The Age of Whatever: Applauding parents, however they came to be.
—by Dennis Hinkamp
The software is not yet coded to diagram the meandering and defoliated branches of my family tree. When I go into the church genealogy library, the “gone to lunch” or “server updating” signs go up. I may have actually driven some of them to start drinking coffee — the hard stuff, not decaf.
That’s okay. The nuclear family is aptly named; a volatile mix always ready to blow up. And, to bludgeon the analogy, it’s the deterrent that some like to hang onto.
My seldom seen stepsister died this week. If not for Facebook, I would have never known. For all its distracting ills, social media keeps us together in our nomadic lives. This is the new norm: My half-sister adopted my RIP stepsister’s grandchild which makes me?… I have no idea; something third twice removed who’s on first? Nobody really planned this; life happens and we should support and celebrate anyone who wants to commit to anyone.
Have you ever done a Monday morning debriefing of the typical family reunion? It makes the rift between Israel and Iran seem solvable by someone as comical as Joe Biden or unelectable as John Kerry.
“Hey, maybe if the leaders of your two countries could just rent a houseboat on Lake Powell for a week you could work things out?” I imagine them saying.
No, I’m pretty sure this would be a prelude to the Biblical end times Revelations war.
So y’all go on with your sanctity of the family and the end of life as we know it. Does it really matter if Adam and Steve or Eve and Yvette adopt a child? Or, if anyone of any gender unrelated twice removed procreates in a Petri dish? Have you thought this through? Hey, I have been around a lot of kids; parenting is the worst-paying job in the universe. I applaud and support anyone brave enough to voluntarily raise children.
Now, let me comment on Utah’s recent same-sex-marriage birth certificate issue (bit.ly/cat1509bc): Birth certificates have not reflected reality for a long time. Mine says Ronald Hinkamp is my father, even though he had nothing to do with my conception and, in fact, was physically incapable of fathering children (mumps; note to the anti-vaccine folks). Legal adoptions often alter biological reality in favor of parental reality; it’s just paperwork. I knew who raised me and who to send the Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards to.
On a sort of side note, but related to our village-to-raise-a-child concept: What could possibly be gay about scarves and knee socks on boys? Thanks for finally coming to your senses, Boy Scouts of America. Utah, it’s your move.
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls.
It’s a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world,
Except for Lola. Lo lo lo lo Lola. —The Kinks
Dennis Hinkamp applies his parenting skills to the wise care of one French bulldog.