Congratulations, nation! A new poll finds that a majority of Americans now think same-sex couples with children and married gays without kids (or the blessings of the Lord?) should count as “a family.”
Not everyone, though! Not everyone is convinced that a committed relationship between two men or two women (gasp!) is as God-blessed, pure, and equal as say, Brittney and K-Fed’s (or any other backup dancer/bodyguard who impregnated her along the way) sacred shotgun wedding in Vegas. Or even any of Newt Gingrich’s three blissful unions following adulterous affairs and the very honorable abandoning of whichever ol’ wifey is laid up in a hospital bed recovering from cancer now.
So, still got a ways to go. But still! Sometimes counting as a family is a big step up from being moral fabric-destroying hedonists who eat children for breakfast not rear them as their own, and whose deviant lifestyles cause Hurricanes to hit New Orleans and commercial airliners to smash into New York City, because God is not some hippie-dippie arugula-eating liberal with the crazy idea that providing a loving and stable home is more important than having the proper penis-vagina ratios. Sickos!
Of course, gay or straight, you’re not a real family unless you have at least one li’l precious miracle of God to show for. These are the rules of American domesticity!
So let’s remember:
Gays and straights with at least one kid = Family.
Gays and straights with no kids = A Couple (albeit an inferior & gross, or suspiciously heartless one, respectively).
“This is not because more people are gay now than in 2003,” says Brian Powell, a sociology professor at Indiana University, and lead author of the study. “This indicates a more open social environment in which individuals now feel more comfortable discussing and acknowledging sexuality. Ironically with all the antigay initiatives, all of a sudden people were saying the word ‘gay’ out loud. Just the discussion about it made people more comfortable.”
Ooooh, hopefully just comfortable enough to muster up the courage to go out and vote against the terrible gays (and lezzies!) for making them decidedly uncomfortable in their quest to destroy American society as we know it, and ruin the sanctity of quickie weddings by an Elvis impersonator in a run-down Casino-Chapel off the Vegas strip.
According to Prof. Stephanie Coontz of the Council on Contemporary Families, “Americans seem to be open to seeing same-sex couples with children as families, even while they hesitate to recognize their unions as marriage.”
I mean let’s not get crazy here! It is only 2010…
So, umm, go gays!? You’ve finally made it into America’s definition of family, along with creepy uncles, know-it-all, homely aunts, drunk mothers, and absent fathers! Hooray!
Even if you’re still considered less part of the family than Champ & Whiskers, the resident dog and cat.
David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, said he was not surprised by the findings.
“I like the standard definition of family: two or more persons related by blood, marriage or adoption. Keeps it simple and coherent.”
But, he added: “We live in groups, and we need each other. So it’s always a good thing, isn’t it, when any of us truly loves and is loved by another.”
Eh, only if Jesus, the elderly, the bigoted gun nut next door, and all the closeted homosexual Republicans secretly trolling for hot man tail while voting against them terrible queers, say so!