome of Red Chief.
ReplyDeleteI went back and read this again, and now I'm confused. I thought she was conceived/adopted as an infant by a lesbian couple, who then divorced, and she's saying being "fatherless" is a bad thing. But now I'm thinking she was born to a hetero couple who then divorced and her mom married a woman - and that marriage may/may not still be intact? If she had an involved biological father, why isn't her alienation and loss of fatherhood HIS fault instead of the fault of her mother's partnership?
ReplyDeleteSomeone tell me if I'm missing something about her description of her family.
I would like to take this comment out, propose to it on the first date, and then be dissapointed because it doesn't have any experience with other comments and is no good in bed.
ReplyDeleteIts quite incoherent. I had the same questions. I think she must really, really, have wanted to write that letter and join in with the other dissapointed children of gay couples but her circumstances don't really fit the bill so she just obfuscated. Its not possible to be that confusing and incoherent by accident.
ReplyDeleteNot without being a GOP 2016 presidential contender it isn't, anyway.
ReplyDeleteRight, on that note I want to point out something that I just read in Goffman's book on Stigma which is that when people are cured of whatever Stigma they've been carrying around they often have a really hard time grasping that their essential being hasn't changed and that in fact, their essential being wasn't really defined by the stigma in the first place. If you have a limp or a red nose and you assume that people treat you badly because of your limp or your red nose you are shocked to discover that eliminating that thing either doesn't change people's responses to you at all or doesn't change your response to people at all. You've been hiding behind it, using it as an explanation, all these years (is what they found).
ReplyDeleteDitto for divorce and gay parents. Its really clear that gay parents is something she used to explain why she was unhappy--but the truth is that she emerged from her adolesence, found her soul mate, and is raising a happy family and she admits that her mothering skills she learned from her mother. So what is the problem, really? The letter reeks of disingenuousness because what more can a person ask than that their parents parenting should prepare them to live the life they want, as the parents they want to be? She's grown up, happilly married, with children--what more of a springboard does she expect in this world from her parents?
A friend of mine who worked at a sperm bank attempted to get me to donate. I did not, but I did read over the forms. As I recall you could check a box that would make your identity available to the offspring, should they seek it at age 18, or you could check the "remain anonymous" box. The bank also required medical history -- self-reported, so prone to mistakes, omissions, and lies, but thorough, inquiring about the donor's parents and grandparents. That part was not optional, and was available to the mother during her selection process.
ReplyDeleteI don't know whether the procedures in place were industry standard nationwide, were due to California law, or were due to this particular bank being a decent operation.
The more ancient Christian image for this ideal is a pelican vulning and feeding her young with her blood, and it seems that Ms. Faust wants to take her particular interpretation of this virtue shaped by her daddy issues and bind the rest of us to it by law.
ReplyDeleteYeah, why didn't those heartless bastard parents put your needs first?
ReplyDeleteAfter all, "The onus must be on adults to conform to the needs of children, not the other way around."
First World/White People Problems:
ReplyDeleteMy parents’ divorce has been the most traumatic event in my thirty-eight years of life.Tough fucking life there.
And is desire to "gay-marry" now the sole cause of divorce?
Well, except for the hell-fire thingy.
ReplyDeleteWhat was it Joan would say to Melissa when she put her to bed? "You ripped me to shreds when you were born. Now good night."
ReplyDeleteIt's located by Leprichan Lane, a little north of Pot O' Gold Road.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the new word!
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to grow out of the habit of feeling sorry for oneself. Lots of people feel like damaged goods because of where we came from, myself included.
ReplyDeleteYou don't often see much wisdom on bumperstickers, but I saw one that read "I'm not okay; you're not okay... but hey! It's okay."
I like that.
Do I!
ReplyDeletePhoenix, right? Pelicans are a little different.
ReplyDeleteaskthebigot.com. I think they dug up irony's grave and then skull-fucked it repeatedly before cremating it.
ReplyDeleteThomas Jefferson resents your remark.
ReplyDeleteShe gets the gold medal in the Victim Olympics.
ReplyDeleteHoly carp you're right - she's not upset that her parents were two women - she's upset that her parents got divorced because her mother decided to stop living a lie. She wanted her mother to have a miserable life in the closet just so that she could have a "normal" life for herself.
