Quote:
|
So you never had stories read to you as a young child, ones that would conflict with the lifestyle the child is being brought up in if gay adoption went ahead. And you dont in any way consider the child would suffer somemajor confusion issues there too ?
|
Considering we're talking about 2005 rather than when Graham was a child (just turned 40, I believe), it's worth examining what a child growing up now would be having read to them. I have a child, and a few books for him. Call it politically correct do-gooding if you like, but I don't think any of them portray married couples as the only way to live, or indeed humans at all. They're mostly about bears and trains and fire engines, IIRC. No doubt this is evidence of the decline in morality as he'll grow up thinking that normality is a bear driving a fire engine.
Thinking about it, anyone growing up now will read Harry Potter, about an orphan growing up in a highly abusive family environment. Would that cause 'confusion issues', whatever that means? I read enormous amounts of Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons, two of the main characters* of which are brought up by a single parent mother, after their father died. So I read books that 'conflict with the lifestyle the child is being brought up in', and it doesn't appear to have left me with any problems.
Children are capable of coping with an enormous amount more than people credit them with - they are after all humans, with human intelligence - what they lack is experience. They aren't going to get it by being insulated from the real world, and they certainly aren't going to get it if you pretend to them that the world exists in agreement with your prejudices**. That's the recipe for a nasty shock later.
*Nancy and Peggy Blackett
** My grandmother, a highly God-fearing Catholic, once tried to stop me reading about Tchaikovsky, presumably thinking reading about homosexuals makes you gay.
[edit for spelling]