One of the side effects of the equality currently sweeping the nation is that no longer are the religious right figures opposing us able to hide behind a flimsy veneer of caring for families, faith or love for LGBT people. Their fangs have been coming out ever since it became clear that their movement will be given approximately as much respect in the history books as slaveowners and segregationists. Oh, back in the day, they were able to argue with some success that their greatest concern was for children. They lied and fearmongered (and still do) about what LGBT equality will mean for children, but they convinced people they didn’t hate gay people. They hid behind the lies and junk science of the “ex-gay” movement (and still try to, even though that movement is in tatters), claiming that they “love” LGBT people enough to encourage us to “change.”
No longer. And with the latest emanation from Laurie Higgins, head of the Illinois Family Institute hate group, I’d say the fangs may have officially come out all the way. In my time doing this work, I have never read or heard something this viciously sadistic from a religious right leader. Laurie Higgins, bemoaning the fact that librarians fight against the banning of books, while also working to keep hate propaganda out of the hands of children — Laurie calls it Christian literature, but millions of Christians more loving and knowledgeable than she would disagree fervently — wishes that there would be children’s books on library shelves which tell their side of the story. For instance, how about a nice story about a “little birdie” who is as joyful as a Menendez brother when its same-sex parents die of disease, so that it can be adopted by straight people? You think I’m kidding?
Will they ask for young adult (YA) novels about teens who feel sadness and resentment about being intentionally deprived of a mother or father and who seek to find their missing biological parents?
Will they ask for dark, angsty novels about teens who are damaged by the promiscuity of their “gay” “fathers” who hold sexual monogamy in disdain?
Will they ask for novels about young adults who are consumed by a sense of loss and bitterness that their politically correct and foolish parents allowed them during the entirety of their childhood to cross-dress, change their names, and take medication to prevent puberty, thus deforming their bodies?
Will they ask for novels about teens who suffer because of the harrowing fights and serial “marriages” of their lesbian mothers?
Will they ask for picture books that show the joy a little birdie experiences when after the West Nile virus deaths of her two daddies, she’s finally adopted by a daddy and mommy?
Surely, there are some teens and children who will identify with such stories.
Of course, there are already books that handle divorce. Straight people get divorced a lot, so it’s helpful to have literature like that, and it could help the children of a lesbian couple who divorces as well. No decent parents, gay or straight, expose their kids to their private sex lives, so to assume that children of gay male couples are automatically damaged by their “promiscuity” is hateful, but more importantly simply stupid. Transgender is a medical issue, one that Laurie isn’t willing to understand, but those are decisions best left to families working with qualified doctors.
But damn, that little birdie. What kind of seething hate must exist in Laurie Higgins’ heart to write something like that? Laurie has always been an unhinged activist — one needs only to peruse Truth Wins Out’s archives on her to see that — but this is something more. She is, of course, ignoring the fact that millions of gay couples are raising kids and that those kids experience, on average, just as much familial love, support and belonging as those raised by married straight people. But Laurie clearly hates gay people so much that she, when imagining the life of a “little birdie” with two daddies, finds it reasonable that the youngster would be jumping for joy if its parents were killed by disease. This is a grievous insult to every child in the world who has lost a beloved parent far too young.
When Laurie says some teens and children would identify with such a story, she’s not revealing anything about the children of loving gay and lesbian couples, because she doesn’t know any, and they do their best to protect their kids from people like Laurie, just as I will with my own children.
She’s saying something about herself, something quite frightening.
Congratulations, Laurie. You just out-Linda Harvey-ed Linda Harvey, up to now known as the most homophobic woman in America. Claim your crown.
[h/t Right Wing Watch]
