GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry on Friday, just hours before the deadline, filed his paperwork to formally become a candidate in the New Hampshire Republican primary. Perry paid the $1000 fee and shortly thereafter went on stage and lied. Rick Perry lies a lot (“I don’t know” if Obama’s birth certificate is real, homosexuality is like alcoholism, Texas teaches evolution and creationism, the science on climate change isn’t settled,) but this particular lie against gays, children, and marriage was not only wrong, it was pure bigotry — and pure evil.
That Governor Perry waited until the very last minute to file for such an important event made me chuckle. For a moment I imagined perhaps Perry was busy taking his two children, Griffin and Sydney, to school, or to a baseball game, or even, perhaps, hunting, at the family hunting camp, Niggerhead. Of course, the two Perry offspring are now in their mid-twenties so that imaginary scenario wasn’t likely, and no doubt the Governor had plenty of help raising his children, and plenty of government benefits to help financially, too. Unlike all gay couples raising children.
“As conservatives we believe in the sanctity of life,” Perry said, in front of 450 voters and supporters in the state’s largest city, Manchester. “We believe in the sanctity of traditional marriage. And I applaud those legislators in New Hampshire who are working to defend marriage as an institution between one man and one woman, realizing that children need to be raised in a loving home by a mother and a father.â€
Children, Governor Perry, need to be raised in a loving home. Period. If that home is headed by a man and a woman, two women, or two men, I really don’t care, and neither do the children. And neither should you.
There is not one shred of evidence that shows children growing up in a household headed by heterosexual parents do any better than children growing up in a household headed by homosexual parents. In fact, the science says that in some cases, children actually do better in households headed by same-sex couples — probably, at least in part, because those gay or lesbian parents had to work really hard to actually be able to adopt children. And, like I said, we have the science that proves it.
The lie that children need to be raised in a loving home by a mother and a father is just that — a lie. Two long-​term studies published in the past two years found just the opposite. In fact, one of them, a twenty-​five year-​long and vigorously peer-​reviewed study published in the journal Pediatrics, found that adopted children raised by lesbian parents are better–adjusted and do better in school than their opposite-​parented peers. Add to this the fact that we now have, “a study of gay dads that finds they are more likely than straight ones to focus on parenting over career, at least when their children are young.â€
Additionally, we do know that states that offer same-sex marriage equality also have the lowest rates of child homelessness.
(And while same-sex parent-headed households aren’t perfect, we certainly don’t have any reports like this for children being raised by same-sex couples.)
Even if Governor Perry and his ilk — like the National Organization For Marriage — actually are successful in their march into the 18th century, same-sex couples will continue to raise families and grow. Which means that re-establishing a second-class citizenship structure will only serve the egos of the bigots, not the needs of the children, who have what they need in terms of parents, but not what they need in terms of equality.
Republicans these days talk a lot about the difference between Democrats and Republicans. Republicans, talking about business and social issues, continue to claim that they believe in equality of opportunity, not the equality of outcome. I think that’s a fair principle. And I think they should apply it to those they claim to care about the most: families.
Why shouldn’t families headed by gay or lesbian parents have the same equality of opportunity as families headed by straight parents?
Twenty-two months ago, New Hampshire became the sixth state to allow same-sex couples marriage equality, after a challenging battle during which the Democratic Governor insisted on heightened religious protections before he would sign the bill into law in 2009.
But Texas Governor Rick Perry doesn’t know the first thing about New Hampshire, or gay marriage, or states’ rights, or what children really need. Because Governor Perry, up until a few months ago, thought that states should have the right to allow same-sex marriage because it was, in his words, a states’ rights issue. Until the Religious Right went crazy and Perry retreated into a Texas-sized corner.
Now, Perry thinks not only should same-sex marriage not be an option, but that New Hampshire should actually ram down the people’s throats a repeal of marriage equality, in a state that believes the law should stay — by a two-to-one margin.
“What we’ve found is those people who are in favor of gay marriage are much more intense in their positions and much more likely to take action politically then are opponents of gay marriage,” says University of New Hampshire pollster Andrew Smith, who finds that 62% of New Hampshire residents want the law to remain, and only 27% would support a repeal.
Sadly, for the theocratic Governor Perry, Smith also finds that “44 percent of those polled would oppose a candidate who favors a repeal,” according to a report by New Hampshire Public Radio earlier this month.
But the reality is that Perry isn’t running for Governor of the Granite State, and he’s not running for president (yet,) he’s running for the Republican nomination for president, and that means having lots of racism and bigotry on tap.
Rick Perry has spent a good part of his adult life at his family hunting camp named “Niggerhead,” so racism and bigotry are right up his alley. And that’s exactly where, as far as I’m concerned, Rick Perry can put his views on gays, families, children, and marriage.