Celebrating Partner B Day

A couple of interesting items on the issue of homosexuality.

The first is a story on David Akinsaya. He is a BBC journalist who has lived as a gay man for many years, but no longer wishes to do so.

Why? Because he doesn’t like the lack of fulfilment of not being able to have a wife and children in the normal way. He says,

what I long for is a nuclear family – wife, kids, the lot. I just want to be normal ... In my present way of being, no one depends on me and I, myself, have no one to rely on. When you have a wife and child, they’re yours and you are theirs.

There are gay couples who have children, but I don’t want to be one of them, as I don’t think it’s fair on the child ... The only way it would feel right for me to have a child is if I’m in love with their mother.

Here we have a recognition of two things. The first is that the liberal ideal of individual autonomy is not all it’s made out to be. David Akinsaya has the opportunity to live an independent lifestyle, but finds it unsatisfying. He wants to make the deeper commitments, and to take his place within an interdependent family.

The second is that homosexuality, by its very nature, is not equal to heterosexuality. Homosexual men have limited options in forming families. As David Akinsaya acknowledges, a child needs a mother, as well as a father who loves the mother. A homosexual man cannot meet such requirements. Homosexuality therefore imposes a radical restraint on human potential which heterosexuality does not.

The other interesting item on homosexuality has a very different theme. Here in Melbourne a booklet has been produced to challenge the “homophobia” of ..... kindergarten children!

The taxpayer funded booklet has been sent to over 2000 children’s centres. It encourages staff to use books, posters, games, dolls and role plays to “promote awareness of homosexual issues” amongst pre-school children.

The booklet even suggests that Father’s Day should be changed to “A Day for Someone Special” and that the terms Partner A and Partner B should be used on forms instead of Mum and Dad.

These last two facts are a reminder that there are points of conflict between heterosexual and homosexual culture. In other words, if homosexuality is to be treated as equal to heterosexuality, then important aspects of a heterosexual culture will have to give way.

I recently wrote about a Melbourne University queer officer who wanted to abolish the very categories of man and woman.

Whilst less extreme, the homosexual activists in this case want to abolish Father’s Day as well as references to mothers and fathers. So again, in order to be “inclusive” of homosexual parents, the normal expression of a heterosexual family culture has to be repressed.

The heterosexual majority should not stand for this. We need to assert the primacy of heterosexuality and the culture deriving from and supporting a heterosexual family life.