Obergefell Fallout: Heather Has Two Daddies—and No Mommy

By Jane M. Orient, CP Op-Ed Contributor Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Douglas Hallward-Driemeier and Mary Bonauto, lawyers for the plaintiffs in Obergefell v. Hodges, speak to the media after arguments about gay marriage at the Supreme Court in Washington, April 28, 2015. The Supreme Court appeared sharply divided on Tuesday along ideological lines on whether the Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage, but Justice Anthony Kennedy, a pivotal vote, seemed open to legalizing gay marriage nationwide. | (Photo: Reuters/Joshua Roberts)

The destruction of the American family is more likely a cause than a consequence of the gay-rights movement. But what began with easy divorce and widespread cohabitation may be brought to total meltdown with same-sex "marriage" and the idea that gender is "fluid."

Government schools have already been indoctrinating children in the "new normal" with books like Heather Has Two Mommies.

Radical cultural revolution hides behind corruption of the language. The word "parent," for example, didn't used to require the adjective "biological." In biology, each of the two parents contributes half of their offspring's DNA. It was the parental surrogates that needed an adjective, such as "adoptive" or "foster."

Biologically, two mothers is an absurdity (although modern science is trying to create a hybrid mother out of one woman's cell nucleus transplanted into another woman's cytoplasm). But having no daddy in the home is tragically common. And in 2012, 40.7 percent of all American births, and 72.2 percent of births to non-Hispanic blacks occurred out of wedlock.

One purpose of matrimony is to establish paternity, although even with illegitimacy and divorce, the identity of the baby's father is usually known and recorded.

But with modern fertility treatments, especially in the context of same-sex liaisons, the baby's daddy may be an anonymous sperm donor, picked from a catalog. And the child may never even know who her mother is.

What happens now that "love has won"? Boys with same-sex attractions can contemplate courtship, a hearts-and-flowers wedding ceremony, and a family. The child's birth certificate might have entries for "parent 1" and "parent 2" instead of "mother" and "father."

But somewhere there's a woman who carried and nourished Heather for 9 months. Very likely Heather is her child, but perhaps not in the days of egg "donations" to help pay bills.

Except for medical personnel, the woman was alone when the seed was planted. There was no husband or father to share the excitement of the baby's first movements. It is unlikely that "parent 1" or "parent 2" sat with her as she labored. And then the baby was gone. The mother or surrogate collected a paycheck, but she'll never see the dance recital or get a card on Mother's Day. Where is the love for her?

And where is the maternal love she might have given the baby? And the love from the doting maternal grandparents and aunts and uncles, and the love the child might have given to them? Daddy 2 may give her a juice box when she is sad, like in the Broadway show Spelling Bee, but is that the same as the tie mothers and fathers have to their own flesh and blood?

Half of the child's ancestry is obliterated, and many of her siblings and half-siblings will be unknown. She may have only one known blood tie, to one member of a same-sex couple.

Beyond that, she is an atomized element in the Matrix. Her mother or father was a vendor, and she is a commodity.

It's a big problem for educators pretending that nothing has really changed. The Bible of course must be removed from the curriculum and even the library. There's far too much begetting in there, and the question of who begets whom is treated as supremely important. And what to do with world literature from the beginning of recorded history, where characters are men or women, who have a mother and a father and complicated family relations spanning generations? What of the names, like the Scandinavian Kristin Lavransdatter (daughter of Lavran), or the Hebrew "ben" for "son of," or Russian middle names like Ivanovich for a son or Glebovna for a daughter, derived from the father's first name?

Children raised by same-sex "parents" cannot be shielded from knowledge of their loss without alienating their generation from its cultural heritage as well as biological reality. There are no old books about two mommies or two daddies.

It's a brave new world, where children are given a Social Security number rather than a patronymic at birth. "Mother" might even become an obscenity, as in Aldous Huxley's novel. And love? Will that be what everybody has to feel for Orwell's Big Brother?

ane M. Orient, M.D., executive director of Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, has been in solo practice of general internal medicine since 1981 and is a clinical lecturer in medicine at the University Of Arizona College Of Medicine.