Janet Parshall Bashes Gay Parents and Matthew Shepard

Posted on | January 19, 2006

I really wish anti-gay people would stop beating this "only a mom and a dad can fully support a child’s needs" bullshit. Because that is exactly what it is, bullshit. This was brought up during Larry King’s broadcast on 01/17 where he had conservative radio host Janet Parshall on. She made such comments like how letting gays adopt was "state-sanctioned child abuse" and other such nonsense about the "one man, one woman" model of parenting and Media Matters for America called her out on it. We already know for a fact that heterosexual couples are not required to raise a healthy, well-adjusted child. How do I know this? Because I am living proof as are millions of other people. I for one am getting sick of this "one man, one women" model being used to discredit gay adoption because in trashing gay adoption, they are also trashing single-parent households and thus trashing my mother. Not to mention none of these bigots have presented a full study on the subject that I am aware of that does not have some sort of hole in it (sample size, no single-parent households, etc.)

Here are some quick facts about single parents in the United States courtesy of Single Parent Central:

There are about 12,000,000 single parents in the US
28% of children live in a single-parent household
- 84% of that number live with their mother
56% of single-parent households have no other adult living there
The number of single mothers has remained constant while the number of single fathers grew 25% in three years
Men comprise one-sixth of the nation’s single parents
Of children living with one parent:
- 38% live with a divorced parent
- 35% live with a parent who has never married
- 19% live with a separated parent
- 4% live with a widowed parent
- 4% with a parent whose spouse lived elsewhere because of business or some other reason
Most single-parent children live in metropolitan areas
- 60% of them are in cities with populations of 1 million or more

The data is a little bit older than I would like but it is based mostly on US Census Bureau information which updates slower.

This whole forcing of the "one man, one woman" model also a pathetic attempt to say biology determines good parenting rather than behavior otherwise known as the "Nature versus Nurture" fight that has been going on for decades if not centuries. In one of his propaganda broadcasts supposed "ex-gay" Stephen Bennett kept making a big deal about how gays should not be parents by touting his one case-study in the form of an interview with Charles Mitchell who was raised in an unarguably bad environment where is adopted parent just happened to be homosexual.

What is even sicker about Parshall’s appearance on Larry King Live is that she brings up that tired "blame the victim" bullshit when the subject of Matthew Shepard was brought up. Of course she puts the disclaimer of:

"this is no way, shape or form a justification of what happened because it was wrong, wrong and wrong. Let there be no ambiguity there."

But then she discards that by bringing up how Matt flirted with the wrong people and so forth as if he asked for what happened to him. The recent case involving former Army Private Kyle Lawson also had the same accusation that Lawson asked to be beaten because he was hitting on his attacker. Parshall even goes further to suggest that if Matthew were heterosexual he would not have been murdered. She is correct in the statement but only in the sense that the two homophobic animals who killed him would not have selected him as a target and not the way she means in that the "gay lifestyle" leads to death.

"But in reality I understand that Matthew was somewhat of a person who hung around some of the gay bars and was coming on to some people. So, was he looking for trouble in all the wrong places?

If I were his mom, I would have given him some counsel stay away from that kind of a lifestyle because there’s a way that seems right on demand and the end therein is death and unfortunately it cost Matthew his life."

If Janet Parshall had been Matthew’s mother, he would have probably needed extensive therapy and psychiatric medication. That woman is a piece of work.

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Filed Under Gay Rights, NeoConservatives |

Comments

3 Responses to “Janet Parshall Bashes Gay Parents and Matthew Shepard”

Joe Brummer
January 19th, 2006 @ 12:19 pm

What people like this do is leave out the reallu important information about gay parents. They leave out the stats about all the happy, healthy, well adjusted kids who were raised by gay nad lesbian parents.

You can find those stats and more at:
http://www.colage.org
Adam
January 19th, 2006 @ 6:12 pm

Even if it were true that the ideal is ‘one man, one woman,’ it seems like two men or two women would still be preferable to only one man or one woman.
Tim W
January 22nd, 2006 @ 10:51 am

What is really sad is that Larry King continues to give disgusting bigots airtime and credibility. “one man-one woman” households have produced some pretty frightening results and it is beyond me why the question wasn’t asked about some of the disastrous results of these unions. Since it represents the supposed majority of the population, there are way more examples to refer to than single parent or gay spousal households.