Reality Check

For all those who adamantly oppose gay adoptions, a rather unsettling article.

Jayden (pictured) turns 18 in August. He’s doing his VCE this year, is into basketball and has lived with Steve and Brendan – his dads – since he was a child. Actually, he says he doesn’t call them ‘dad’ to their faces, but if people ask him about his family, he says, yes, he calls them his dads.

It's a nice story, and from all available evidence seems to be the norm. Jayden's take on his "real" parents is -- or should be -- an eye-opener for, say, the voters in Florida and Arkansas:

It is at this point that the topic of Jayden’s parents comes up for the first time. I ask him if, like Steve and Brendan, his mother and father also give him advice. “I get advice from them,” he replies. “Whether I listen to them or not is another story.” He listens to Steve and Brendan, he says, rather than his parents. I ask why. “I guess my parents don’t really have much to show for their own advice that they’re trying to give out, whereas Steve and Brendan do. The least I can follow in my parents footsteps the better for me. They’re both not working and haven’t done the best by me.”

The bottom line is pretty revealing, on a number of levels:

Does he see his relationship with Steve and Brendan continuing after he grows into independence and no longer needs care in the formal, social-worker sense of that word. Jayden’s response is immediate: “They will be the ones standing next to me at my wedding. They’ll be at my wedding, they’ll be my parents at the wedding.”

That sort of says it all, doesn't it?

Thanks to my pal Nigel from Down Under.