Remember that a few weeks ago the State Department said it would be changing U.S. passport applications (and Consular Record of Birth Abroad (CRBA) forms) to say “Mother or Parent 1″ and “Father or Parent 2” instead of just “Mother” and “Father”?
In response to State’s actions, Rep. J. Randy Forbes (R-VA) has introduced a bill that would require federal agencies to use only “mother” and “father” in all official forms. In a press release, Forbes called the Parent1/Parent2 change, “a bureaucratic attempt to redefine traditional parent roles.”
His bill does not just require the addition of Mother/Father to all forms—it explicitly prohibits the use of Parent 1/Parent 2. Here’s the key passage from the bill itself:
Each Federal agency, contractor (or subcontractor at any tier) pursuant to a contract with such agency, or government-sponsored enterprise shall use the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ when describing parents, and not the words ‘parent 1’ or ‘parent 2’ (or other similar words), in all official documents issued by the agency, contractor, or enterprise.
I’m not a politician or a lawyer, but I’m concerned that the words “government-sponsored enterprise” could also be interpreted to mean that organizations such as hospitals receiving Medicare/Medicaid funds would also be banned from using Parent 1/Parent 2 on their forms. And what about schools receiving any funds from the U.S. Department of Education? Government contractors, too, include a wide range of private businesses. We’re not just talking passport applications here.
Let’s hope this piece of nonsense dies a quiet death.
This bill is just hateful.
What happened to the petition? I forwarded it to a bunch of people but now we can’t find the link.
Clio: I took the petition down. After discussing matters with someone who is working closely with these matters in D.C., it seems they’re taking a strategy of trying to keep this fairly quiet and hoping it dies in committee without a lot of fuss. So–infuriating, yes, but at this point, the bill has no co-sponsors, and the “ignore it and it will die” strategy seems reasonable. Thanks for wanting to take action about it, though.
The fact that narrow-minded bigots like this try to turn their prejudice into law infuriates me. By contrast, I was very pleased to see this week that Massachusetts is standardizing birth certificates so they will all say mother/parent and father/parent.