by Christian Portilla
Staff Writer
When I think about starting a family and having children, I think about how the future will be and how society will react.
I think about how the children will become curious and ask questions about how they were procreated and about their mommy’s sexual orientation.
These thoughts really came into perspective after I read a post from a Colombian communications professor, Juanita Leon Santaella.
In her post, she asked why she was not able to adopt in her country, and why society was against it.
As if being a lesbian was a guarantee that she would be a bad parent or wouldn’t give her children the same morals, love and education if she were in a heterosexual relationship.
I refuse to be stigmatized and I will not develop a complex because of my sexual orientation. I refuse to think that I will be a second rate parent because I decide to raise my child with another woman.
Like professor Santaella, I know I will try my hardest to raise a human being to the best of my abilities with respect and moral standards.
As far as having children with my partner, I know that it does not take a certain title or gender role to raise a child in a loving environment.
I know of many heterosexual families that don’t have one or the other parent involved. Although there is a difference, the love for the child is the same.
I can attest from this by personal experience.
I was not born with a preconceived notion of how a “regular” household should be. All I knew was that I was raised with a lot of love and respect and it didn’t matter who was present.
As a human being and as a person that looks forward to having a family of my own one day, I hope that my sexual orientation will become an obsolete topic to society when it comes to raising my children.
I look forward to seeing more acceptance and less discrimination of the LGBTQA community and same-sex parenting.
I hope that as our country progresses, we can create a unified culture that values differences and accepts similarities.
After all, being LGBTQA is a process of self-discovery, questioning and acceptance. Being questioned about our parenting capabilities by society shouldn’t be part of it.
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