"Being heterosexual doesn't make you a better parent."

SO, it appears anti same-sex marriage campaigners are worried about the children.

In full-page advertisements in newspapers this week, the Australian Marriage Forum (AMF) asks “is it ‘equality’ if you force some kids to miss out on their dad?” and “is it ‘loving’ to destroy the primal love between mother and baby?”

Well, here’s some questions in return. “Do you realise that not all couples who marry want, intend or can actually have children?” and “Are you aware how insulting and discriminating it is to others assume that this is the ultimate goal of a legal union?”

As a woman who hasn’t and won’t have children, I would like to tell the AMF that their views are as offensive and disrespectful as they are archaic and ignorant. A child being the goal of marriage is as simplistic and naïve as saying sex is only for procreation.

For a start, it negates anyone beyond child breeding years as having a purpose to wed the person they love. It tells the infertile that they may as well not bother with marriage. It tells anyone who has remarried that their union is of less value than one in which children will result.

And can we talk about what such shallow views say to the children who are already born, parented by gay couples? How dare they be told that their parents have “forced them” to miss out on a mother or father, that they are destined to be damaged by the loving unit that created them because their parents share the same chromosomal make-up.

In the print advertisements, the group has the audacity to compare the forcible removal of babies from young unmarried mothers in the past to gay parenting. “In 2013 our leaders apologised for the policy that forcibly adopted babies away from teenage mothers, breaking ‘that primal and sacred bond between a mother and her baby’,” the AMF ad reads.

“Now we are being asked to break that bond again, by a law instituting ‘marriage’ without a woman, which means families without a mother. A policy for ‘gay’ marriage will overturn state laws that stop two men adopting or creating a baby by surrogacy. So gay ‘marriage’ means an increase in motherless children.”

This statement is as preposterous as it is assumptive. There are many gay couples that have loving relationships with their child’s surrogate mother or donor father. And even if they don’t, it still doesn’t mean they will be lesser parents than heterosexual couples whether married or not.

And while we are on the subject of heterosexual marriage, let’s have a look at the divorce statistics shall we? It’s one in three. That’s one in three couples the AMF believes have piously wed in order to procreate. So, what happens when these marriages break down? One parent usually moves out, thus breaking the “sacred bond” they extol, be it maternal or paternal.

It is frankly idiotic to believe that the majority of couples marry to have children. They do it because they are in love and it is their right – or at least should be. However, look further down the page on the AMF’s ad and there is another insulting piece of propaganda, this time insinuating all gays are promiscuous. “Serious gay activists for not want to join ‘marriage’,” it reads, “they want to take it and remake it in their own sexually radical image.” If that’s not inflammatory enough, the AMF goes on to ask if “it is right to force homosexual education on all our children?” referring to the current Safe Schools education program.

Well, yes it is AMF because here is a salient fact – gay people exist, they love and they deserve respect. Denying or trying to hide reality from children is not good parenting, it is promoting ignorance.

In summary, the AMF says, “Same sex couples (the 1%) are free to live as they choose but they are NOT free to redefine marriage for the rest of us.”

Actually AMF, they are. And while you are quoting statistics, let’s remember that 72 per cent of all Australians support marriage equality, along with a majority of all Christians. Young people are the most vocal with 81 per cent between the ages of 18-24 pro changing the law. On the whole, 75 per cent of the population believes the reform is inevitable.

So, perhaps it is time to reconsider the current laws affect far more than the one per cent which you cite and start seeing that this not so much a Lesbian, Gay or Trans gender issue but a human rights one. And remember that being heterosexual does not make you a better parent; it just means you can be a married one when others who love can’t.

Have you seen these ads around? What did you think? 

For more on marriage equality…

18 arguments against marriage equality – and why they’re bollocks.

Stop telling me Christians don’t support gay marriage.

The Internet’s best responses to same sex marriage in the US.

Charlie Pickering just obliterated Tony Abbott’s opposition to same-sex marriage.