Do it for the Children

Most of the time, the right-wing/evangelical folks use the children to change things: stopping Happy Meals, censoring television shows.  But today, it seemed that the kids just weren't on their side.  Today there was a congressional hearing about overturning the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  And there were a bunch of the right-wing/evangelical folks to tell the world how DOMA is just so bad.


There is Thomas Minnery, Senior Vice President for Public Policy, Focus on the Family.  He had written testimony that cited an HHS study that said "same-sex" families were bad for children or "opposite-sex" families were better for them.  Sen. Al Franken actually had the HHS study in his hand and it actually said that children did better in "two-parent" households and that the parents' gender had nothing to do with it. (ThinkProgress.org)

Franken then said that since Minnery had lied he didn't "know how we can really trust the rest of your testimony."


But Mr. Minnery gave more anyway.  Sen. Leahy brought up the issue of not having the "same financial benefits that an opposite sex family would have" without marriage rights.  Minnery went back to "certainly children are better off with parents in the home."   (PamsHouseblend.com)

But, Leahy wouldn't let it go:

• "if you have parents legally married under the laws of the state - one set of parents are entitled to certain financial benefits for their children, the other set of parents are denied those same financial benefits for their children..."

And Minnery had to say yep.  That would be yes.


But, really it is just that some of these whackos simply hate gay people.  And they throw that hate around and blame all kinds of things on gays and their marriages.  Rabbi Yehuda Levin now says that gay marriage is what caused the murder of an 8 year-old Hassidic boy in New York.  "This came in the very aftermath of the marriage bill, my dear friends," he says.  And really, had nothing to do with a heterosexual, divorced observant Jew? (JoeMyGod)

Do it for the children, Rabbi.