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Strollerderby
A Massachusetts boy won’t be attending St. Paul Elementary School in Hingham after all. His application for third-grade at the Catholic school was rescinded during a conference call between Principal Cynthia Duggan, the parish priest, the Rev. James Rafferty, and the boy’s parents.
Rafferty told the boys mom, who was not identified in the NY Times story, that her relationship with the boy’s other mother ”was in discord with the teachings of the Catholic Church.” Continue reading »
It’s a continual lament around our house — there are so few films that are suitable for young children. My mother-in-law likes to take her grandkids to the movies, but it’s hard to find ones that we feel are acceptable. Being animated doesn’t automatically mean a film is okay for the little ones. Even Disney films are, in our house, “for big kids” because of the violence and gender stereotypes. So when a state decides to offer a tax credit for “family-friendly” films being made there, it sounds like an idea long overdue.
I imagine that, as a child in the foster-care system, it would be difficult to trust anyone, be it case workers, foster parents, or pretty much any adult. But when an entire foster-care program throws up its hands and walks away, that’s got to hurt. Especially when the reason is as irrelevant and malicious as a personal opposition to same-sex marriage. That, however, is exactly what the Catholic Church has done in Washington D.C.
Despite the fact that virtually every professional organization agrees with the American Psychological Association when they say “efforts to change sexual orientation are unlikely to be successful and involve some risk of harm, contrary to the claims of SOCE practitioners and advocates,” high school students in the Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland were given information from the group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays last week, claiming that sexual orientation is merely a choice. And a bad one at that.
In our house, it’s simply “The Trial”. My brother-in-law, who follows such things, says that this is probably the biggest case in the last 40 years. It will very likely affect every state in the nation and will either affirm or weaken the constitution, depending on the outcome. And whatever the outcome, in another twenty years’ time, it will almost certainly be moot, except as a chapter in high school civics books. The Trial, of course, is the case of Perry et al v. Schwarzenegger et al, also known as the federal challenge to California’s Proposition 8.
According to a psychologist testifying in the federal case challenging the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, same-sex parents are just as good as their mixed-gender counterparts. That’s not just one man’s opinion, however. It’s the finding of more than a hundred studies on the subject and the official opinion of the American Psychological Association and seven other professional organizations. And based on my own personal experiences, I have to agree.
There is far more to being a parent than genetics. Sure, there are animals where the male drops by, makes a deposit, and leaves the female to bear and raise the young on her own, but they’re, well, animals. Most of us, I think, see ourselves as being evolved past that. For humans, being a parent means caring for the child more than it means being genetically related. For that matter, other than in cases of medical issues, does genetics really matter?
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