Saturday, December 23, 2006

DAD... WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR... ABSOLUTELY NOTHIN...

It was a bit of a shocker to read recently that the Vice President's daughter, Mary Cheney, and her longtime partner, Heather Poe, are expecting a baby for next spring. O'er here, the press had a lot to smirk about the issue since Papa Cheney happens to be one of those vile American Rightwing nutters whose homophobic administration has done everything in its might to turn gay people's lives into hell.

Dr. Kyle Pruett

What they apparently fail not to understand is that - for as far as I can see - it's actually that more and more state administrations seem to endorse the Bush Administration's point of view: indeed, the very state where Mrs. Cheney and Mrs. Poe are living in, Virginia, last month adopted a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. So, it's not just the White House, and while Euro MSM tries to spin the symbolism of the news as a sign things are moving in the "right" direction in America, the bottom line, for me at least, is that we have yet another state where it is understood how dead wrong the policy of same-sex marriage is, and all that inevitably will follow. I'm talking about gay adoption, children conceived in gay relationships, multi-parent gay relationships with children etc. etc. etc. If you think I'm kidding about that last one, in a TIME October 9, 2006 issue, "Europe's New Frontiers", a story could be read about 4-year old Parisienne Louise, daughter to Nathalie Jobard, 42, who with Sophie Rajzman, 38, forms a lesbian couple, and Joël Bedos, 41, who with Gilles Kleitz, 42, forms a homosexual couple. They form thus a 5-strong "family" of 4 gay people and one child. I suppose I am to include here a couple of examples to prove that I am not homophobic, but I'm convinced I will still be branded one by the leftozoids no matter how many examples I'd bring up. So to hell with them, and I don't mean the examples.

But while I am moderately optimistic about the continued existence in America of the Classical Family, which has been proven throughout 5,000 years of recorded civilization to be the most sound environment for raising children, I am downright pessimistic about that kind of Family in my own continent, Europe, and especially in my own country, Belgium. Indeed, Belgium, together with Spain and The Netherlands, allows not only gay marriage but also gay adoption, and I fear this is just the beginning. Curiously enough, in exactly the countries where birthrate is at its lowest - Spain, e.g., has a birthrate of 1.32 (2004) - legislation is the most liberal. But back to the United States.

In a December 12, 2006 TIME column, James C. Dobson, founder and chairman of Focus on the Family>, cites well-known Dr. Kyle Pruett, Child Psychiatrist of Yale Medical School to back up his defense of traditional marriage and the essential role of a father and mother in raising kids. Now, Dr. Pruett has indeed written Fatherneed: Why Father Care Is as Essential as Mother Care for Your Child. Personally, I'd be a bit more cautious about hiring the advice of the good doctor since imho he's still too much inclined to take the soft approach and see how things pan out. True, he argues a.o. that dads are critically important simply because "fathers do not mother."

But on the other hand, in an interview Dr. Pruett gave in 2004 to Religion and Ethics' Betty Rollin, he sounded as nuanced as your run of the mill euro politician:

Dr. Kyle Pruett
...I think it's naïve to think this is a piece of cake for either the parents or the kids, but I also think it's inaccurate to think of it as a form of automatic trouble. But so far, the cautious read of the research would be that these kids who are growing up in these families are basically not at risk. They don't show increased rates of mental illness. They are not very much unlike the other kids that they are going to school with.

...these children may fare better than children of single-parent families... Two-parent families, even when the two parents are of the same gender, do seem to provide a somewhat more supportive atmosphere for kids than single parents..."

According to Dr. Pruett, the evidence about what happens to children raised in same sex households is incomplete. There has been no long-term, 20-year follow up, something the child psychiatrist says is much needed.

Well, maybe America can afford to await the final results of Dr. Pruetts research, but Europe can't. I don't want to brag, but Europe can do with Outlaw's research right now, and its conclusion is that kids have to be raised by two heterosexual parents of different gender, basta. Living in Europe, I could easily narrow down the whole issue to a matter of simply preserving our precious species of white caucasians and their olive skinned spaghetti, tortilla and tofu brothers further south. After all, last month it came out that Mohammed was the most popular name given to newborns in the Caliph.., erm, Capital of Europe, aka Brussels. In the top ten for boys we find, apart from Mohammed, also Ayoub at 3, Rayan at 4, Mehdi at 5 and Zakaria at 8. For the top-10 for girls we spot Yasmine at 3, Aya at 4, Rania at 5 and Imane at 6. Try to compete with that using the Joël Bedos + Nathalie Jobard + Gilles Kleitz + Sophie Rajzman = Louise Bedos-Jobard-Kleitz-Rajzman Designer Kid Method and you end up, well, at the end. Probably faster than you think because the more kiddos like Louise Bedos-Jobard-Kleitz-Rajzman there are the more they may think a family like the travesty they grow up in are the norm, which might lead from the impressive birthrate of 0.5 of said family to 0.25 in the course of one generation. Waiting for yet another generation to have that evolve towards 0.125 will in all likelihood not be necessary, because it can be rather safely assumed that Europes postmetrosexual environment's tolerance for fancy social experiments will by then be somewhat less than the one shown today by the dwindling number of rightwing madmen like me, myself and I. But it's not only that. It's that Outlaw, after a 20-year research of his own, has established beyond doubt that the equipment used by men and women to procreate differs a goddam heck of a lot, e.g. a woman sports curved secondary equipment higher up that has the potential of driving a man totally bonkers while, curiously, it does not seem to be of direct relevance to the act of kid production. Also, it's that he suspects that men and women are, because of these differences, but not only just therefore, totally different human beings. And it's that he suspects very strongly that in order to keep these differences intact - after all, we are all for diversity, aren't we - it's best to have a man teach a boy what it means to be a man and a woman teach a girl what it means to be a woman.

I guess most who read DowneastBlog have by now come to the conclusion that waiting for Outlaw to disagree with President Bush is like waiting for Ted Kennedy to admit he screwed up badly in that Oldsmobile, and guess what? You're right. Still, while I do think the President may be right when he says that "Mary Cheney is going to make a fine mom, and she's going to love this child a lot,", I'm goddam sure Heather Poe can never make a fine dad. Don't get me wrong. I think Mrs. Poe is a decent person, as is the Vice-President's daughter. But pity the boy - if it turns out to be a boy - whose role model for manhood has him nothing more to offer than his mother. And I am being polite, mind you. I'm not even adressing the extremely insulting, underlying message of our newest celebrity couple that us males can be reduced to anonymous sperm suppliers whose task in a kid's life ends after jerking off in some sad cell over an old Hustler.


MFBB.