Aparentheid

This past week, Obama ordered the State Department to change passports and the passport applications. The amended passports will list, instead of “Mother” and “Father,” “Parent One” and “Parent Two.”  In his efforts to appease legal guardians, Heather’s two mommies and Hector’s two daddies, and Liberals in general, he ordered this short-sighted change without considering the future consequences.

Enumerating parents will inevitably cause conflict within America’s already beleaguered institution of marriage. Which parent is going to be listed as “Parent Number One”? Which parent is going to be relegated to the secondary parent status? Divorce courts, already overloaded with petty bickering over child custody rights, will now have one more challenge to sort out.

With our headlong advance towards a Muslim theocracy, this new bureaucratic ruling will add one more log onto the Islamic fire. Muslim countries favor the father over the mother. America’s enumerating listing will allow Muslim men to discriminate against their wives, granting them automatic evidence of legal custody.

And what will we do on Mother’s and Father’s Day? Will these holidays now be designated “Parent One” and “Parent Two” Days? Is this another effort to undermine paternal authority in American families? Happy Parent One Day?

All this to appease a minority of Americans who are trying to cheat nature, or can’t get around nature, because the truth is they’re the wrong sex to be a mother or a father. These people can adopt children or “parent” children through surrogates. But in the end, you are what you are. You’re either an adoptive mother or father, or you’re a legal guardian.

What are children supposed to call their parents now? “Parent One, may I have a drink of water?” “Parent Two, would you play catch with me?” “Waaaah! I want my Parent One!!!!!” “I’m going to tell my Parent Two on you!!!”  

I can just imagine the religious invocations: “Holy Mary, Parent One of God….” “Our Parent Two, who art in heaven.” “Faith of our Parent Twos, living still.” And let us not forget our “Founding Parent Twos.”

Being designated Parent Ones will appeal to feminist women, who always imagine they’re the better parent. Lawyers will be able to point to this status in divorce court as evidence of their better fitness to gain custody.

Raising kids in this day and age of the Nanny State is difficult enough already, without throwing yet another impediment in the way of struggling parents, reducing them to units rather than adult human beings.