The primary group opposing passage of a
gay marriage bill in Illinois has joined the chorus of social
conservatives promoting the anti-gay parenting rhetoric of Robert
Oscar Lopez.
Lopez has claimed that gay parenting is
a form of “child abuse” and that any attempt by gay couples to
form families is a “crime against humanity.” He is celebrated
among social conservatives due to the fact that he was raised briefly
in a same-sex household – his mother and her partner lived in
separate homes for years before moving in together shortly before
Lopez's mother died.
“When your home life is so
drastically different from everyone around you, in a fundamental way
striking at basic physical relations, you grow up weird,” Lopez
wrote in an op-ed. “I just grew up in a house so unusual that
I was destined to exist as a social outcast.”
In a post titled Same-Sex Parenting:
A Form of Child Abuse, Laurie Higgins of the Illinois Family
Institute (IFI) touts Lopez's writings.
“Lopez describes what all
conservatives activists already know: The homosexual community and
its ideological allies have become a tyrannical, oppressive,
poisonous cultural force that compels conformity and compounds the
suffering of children intentionally denied mothers or fathers,”
Higgins
wrote.
“And still most Christians – and
shockingly their leaders – say relatively little. Ever anxious
that the non-believing world in its relentless misuse of Scripture
will excoriate them for judging (rightly), speck-looking, or
stone-casting Christians opt instead to become complicit in child
abuse.”
Writing at progressive blog
ThinkProgress.com,
Zack Ford responded: “Studies of same-sex parenting have generally
found no differences among the children in such families, including
any claims of 'suffering.' Higgins and the other groups that have
shone a spotlight on Lopez, magnify stigma against same-sex families,
creating the very harm they claim to be protecting the children
from.”