Thursday, June 26

Gay Parents adopting issue on 30 Days

This Tuesday there was an impactful and important "30 Days." If they repeat it or if you can get it online or ondemand, please see it. It was an awesome program. "30 Days" if you don't know is a FX program done by Morgan Spurlock who did Supersize Me and the premise is a person must spend 30 days with a family or person of opposing view of an issue. In this one, a mormon mother and wife lives with two gay men and their four adopted children. It was very well researched and showed many different views to the issue. Included many pro-gay groups and also anti-having gay couples adopting children lead by a woman that had a bad experience that damaged her sexually and psychologically by her father who suddenly introduced his lover and it was complicated. Anyhoo, this woman could be construed as a cookie-cutter stereotype or cartoon character, but she did show more than one side. And even though at some points I hated her and what she had to say, the one-hour episode had lots of important things to say.

I was kinda disappointed they concentrated mostly on her and not the couple she stayed with but maybe because they were a bit more reserved than last week's hosts---last week was about a meat-eater living with vegans and the vegan host was a bit more outspoken. So, yeah what was funny was that this woman in this episode was crying and hated being confronted and kept saying she wasn't an expert on the subject and what is funny about that is that is how I feel most of the time when confronting hostile straight people. What I hate the most is when they don't see homophobic and say they aren't but still say hurtful things and are so smug about it. So she felt attacked but that is how we feel most of the time. In the end, she didn't want to change or budge, even though she has grown to love them and didn't like that the kids didn't hang out with her anymore--it was because of the conflict between her and their parents. Many of the pro-people were pushing on her that if gay parents can't adopt, then many many children end up with no homes. And I agree, many they came up too absolute and too strong, but maybe that is how it was edited, but they could have attempted easing into it.

She expected to be civil with everyone even though they have opposing views and that is not a bad idea, it might be naive but it is an ideal. I wish we could all come to compromises in the name of our children's safety. And just because they are raised by a straight couple, it doesn't mean they will be raised by sane and people of honor. One thing I liked what one of the parents said, "Gay parents are not accidental parents." Indeed, they are the only parents who choose to be parents and are not like.. oops. I'm late!