Rand Paul attacks same-sex families during Senate debate

Rand Paul attacks same-sex families during Senate debate
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During a debate Thursday between Kentucky Senate candidates Rand Paul and Jack Conway, Paul gave an interesting reason as to why he feels the Department of Education should be abolished.

According to Think Progress:

I would rather the local schools decide things. I don't like the idea of somebody in Washington deciding that Susie has two mommies is an appropriate family situation and should be taught to my kindergardener at school. That's what happens when we let things get to a federal level. I think I would rather have local school boards, teachers, parents, people in Paduka deciding about your schools and not have it in Washington.

Paul's comments are the height of ignorance. According to a March 2007 report by Gary Gates, Lee M.V. Badgett, Jennifer Ehrle Macomber, Kate Chambers of the Urban Institute:

* More than one in three lesbians have given birth and one in six gay men have fathered or adopted a child.

* An estimated 65,500 adopted children are living with a lesbian or gay parent.

* Gay and lesbian parents are raising four percent of all adopted children in the United States.

* An estimated 14,100 foster children are living with lesbian or gay parents.

* Gay and lesbian parents are raising three percent of foster children in the United States.

And according to a 2010 study by Brian Powell, a sociology professor at Indiana University, as reported in The New York Times, a majority of Americans say that their definition of a family now include same-sex families.

So the question has to be just where does Paul think these children attend school? In some secret government lab?

Seriously, I always chuckle to myself when someone attempts to tap into a phony hysteria about children being "forced to be taught" about same-sex households.

Common sense should tell Paul, and the rest of us, that neither the federal nor state governments have to teach children about same-sex families because they are already aware of same-sex families. Children do talk amongst themselves about their families, you know.

And some of these families most likely contain two mothers or two fathers.

I will wager that they have less of a problem with it than us adults. They probably wonder what in the world is all the fuss about.

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