Today is the Third Annual Blogging for LGBT Families Day, an occasion to celebrate the beauty of non-traditional families. Kate and I are a child-free couple, but we’re doting aunts, and completely out of the closet to those we love. It means that nieces and nephews will grow up knowing us without a thought to our orientation, that it’s not a dark family secret or a guessing game.

The existence of thriving LGBT families of all shapes and sizes is a grave threat to the Dominionists who see life and love through a very narrow religious worldview, as if morality and good child-rearing is only present in a mother/father parented family. Even though all sorts of configurations of families exist—grandparents raising children, single parents, etc.—we have seen an obsessive focus by the right on denying LGBTs the ability to adopt or foster children, and to deny committed same-sex couples to marry, even though these are culturally and socially stabilizing institutions.It’s amazing to think that legislators like NC State Sen. Jim Forrester (R) are so hell-bent on making legal life difficult for LGBT families here in our state that one day into the legislative session he introduced his marriage amendment bill—Senate Bill 1608. Issues that all families care about—education, health care, unemployment—were not Forrester’s priority.

That’s why the visibility of LGBT families—and taking time out to honor them—is what will bring about change over time - the fossils of fear cannot continue to ignore the children growing up who don’t see their different families as odd, strange or immoral.

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