Ready to see society accept same sex parenting

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.