On Lesbian "parents"

Many of you have heard the story about the lesbian who sued a California Hospital because doctors, citing religious conviction, refused to artificially inseminate her. The story is here.

Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle published Gibbons' letter to the editor on the subject:

Right to a parent

Editor - The story "Gays get equal doctoring under ruling" (Aug. 19) plumbs the depths of narcissism. Guadalupe Benitez is deliberately violating the fundamental right of three children to a mother and a father.

Given the endless sociological studies showing the importance of a father to the proper socialization of boys, this is unconscionable. How is a boy to learn the proper and responsible way to treat a woman or children without a father's day-by-day example?

And how are Benitez's girls to learn the proper way for a woman to respond to men and to demand respect, without the day-by-day example of mom relating to dad? From TV? They'll be susceptible to the first smooth-talking "player" to come along.

Of course, many marriages collapse into divorce and the children are bereft of a mother or father. That's a bad thing, but at least it's the failure of an attempted good thing. Here, the bad thing, children without a father, is sought from the outset.

If "equality" means deliberately leaving children without a mother or father, it's time for people to start rethinking the importance of "equality."

Gibbons J. Cooney
San Francisco