ReplyDeleteWhat a miserable little shit. I could understand that sentiment from a teenager or even a 20-something, but this woman is nearly 40! By that point you should be able to come to grips with the fact that sometimes people marry each other for the wrong reasons - like because it's 1972 and you are in denial about the fact that you're gay.
Not exactly - apparently she was born to a hetero couple, which divorced, and her mom entered a lesbian relationship, which raised her. So her existence itself wouldn't seem to be at issue.
ReplyDeleteOdd that she apparently isn't pissy about the father who didn't raise her.
SELF-SACRIFICE
ReplyDeleteSelf-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without blushing. 178
If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.
G.B. Shaw
Maybe she should get together with that crazy European guy who thinks governments should arrange girlfriends for men, presumably using force.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reddit.com/r/Drama/comments/19nwpa/governmentsgetgirlfriends_ama/
Actually, in the Christian tradition it is a Pelican that vulns its young, though the Phoenix was also appropriated as a religious symbol for obvious reasons. If you google "pelican vulning" you can see many examples of this image from church windows and heraldry. From what I understand, the reason the pelican is often depicted without its pouch is that some early artists didn't know quite what it looked like, so they did their best based on descriptions, and these anatomically incorrect images persisted.
ReplyDeleteTry this one , from St. Martins' in Tours. Remember, unless people lived by the sea, they wouldn't know what a pelican would/should look like back then:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.martinoftours.com/Images/Image70.jpg
No, but lots of heteros are wanting to gay re-marry cause the licenses, cakes, and venues are way cooler.
ReplyDeleteShe's 38 years old? Isn't it about time she stopped whining about this?
ReplyDeleteShe's apparently found someone to pay her to whine, which might be a factor. Although I'd also like to think I'd have more dignity, to say nothing of loyalty.
As King Lear might have said had he time, "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a gullible rightie child."
ReplyDelete"She's 38 years old? Isn't it about time she stopped whining about this?"
ReplyDeleteI wonder how often her pastor husband is like "Honey, I know you're mad at me for having an affair with the organist, but it's not me you should be mad at. Be mad at your lesbian mom. If it weren't for her, you'd know how men have to be and you'd find it easier to accept."
If Faust and others like her were arguing that couples with kids and problems should try to work things out before splitting and raising their children with other people, I'd agree with her as far as it goes. Qualified agreement with case-by-base exceptions, but she'd have a point. But obviously there are reasons other than pique why parents can't go on together. Sexual orientation is one. An abusive partner is another. And then yes, there's the Grand MoFo himself, Death. That's a lot to ignore without bumping your head on your large intestine.
ReplyDeleteGo Rainbow Warriors! Next yr. for sure!
ReplyDeleteThey fuck you up, your mum and mum...
ReplyDeleteThis kind of maternal selflessness is often advocated with a tacit "You poors and suckers sacrifice yourselves now. I'll, um, catch up later."
ReplyDeleteWrong denomination.
ReplyDeleteChild-centered? These are the people who have fits about toothless U.N. resolutions on children's rights, & who believe that "their" children are their property.
ReplyDeleteThing is, I don't remember any great conservative enthusiasm for child-centered parenting and education. What Faust is saying is only for the purposes of putting a damper on same sex marriage. It's an ad hoc argument, "ad hoc" being Latin for "bullshit".
ReplyDeleteCOVENANT MARRIAGE OR DEATH!! NO COMPROMISE!!! IT'S IN THE BIBLE!11!1!!
ReplyDeleteI want to stay up all night eating magic mushrooms and binge-watching this comment.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I have some dear friends who went through the exact same thing. Man/woman marry, have two daughters who are in jr. high/high school when mom stops living a lie and comes out. Older daughter freaks and has trouble handling all of it, to include the divorce. Younger daughter seems to handle all fairly well.
ReplyDeleteOf course, by the time she turned 20 eldest daughter had tearfully and sincerely apologized to mom and her lover and was fully accepting of it all. Today dad and his fiancé, mom and her fiancé and both daughters have a beautiful family.
It ain't Ozzie & Harriet but it works.
