In his fathers’ day proclamation President Barack Obama made what pro-family leaders have said were a number of praiseworthy statements about fatherhood and the importance of fathers in the lives of their children. At the same time, the president drew sharp criticism for using the proclamation as an opportunity to show his support for homosexual parenting.
“An active, committed father makes a lasting difference in the life of a child. When fathers are not present, their children and families cope with an absence government cannot fill,” stated Obama, whose own father was conspicuously absent for most of his childhood.
However, the president then made his plug for homosexual families as normative.
“Nurturing families come in many forms, and children may be raised by a father and mother, a single father, two fathers, a step father, a grandfather, or caring guardian,” he said.
The carefully downplayed, but unprecedented remark drew sharp criticism from pro-family leaders.
“It’s just too bizarre for words,” Brian Camenker of President of MassResistance told LifeSiteNews.com. Calling the president the “apostle of gay rights” is not far off the mark, he said.
“He is pushing gay rights more than anybody could have dreamed that anybody would. Nobody would have thought that Barney Frank would have done this, and he’s my congressman,” continued Camenker. “I think it sort of fits with his general approach to America, values, Christian values, and everything else. It fits with his whole line of thinking about America and our way of life – it’s completely foreign and completely radical.”
Peter LaBarbara of Americans for the Truth about Homosexuality said that Obama was appeasing the homosexualists in his base, without regard to what effect homosexual parenting has on children.
“If an adult man chooses to embrace homosexuality, that’s one thing. But two men imposing their homosexual lifestyle on an innocent, impressionable child — thus intentionally denying that child a mother — is something quite different,” he said. “Shame on Obama for ‘gaying down’ the noble institution of fatherhood to appease his homosexual activist supporters.”
LaBarbara stated that “notorious promiscuity … is rampant in the gay male subculture” and harmful to children and their healthy upbringing. LaBarbara pointed to Dan Savage, a sex-advice columnist, who continued promoting “‘non-monogamy’ as an alternative to marital fidelity” even after Savage and his “husband” had adopted a baby boy.
In late May, President Obama emphasized his bona fides with the homosexualist movement by proclaiming June – for the second year in a row – as “Gay Pride Month.”
The proclamation outlines Obama’s policy agendas for the promotion of homosexuality including the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), establishing a right for homosexuals to adopt, repealing the military ban on open homosexual service, and enacting the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA).