Gay-obsessed religious-righters aren’t satisfied with defending businesses that discriminate against LGBT people. They’re also demanding that government officially discriminate as well.
Yesterday, for example, Texas Values — an affiliate of James Dobson’s right-wing Focus on the Family — sent an email to supporters expressing outrage over calls for the state to recognize the same-sex parents of their children as, well, parents.
“Homosexuals Are Pressuring Texas to Remove ‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ From Texas Law, All Birth Certificates,” the group screams in a breathless (and deeply disingenuous) email.
So what’s this all about?
The Dallas Morning News last weekend reported about same-sex parents calling for state forms to allow both of their names to be listed on the birth certificates of their children. The article explains the heartbreaking experience of a woman who recently gave birth to a son conceived from one of her wife’s eggs and an anonymous sperm donor. The hospital refused to list both mothers on the birth certificate, saying the form has spaces only for one mother and one father.
“No matter what kind of family you have, you’re still a family,” the birth mother told the Morning News. “I feel like you should be recognized as such.”
The newspaper explains that birth certificates, as legal instruments, can be used to help establish parental rights and to qualify a child for financial support and health benefits.
So advocates for same-sex parents want birth certificates to be changed to allow both parents to be listed. Texas wouldn’t be the first to do so, as the Morning News points out. South Carolina’s birth certificates, for example, have spaces for “mother/parent” and “father/parent.”
But hateful political groups want to deny any kind of recognition for families headed by same-sex couples, even after (in fact, especially after) the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this summer that the Constitution guarantees the freedom to marry for gay and lesbian couples. They have even denounced decisions by state agencies to extend access to job-related benefits (such as insurance) to legally married same-sex spouses of public employees and retirees. (Of course, the state already provides access to such benefits for legally married opposite-sex spouses.)
It is abundantly clear that these pro-discrimination groups will hound and harass same-sex couples in every way possible. And they will demand that government join them in making life difficult for LGBT people and their families (who, of course, pay taxes like everyone else).
This is nothing less than callous, cruel and hateful. Most Texans reject values like that. But the extremists at Texas Values and similar groups are proud of them.
