The ways in which same-sex parenting can be a form of child abuse

Same-Sex Parenting: Child Abuse?

by Robert Oscar Lopez

Single-parenting and divorce have always been understood as a 

breakdown of the married mom and dad ideal, but the demand

 to view same-sex parenting as "normal" imposes a silence 

on children about the wound caused by the loss of 

one parent or the other.

Emotional abuse can be as bad as physical abuse. Any young person who's heard the words, "I wish you were never born," understands that adults can inflict tremendous damage on their dependents without leaving the slightest bruise. One of the worst parts of abuse is society's refusal to see the injustice. Emotional abuse is particularly difficult because it is invisible and therefore ripe for denial.
It is worse still to feel "abandoned" by a community that views the cruelty inside a child's home and does nothing. When told by everyone in the vicinity that what's happening is normal and no cause to be aggrieved (even worse, a reason to be grateful), the natural instinct of the child is to blame herself for revealing the effects of mistreatment, in addition to the primal trauma of the mistreatment itself. The situation is much worse if outsiders who intervene, such as doctors, school officials, cousins, or legal authorities, side with the guardians.

After having spent the last year involved in the debate about same-sex parenting, I can say the following with great confidence: both sides of the same-sex marriage debate are afraid of naming child abuse by same-sex couples. The issue is so raw and painful that even critics of same-sex parenting are scared to go there.

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