Which brings us to the 38 year old still acting like a self-absorbed teenager.....
She would have gotten the platinum medal if it wasn't for those meddling gays.
ReplyDeleteSeems to be the problem, doesn't it. Her family was like everyone else's, but she wanted it to be better than all us dweebs.
ReplyDeleteI was born to a couple named Mary and Jane
ReplyDeleteAnd I got howled at by Herman Cain
But it's all right now, in fact it's a gas!
It's all right, I'm getting wingnut cash,
Wingnut Cash, Cash, Cash!
They din't mean to, but they did.
ReplyDeletebecause your dad was worthless scum
they figured he was better hid.
They say that if you're god hates all the same people you do, it's very likely you made him up. What's it mean if your god hates all the same people you hated when you were 9? Besides that you're kind of an asshole, I mean.
ReplyDeleteI had a pony when I was a child. Believe me, they are very overrated.
ReplyDeleteIt means that you'd be able to bribe your way into heaven with a cool Lego set and a couple of root-beer floats, which is simultaneously the best and worst argument for and against it being true. 'Cause who'd want to spend eternity waiting for a deity with the maturity of a nine-year-old to have a tantrum?
ReplyDeleteI've met actual flesh-and-blood ponies. Nobody likes them much, and the ponies return the feeling. With interest.
ReplyDeleteYep. It's fun to see the smoke come out of their ears when the conclusion becomes inescapable even for them.
ReplyDeleteIf cattle and horses had hands, and could fashion statues of their gods, their gods would (of course) have hooves and hands.
ReplyDeleteXenophanes (570 - 475 bc)
What a kid needs is a mule to work. And the mule needs the kid to hang out with and be good for nothing.
ReplyDelete'She also tells us, "many are of the opinion I should not exist...'
ReplyDeleteDoes she tell us what we might have done to bring this about? Just in case, time travel.
See, lesbians are only interested in catting around for their own gratification, whereas heterosexual men reliably put aside their desires in the interests of being a good Daddy.
ReplyDeleteDoes she even realize that heterosexual divorce, death, or single-parent families exist? She had the worst childhood ever, except she didn't, and it's all because of Teh Gay.
ReplyDeleteI'm at a loss to understand how banning gay marriage would have brought her daddy back, but then I never was much good at understanding the inner turmoil of unbalanced adolescents.
ReplyDeleteI will never forget them doing the haka at the 2008 Sugar Bowl. 'Course they proceeded to get stomped by UGA, but that's some pregame prep you don't want to miss trying to get a Coke.
ReplyDeleteNo shit. If you didn't go hungry, weren't beaten, had clean clothes and a place to live, and even a hint of love from a parent, that's about as good as it gets. Same goes for parents, as I once lectured my own dad: don't bitch and moan about kids not living the life you imagined for them. If they're grown and no one has an addiction or has been to jail or even had a child without being married, well, it doesn't really get any better than that - congratulations, you must have done at least some things right as a parent.
ReplyDeleteSounds to me like Faust still has a very child-like view of parents, as omnipotent perfect beings. Most of us have figured out by the time we reach her age that no, they're just people like the rest of us, who are entitled to the full quota of human error.
Reminds me of one of the funniest things I've seen in awhile. The "pony ride" at the local po-dunk Fall Festival had a portable corral set up around it; on the top rail of one of the sides there was this index card attached to the top rail, which said in fairly small letters: "Warning: Ponies may bite." Which I just found hysterical, not only because of the understated warning, posted in small lettering on a tiny 3 x 5 card, but also because it was placed so high that those most likely to say, stick their hands through the fence to pet the ponies and perhaps be bitten, weren't even tall enough to see it. Then there's the existential appeal of the statement itself: "Warning: Ponies may bite." Reminds me of the time I said to my cat, "Sometimes, Eartha, the bunnies bite back." You know, the kind of statement that's appealing with no other context.
ReplyDeleteSome of my happiest moments have been spent wallowing in self-pity! But I wouldn't want to base my life philosophy on it!
ReplyDeletePeople of the time didn't realize the pelican mommy had a pouch out of which she was feeding her babies. So much more practical that making them cannibals!
ReplyDelete"After all, look at me! I'm the product of an intact home!"
