People have been talking a lot about Family Values the last few years. Mostly it’s been the the far Right Tea Party. The only problem with that is what they have decided Family Values are – Mom (female), Dad (male), 2.3 kids and everyone the same color. Nice enough if you’re homophobic or racist or some other flavor of scared-ass hater. But for everyone else there are other possibilities.
Maybe your family is Mom and Mom or Dad and Dad plus 2.3 kids. Maybe your family is non-monochromatic. Maybe your family is Grandma and Grandpa and 2.3 grandkids. Think about all the possibilities that Robin Williams gave us in Mrs. Doubtfire…then multiply that by a gazillion.
You see, family isn’t some Polly Purebred, sanitized for your protection definition of a family. Family is the people who love you and who you love. As I write this I’m sitting at the kitchen table at a yearly family get-together. I’m here with people who’s opinions I disagree with, people who I argue with, people who argue and disagree with me. But they’re all people I love and who love me in turn. They’re all family.
What the far-right Family Values crowd doesn’t understand is that life is proof that they are wrong. Everywhere they turn there are people who are members of families that don’t fit their view. So they respond by saying that if you’re not in one of their approved types of families you’re morally bankrupt or anti-Christian or anti-American. But the truth is that they’re the ones who are morally bankrupt and anti-Christian and anti-American.
Moral people are not threatened by people with other views. Good Christians are open and accepting. Good Americans support other people’s freedoms…like the freedom to love whoever you love.
At present, my immediate family is my wife and me and our two sons. At some point I’m sure the boys will find people to share their lives with. I’m equally sure that there will be some personality quirk of those people that will irritate me or maybe even totally piss me off. People being people, it’s totally unreasonable to assume that they won’t. But that’s OK as long as they meet one condition.
The only thing Tami and I want is for those people to love our boys as much as they deserve to be loved. Beyond that we don’t care what color they are or what creed they are or what anything else they are. Because if they love my sons as much as my sons deserve to be loved it just won’t matter. They’ll be family.
