I had a one hour radio debate with Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality, on Mickelson in the Morning on WHO News Radio AM 1040 in Des Moines on Wednesday. We discussed the problems facing American families, and also the recent Iowa same-sex marriage ruling.

My view is this: however one feels about gay marriage (and I have no problem with it), it is a small issue, and Christian groups which claim to be defenders of the family are misguided and/or hypocritical for focusing such an extreme amount of time and money on gay marriage while ignoring the real problems faced by American families.

These are: the divorce epidemic; the single motherhood epidemic; and the way family courts allow fathers to be driven out of the lives of the children who love them and need them.

Gay activists and gay marriage didn't cause these calamities--heterosexuals created them.

To listen to the commercial-free audio of the show, click here.

Some of the subjects discussed included:

1) My previous conflict with LaBarbera, in which I had said that respectable Christian/religious/conservatives groups should distance themselves from LaBarbera's toxic rhetoric against gays. To learn more, click here.

2) The controversial Lisa Miller/Janet Jenkins lesbian custody battle. In my blog post Lesbian Social Mom Target of Ex's Alienation Campaign--and the Christian Right Helps I explained:

The former couple joined in a same-sex civil union in Vermont in 2000 and had a child together in 2002. After their breakup, Miller, the biological mother, moved to Virginia with their daughter Isabella, won sole custody, and excluded Jenkins from the girl's life.

Jenkins had been involved in Miller's pregnancy from the beginning, was present in the delivery room, worked to support the family, and played an important role in Isabella's life. Following their breakup, Jenkins was granted visitation rights but Miller refused to comply. Jenkins has pursued a long, hard legal battle to get back in her daughter's life.

To learn more about Miller-Jenkins, click here. To learn more about lesbian custody battles in general, see my co-authored column Lesbian child custody battles and heterosexual divorce (World Net Daily, 8/5/08).

3) The unwed birth rate has reached an all-time high, and 90% or more of these mothers are heterosexual. The divorce rate is also near an all-time high.

4) After divorce, short-sighted mothers and family courts usually permit decent, loving fathers only a few days a month with their children. When mothers refuse to allow fathers to see their children, family courts often do nothing to enforce visitation orders.

5) Hundreds of thousands of innocent fathers have been booted out of their own homes via restraining orders based on false domestic violence allegations, with little judicial oversight. As the Family Law Section of the State Bar of California has noted, these restraining orders are often used as custody maneuvers in divorce.

One point that I didn't get a chance to call LaBarbera on was this--whenever LaBarbera wanted to incite hostility or disgust towards gays, he specifically cited gay men and sex between gay men. This is yet another example of how society stigmatizes male sexuality, both in heterosexual and gay men.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Family Law, Divorce/Separation/Child Custody, Gays, Gay Marriage, Christian Conservatives, Catholics, Christians. You can trackback from your own site.