ReplyDeleteMajor Frank Burns
Oh, I think you've done quite well without me, Grasshopper.
ReplyDeleteAnd she imagines that trapping her mother in that situation would not have resulted in any resentment or frustration at all.
ReplyDeleteIt must be- Illegals! Homeless! The list is a very long one.
ReplyDelete"Make. Your. Kid. Feel. Guilty. To this day I wake her up in the middle of the night and say, 'Melissa, you ripped me to shreds. Go back to sleep.'" —Joan Rivers, c.1983.
ReplyDeleteI had one; he was a jerk when I got him because he'd been mistreated by a family of serious bible thumpers, but he came around and was a good pony. Thing is, they are smarter than horses, and that can be a good and a bad thing...
ReplyDeleteYes, but is it art?
ReplyDelete...and the portions were so small.
ReplyDeleteA guy in my dorm had a paid donor ponzi scheme running one year. He had business cards printed with the title "Donor Manager" and an actual sperm bank's address. You had to pay him to get on his roster before you could donate and he collected a processing charge on each donation, but you'd get all that back and more once you were a Lab-Certified Trusted Donor.
ReplyDeleteYou'll be surprised to know I wasn't one of the ones who fell for it. I'm just one of the ones who thinks about launching the scam myself any time I run out of money.
Her complaint seems to be about divorce, not gay marriage.
ReplyDeleteIn a nutshell, you were raised by two lesbians, I was raised in a Baby Jesus Approved nookyular fambly. Your childhood was great, mine sucked. You're all grown up and bitching about it (whatever "it" is, I got over it. Fuck you.
ReplyDeleteOK. I think that that's the case with Lopez, as well, and he was similarly cool with Dad showing up well after the real gruntwork of raising a kid was done. Maybe the real dynamic is Lopez and Faust doing some old-fashioned mommy-blaming.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was wondering about the seeming contradiction. Looks like she grew up, took the Right fork in the road, got her brain washed real good, and now retroactively blames her Mother's lesbianism for the horrible childhood she never knew she'd gone through till she found Jesus and Godly Homophobia. Maybe her childhood *was* a bit sub-par, what with the divorce and all, and she was searching for answers, as people will do, but all she ends up with is placing blame where there probably isn't any, and feeling even holier as a result. In the zero-sum world of the Xian Right, I guess that's what you gotta do...
ReplyDelete"While I did love my mother’s partner and friends, I would have traded
ReplyDeleteevery one of them to have my mom and my dad loving me under the same
roof."
Hey, the word "love" was used twice in that sentence, so by the x=x principle, she would have traded her mother's happy relationship and all her friends to get her mother and father living under the same roof and...
...being wholly willing to trade her and every one of her friends for a little personal satisfaction.
Well, you know, as long as EVERYONE is hiding a knife behind her back, it's fair, right?
Yes, because of the icky. And maybe she caught a certain amount of that shit from her "friends" in jr and high school? And threw her Two Mommies under the bus?
ReplyDeleteI hope he made good money. That's a lot of spunk-handling.
ReplyDeleteThe technical heraldic term for this image is "a pelican in her piety". So you can see why it would appeal to a whiny, self-pitying Christian bigot.
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking reboot!
ReplyDeleteWait - so she thinks gay people shouldn't be allowed to marry because they might get divorced? Because straight couples NEVER do that!
ReplyDeleteIsn't this all a long argument that divorce should be banned, rather than that gay marriage should be banned?
ReplyDeleteThe onus must be on adults to conform to the needs of children, not the other way around.
ReplyDeleteWhich is why I am sure she supports mandatory vaccinations.
Hang on a second!!
ReplyDeleteShe is 38. Her mother was never married to her partner while this woman was growing up. What on earth does this have to do with anything?
But that is what she already is.
ReplyDeleteBit let's take her at face value: Outlaw divorce!
It takes a majorly defective personality to want to be friends with people who despise your parents, and even more defective to actively reject your parents in an effort to court those people.
ReplyDeleteBut I guess that some people see Maslow's hierarchy and decide it needs to be a plateau on which to rest their beers at the "belonging" level.
Funny thing is, she's on it as well.
