No matter your religious faith, the birth of a child should always be a special occurrence, not a critical one.
However, when many saw magazines covered in the news of Elton John’s new baby, they couldn’t help but do a double-take. Not only are John and his partner a non-traditional couple, but they are older than most new parents, John being in his sixties and David (his partner) in his late 40’s.
And of course, whether it is for anti-gay reasons or not, many people are up in arms about this. So much so that a supermarket in Arkansas placed a “family shield” (normally reserved for adult magazines) over the cover of the US Weekly showing the family together.
The controversy here is not necessarily whether you think gay couples having children is acceptable, but whether or not a supermarket should be allowed to exercise this type of discretion over such a contentious issue.
In the store’s defense, it incurred a seeming lapse of judgment in an effort to make its patrons more comfortable and happy. This would indicate that we need to take a closer look at the patrons whose moral sense of judgment was apparently violated by this family photo.
Did Elton John appear half-naked wearing only a tie and heels like some other celebrities? Of course not. And he’s British, so even if he did we would probably understand. Was the baby seen dangling from a staircase or sucking on someone’s teat? No, but now I have given you a lot of awful Elton John mental images.
The fact is, nothing was happening on the cover of that magazine that a child wouldn’t see walking around in the normal discourse of a day. Well, maybe not in Arkansas, but that’s a separate editorial.
I’m not going to climb atop a soapbox and proclaim the good news that everyone is equal and should be treated as such.
I think it is safe to say the broad issue of gay individuals being accepted in this world has made huge strides, especially given Pat Quinn’s new signing of the bill legalizing civil unions. Anyone who is still lighting up the blogs and complaining to supermarkets is either too dense to get that this issue is not black and white or too clouded by their religion to see any other viewpoint, and I would argue these usually work in tandem.
But this issue is so huge and involves such polar opposite, passionate views, that unless those anti-gay, anti-gun control, anti-Swiss cheese people can begin peeling away their inflexible exteriors, they will forever be doomed to ride on everyone else’s coattails while they’re busy doing what our forefathers meant for us to be doing – progressing.