Open gay actor Rupert Everett.
“[I] can’t think of anything worse than being brought up by two gay dads… Some people might not agree with that. Fine! That’s just my opinion.” ~Rupert Everett during an interview with the UK’s Sunday Times Magazine
When this quote surfaced on the Internets, e’erybody was looking at their computer like, “Wait, Rupert who? Oh, that’s the bitch from the Julia Roberts movie:”
I mean, he ain’t done shit in about fifteen years, just living off that My Best Friend’s Wedding money, which at this point is probably just twenty dollars and a “buy 9, get 1 free” sandwich card from Blimpie and now he’s in the news, talking nonsense. You know what, Rupes:
Because I can think of several things that are worse than having two gay dads. Like my friends and I sit down at a much-raved about restaurant and find out it’s cash only, so I mumble to myself, “Isn’t this America,” sneak a few sips of water, and then we bounce before the waitress comes back to take your order. Or when I try to fix the snag in my last clean pair of Target underwear, only to have the fabric unravel more, so now I have to wear saggy ass drawers all day at work. Or imagining the kind of sex that talented yet greasy-haired motherfuckers Tim Burton and Helena Bonham Carter have:
For reals, they can def afford to go half on a bottle of Pert Plus.
Also, genocide, working in a sweatshop, dying, a co-worker eating your last Yoplait yogurt, having shitty straight parents, blood diamonds, and Gmail going down for five minutes. ALL those things are way worse than having gay people as your parents because having gay parents isn’t a tragedy that should have a fountain erected to commemorate it. It’s just a different kind of life. Certainly a more difficult one because of the outside world and the prejudices gay and lesbians face, but Rupes, trust me, discovering that someone jacked your lemon meringue flavored Yoplait yogurt will fuck your whole world up for like seventeen minutes. And then you’ll call one of your gay dad’s about it and he’ll be like:
Cuz he gets you. It’s LEMON. FUCKING. MERINGUE. You just don’t fuck with that.
In all seriousness, what is the big deal about Everett’s comments? After all, they are just his opinion. However, to have a gay person publicly say that gay people parenting is the WORST thing imaginable is irresponsible especially in times like these when Chik-fil-A’s Dan Cathy basically thinks that homosexuals who ordered a chicken tenders meal from his establishment, they got a side of “one trip to hell.” Not only are Everett’s statements reinforcing the erroneous notion that gays and lesbians are unfit to be parents, but it’s also asserting the fact that straight people = automatically good parents. It’s just like dick + vagina = a okay in my book. Except for all those straight people who have kids and simply can’t handle the responsibility of being a parent, are mentally, physically, and sexually abusive to their children; don’t spend any time with their kids, abandon their kids. But still having two gay parents who don’t do those things is so abominable because a child seeing a healthy example of love between two adults of the same sex is like totally the worst, right, Rupes? Because this is what will happen if two lesbians raise a child:
END SCENE. Clearly, if a kid has two moms, he will grow up to look like a Ryan Phillippe knockoff, have zero table manners, and talk about dicks before the waitress has brought over the bread basket. Oh, the horror! Look, I’m not saying that having a mother and father is some arbitrary thing. It’s not. I was lucky to grow up with both in the same household. So I know how awesome that can be. However, unlike Everett, I’m not arrogant/ignorant enough to think that the way I was raised is the one and only right way to be raised. I think that having two people, regardless of sexual orientation, who are doing a good job should be applauded and not treated as, “Okay, the straights probably would’ve done it better.” Sure, if you grow up with gay/lesbian parents, you don’t have someone of the opposite sex in the house on a daily basis. But it’s not as though children grow up in cocoons. They will be surrounded by male and female figures in the form of other family members, teachers, coaches, etc. Just because those people of the opposite gender won’t be there everyday doesn’t mean the child will be adversely affected.
BUT HOW DO YOU EXPLAIN WHY THERE ISN’T A MOMMY AND A DADDY? I’ll let Louis C.K. break it down for you:
Exactly. Take the time to have a conversation with a child and explain to them about gays and lesbians. Do that instead of going, “Eww, this is different. I don’t want to use my words to explain this difference to someone. So I’ll just hate it.” Great plan. Hope that works out for you! But hate is kind of a key thing here. Everett’s continual comments about gays over the years do seem to have an air of self-hate. From alluding to the fact that the idea of parenthood is forced on gay and that explains why so many gay people want to be parents (because is it apparently so outside the realm of reasoning that a gay person would desire to be a parent) to in an interview from 2009 where he stated “[the] whole idea of two gay guys filling a cocktail shaker with their sperm and impregnating some grim lesbian…is really weird,” Everett has had some rather harsh and trifling views about gay people. And now it starts to make sense after reading what his mother said in the same Sunday Times Magazine interview:
“In the past, I have said that I wish Rupert was straight and, I probably still feel that… I’d like him to have a pretty wife. I’d like him to have children. He’s so good with children. He’d make a wonderful father… But I also think a child needs a mummy and a daddy. I’ve told him that and he takes it very well. He doesn’t get angry with me. He just smiles.”
So, Rupes, how about you stop expressing your self-hatred to the world? We don’t need the hate and gays and lesbians already encounter enough of it in their lives. They are full human beings just like straight people and they should be treated as such and have the kind of life that they want. A life that may include children. And parents, please stop saying hurtful things to your gay/lesbian children. They hear everything you say and after a while, they start to believe it. And I think that’s is the worst.
