Yes, it really does
“First of all, Chick-Fil-A is delicious!! Secondly, this situation begs the question: Does believing that a legitimate family consists of a biological man, a biological woman, and children equate to being anti-gay?”—
It’s that word “legitimate.” Because as soon as you toss that in there, we have to assume you mean something by it. As I see it, it could mean one of two things:
- Based on some external standard or set of rules. For example, certain moves in a chess game are “legitimate” moves because they follow the rules of the game.
- Based on your own subjective understanding and prejudices.
Since there’s no external standard defining a family as “a biological man, a biological woman, and children.” It’s not a legal standard. Anywhere. So when you’re saying that a family constructed in some other way is “illegitimate,” I’m hearing “that family makes me uncomfortable and I don’t think it counts as a family.”
Of course, it’s not really the construction of the family that bothers you, is it? If two straight parents adopt, you’re cool with that, right? And if mom and dad are killed in a car wreck, you’re okay with grandparents being part of a family? Or maybe an aging grand parent can move in and still be family? Or if there’s just one child rather than “children”? Or maybe a single parent? (How about we make a single father who is also a widower under circumstances so tragic that you can’t even bring yourself to judge him?) What about a mom, a dad, and three children—but one of those children has a baby at age 15? If they decide that the baby is part of the family, does the whole group stop being legitimate?
None of this is a problem, right? It’s really just the gayness of it all that makes you fall back on the word “legitimate,” isn’t it? So, yes. If you announce that you believe that the only “legitimate” family is “a biological man, a biological woman, and children,” I’m pretty confident you are anti-gay.
