Family Values

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The gay issue has a strange prominence and civic complexity in this campaign. When he was interviewed two weeks ago by NBC's Stone Phillips, President Bush talked about homosexual marriage: " a life-style that in my view is not normal. I don't, I'm not, I don't favor that." The heterosexual public seems disposed to tolerate homosexuality but less inclined to grant gays civil rights protection. Nearly half of those polled consider it "very important that homosexuals be prevented from adopting children," and 67% answered no when asked, "Do you think marriages between homosexual men or between homosexual women should be recognized as legal by the law?"

"If we're talking about family values, we're talking about sticking by those we care for," responds Donald Suggs, a spokesman for the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. "The way gay couples and their close friends have dealt with the AIDS epidemic is something that most so-called traditional families could learn a lot from."

Says Craig Dean, a Washington lawyer who has led the campaign for legal recognition of gay marriages: "We hold the same values of love, commitment, honesty and respect as heterosexual families do. ((The Republican position)) is an insult to millions of people in this country. They are saying, 'My family is better than yours.' "

Consider the case of Karen Grant of Goldsboro, North Carolina. She took her three sons, ages 13, 10 and 6, to the local library, and while she was helping the older boys find books, the six-year-old began browsing through a children's picture book called Daddy's Roommate, a book by Michael Willhoite written in the voice of a young boy whose parents divorce and whose father subsequently sets up housekeeping with his gay lover. The incident has created a storm and divided Goldsboro. The Grants call the book "antifamily" and claim among other things that it trivializes divorce and implicitly condones a homosexual life-style. What so upsets the Grants and others, including the editorial writer for Goldsboro's News-Argus, is that the mother in the book explains to her son, "Being gay is just one more kind of love and love is the best kind of happiness."