ReplyDeleteEasy, big fella. I'm going through the same thing with my mother now that my father passed away. Suddenly mom's coming out as rather racist, and she's completely lost all sense of empathy and compassion. Her world has narrowed down to herself and her cat.
ReplyDeleteIt's taken me a year, but I've finally managed to step back from the situation so I'm not mortified by mom's attitudes and what comes out of her mouth. When I found myself apologizing to the Black visiting nurse for what my mom was saying, he let me know that it's a not-uncommon thing when dealing with folks in the 80+ age group, especially as their faculties decline.
At the Seattle zoo, there was a sign that said, "Ponies bite." My father was impressed with what a "simple, declarative sentence" it was. No shilly-shalling around the issue at all. We all kept our hands on our side of the fence.
ReplyDeleteI want to put this comment on my iPod and play it on continuous repeat.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes! Hillary Clinton, who is sooooo lesbian she had to kill her lover Vince Foster because, um, White House Christmas tree in the Travel Office with a ballpoint pen.
ReplyDeleteOr something.
Thing is, I don't remember any great conservative enthusiasm for child-centered parenting and education.
ReplyDeleteThat's only because you don't understand the function of children as conservatives see them.
First and foremost, children are useful only as cudgels with which to beat political opponents. Thus anti-abortion, but also anti-maternity leave, anti-contraception, and (now) anti-adoption. It's child-centered politics in which family-values policies invariably result in what's worst for the children.
I would like to subscribe to receive this comment on DVDs.
ReplyDeleteAnd is desire to "gay-marry" now the sole cause of divorce?
ReplyDeleteApparently there are legions--perhaps tens of millions--of good conservative Christian men for whom the only thing keeping them "straight" is the law's refusal to recognize gay marriage. This is the only way I can figure that gay marriage poses any sort of threat to traditional marriage.
"Or at least the wolves only eat the right children, and the good ones live happily ever after."
ReplyDeleteOh! My daddy who wasn't there
ReplyDeleteWould have raised me straight and square
And all our days would have been so fair
With my daddy. Who wasn't there.
I wonder how many of those "many" are people in her own camp--conservative Christians who think people like her are the product of abomination merely for having chosen the wrong parents.
ReplyDeleteIt's even more fun to see the smoke come out of their ears when the marriage becomes inescapable even for them.
ReplyDeleteIt takes a special kind of guy to pull that off. Not just any jerk can handle it.
ReplyDeleteProblem is, if the donor was, say, 23 when the donation was made, he had no way of knowing or reporting the heart attack he'd be having when he turned 58, or the cancer he developed when he was 64.
ReplyDeleteI had no idear. How silly of me - of course the phoenix doesn't feed its young, cause it burns before their birth, duh. That's just logic!
ReplyDeleteThese are the people who had a fit when the First Lady suggested that children ought to eat right and exercise.
ReplyDeleteWere you at a public school? Why the hell would a school bring in a religious group that could even possibly comment on adoption and in vitro? (I'm not doubting your story. I just amazes me when I hear about stuff like this going on.)
ReplyDeleteHow does 'I never really felt close to my stepmom and I projected my wishes onto an absent divorced parent' translate into "We have to recognize that all children of same-sex parents are being raised in brokenness." ?
ReplyDeleteI get that divorce can be really hard on a kid but if it's ruining your life at 38 it's time to find a therapist, not a political cause.
As an adoptee, I can testify first-hand that there is an awful lot of hate out there for adoption. The shit people have said to my face would curl my (loving adoptive) parents' hair.
ReplyDeleteIndeed there are. The authoritarian mind is a thing of wonder.
ReplyDeleteSo when it comes to marriage and divorce, the government knows better than parents on what's best for their kids, but when it comes to vaccines, parents are the real experts and must be allowed to follow their own morals and values?
ReplyDelete"Somehow I think that if her parents had never divorced, she would be a shallow, self centered professional victim with happily married parents."
ReplyDeleteSeconded. It's pretty clear that she's pulling this because of her religious beliefs.
It's martyrdom-Oh what a good person I am for loving an inferior (non white) being. I'm not saying all Chinese adoptions or even all Chinese Christian adoptions are like that, but I get that vibe from some.
ReplyDelete