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Right Winger Calls Gay Parents Slave Owners

by Emma Cueto

Right wing commentator and all around ignorant asshole Roberto Oscar Lopez went on a morning radio program recently to grace the world with the much-needed pronouncement that same-sex parents are actually slave holders. And, when I say that, this is not one of those times when I'm extending the logic of what someone said a step further than they themselves did. He really, truly, straight-up said that.

If you're confused as to how on earth anyone could come to such a conclusion, I assure you, you're not alone. Lopez seems to think that because children have a "right" to both a mother and a father, and because children adopted by gay couples have no say in their adoption, they are now slaves. Or something. Here's specifically what he has to say:

I believe every child has a natural born right to his mother and father and ultimately those rights were taken away from them because adults made a decision that the child was not a party to because he didn’t exist or was too young to decide that.

Yeah, I don't follow that either, but then he goes on to say that even if most children ultimately are OK with being adopted by gay parents, it doesn't matter because, and I quote:

[W]e as a society already went through a huge debate in the United States about owning other people and we decided — the Thirteenth Amendment is worded very sweepingly not just to ban what was specifically happening on Southern plantations but to ban any kind of practice. It says ‘slavery shall not exist,’ any kind of arrangement where you have a legal contract upon another human being is banned.

Now, if you have been paying attention to the logic here, there really is no actual connection between these two things. Because even if we accept the idea that children do have a right to a mother and a father (as opposed to, say, a right to a stable and loving home), it still doesn't follow that being denied that right is the same as being owned. But to Lopez, this all apparently makes sense. Because when you say the 13th Amendment bans same-sex adoption, you're no longer making comparisons. You're saying that these adoptions are slavery. Further, if Lopez has a problem with legal contracts governing children's guardianship, then shouldn't he have a problem with all adoption, not just where gay parents are concerned?

He goes on to say highly sensible things like gay adoption is "redefining what it means to be human ... [and] what it means to be a free citizen" and that a person can't "really be free if you’re born with a price on your head."

That thumping noise? Is the sound of me banging my head against a wall.

For the record, the Thirteenth Amendment does outlaw slavery and involuntary servitude, though it doesn't provide a definition of exactly what those things are. I have a feeling that Congress wasn't thinking of adoption, though, when they wrote it. They were thinking of a massive, widespread institution actively engaged in horrific human rights violations.

American slavery, in case anyone didn't pay attention to even the watered down version of U.S. history they teach in high school, was barbaric. It routinely involved everything from rape to selling children away from their parents to cold-blooded murder to outright torture. And it went on for hundreds of years.

Comparing all of that to children being raised by couples that happen to have the same genitalia as each other is not only stupid, but actively offensive – not just to LGBT people, not just to the children of same-sex couples, but to slaves and their descendants. And, to a lesser extent, anyone who gives a damn about human rights.

And if that wasn't enough, there was also that time he compared same-sex adoption to the genocide of Native Americans.

Burn everything, burn it to the ground.