This article came out in 2008 when Ricky Martin's announcement about his twin boys, born from a surrogate mother, was met with hostile remarks most notably by the Cardinal of Honduras and a Mexican talk show host. Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez apparently said “What Martin did diminishes the dignity of a human being. You can’t just buy or rent life. It’s even worse when someone famous and in the public eye is doing it.” A few years ago, Martin had said he planned to adopt a Rainbow Family: one child from every continent. (I assume that mission excluded uninhabited continents.) I think the Catholic leader probably wouldn't have objected to adoption, which is arguably "buying" a child. I suspect that if Ricky Martin had been married to a woman, this also wouldn't have been an issue. Martin is now out as a gay man, but there had for years been speculation about his sexuality. The overlap between the "morality" of parenthood and religious doctrine is really muddy and complicated. Because so much of the Latin world is Catholic, the popular media frequently carries religious subtext--either in contrast (think scantily clad, busty ladies on popular TV) or more directly. (Of course I'm not excluding this phenomenon to Latino cultures and popular media; this struggle exists in the U.S. as well with Protestant churches.)
This may be why the Mexican talk show host felt comfortable saying, "I don’t think it’s right to deny children of maternal figures, just because you have a big ego.” This gets at my earlier post about the lack of evidence proving children suffer from having parents of just one gender. But furthermore, I struggle with this idea of the ideal family circumstances. Community approval is certainly not the primary evidence needed to prove a family's righteous behavior. I've been reading about some very subtly abusive, or at least of dubious mental health, heterosexual married couples who adopted children from other countries. I'll have to chew on this one a bit more.
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I think you're right.
ReplyDeleteIf Ricky Martin had been married there wouldn't have been as much lashing out against him from religious figures.
It's interesting how people will argue points without addressing them directly. Rather than talk about homosexuality, the Cardinal and talk-show host opted for criticizing Martin for how he "acquired" the children.
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