Overpopulation + World Degradation = Don't Blame the Gays

Okay, I’m watching NBC’s Today Show this morning, and a straight couple with seventeen biological children are being highlighted. Of course the treatment of the story is cute and smarmy, containing humorous little platitudes, but as a gay man who is constantly hearing arguments against gay marriage, or even the very logic behind same-sex relationships because we cannot “bare children,” the idea of a straight family with seventeen kids really irks me.

As a parent of four (two mine, two my partner’s), I want to leave this earth as I found it—though, even then it was on the decline. Therefore, I believe we shouldn't over-burden a planet that’s already stressed to the max by overly contributing to a population explosion. According to The Population Institute, an international, educational nonprofit organization that seeks to reduce rapid population growth:

“Climate change is perhaps the most crucial environmental challenge of this century. Eleven of the world’s 12 highest annual global temperatures on record have occurred since 1995, leading many of the world’s top scientists and environmentalists to conclude that global warming has begun in earnest.

While a great deal of attention has been paid to reducing emissions responsible for global warming, there has been far less focus on the role of population growth in climate change.

Population pressures are not the sole cause of global warming, but exacerbate ecological degradation. Providing effective voluntary family planning to the tens of millions of women worldwide who lack access to affordable reproductive health services would be a significant step towards reducing human impact on areas left vulnerable by climate change.”

The parents of these seventeen kids say they’re very religious, and that their children are all gifts from God. I believe this is a crappy diversion of their culpability in contributing to an over-populated world, and the environmental degradation of the planet. Naturally, if these kids had been adopted, this post might have lauded this couple, but that is not the case.

So, the next time you hear a gay-hater using the argument that being gay is wrong because gay relationships can’t produce children, tell them they’re full of crap, and that the overpopulation of the world is one of the prime reasons this planet is ailing. Also, dig a little deeper, and add that because a lot of gay couples who want children adopt, we not only don’t add to an ever-expanding population, but contribute to a reduction of the surplus population caused by gay-hating straights like themselves.