Queer couples and families are only beginning to be normalized now. For copious decades, gay, lesbian, queer and LGBTQ+ couples have fought tirelessly for the basic rights to have essential freedoms and liberties that straight, white people (specifically males), have never had to ponder twice. Losing contact with family, risking employment and fair compensation, putting basic freedoms at risk, and fear of being classified as mentally ill (because of sexual orientation; homosexuality was removed from the DSM-5 as a mental illness only in 1973) were only a minuscule percentage of the terrors LGBTQ+ people gambled in order to live as their truest selves. Looked down upon by others for their non-normative, innate orientation, queer freedoms and rights are to this day still very much in the works. Progress is happening all around us, but unfortunately, it would be overly optimistic to say that true and complete equality is on the horizon. Overpopulation is a very real and prominent issue in today’s world, with a surging world population of over 7.8 billion people in 2020. Similar to climate change, this phenomenon is difficult to turn a blind eye to and should be treated and respected as a pressing issue that deserves light and attention in a society that tends to believe that ignorance is bliss. There is, however, nothing blissful about an escalating population whose exponential numbers cannot be properly and adequately sustained by the earth. Only in June of 2015 was it made legal in the United States of America for LGBTQ+ couples to marry. Like many couples from all backgrounds who tie the knot, queer couples also deserve the right and ability to not just have children, but a family of their own. It is no unknown fact that two women/two men, without external sources of assistance, cannot naturally reproduce on their own. However, sexual orientation is not just innate, but unavoidable, and those who are not straight that are forced into heteronormative lives often find themselves feeling discontent because they are living life in a genuinely unauthentic manner. The mere inborness of orientation does cause me to wonder if this all happens for a reason. By adopting children, queer couples take away from the overflowing population of babies, toddlers and adolescents in both adoption and foster care centers, and therefore, depletes the number of homeless children by providing them with a loving family. Had it been societally acceptable for queer couples to marry for decades now, overpopulation, at least by this train of thought, would be vastly diminished by now, and perhaps not as much of a pressing issue. Instead, we now have straight couples producing too many children, queer couples not being able to have or adopt any children, and thousands upon thousands of orphanages and foster care centers that are collapsing at the seams due to an influx of homeless children that has been rising for years on end. Although there is no one answer to the problem of overpopulation, a heteronormative society can without a doubt be attributed to this cataclysmic phenomenon. It is time to move on from homophobic roots and traditions, and accept people for they are, who they want to be and who they are destined to be. It should also be noted that all couples, regardless of orientation, absolutely and always have the right to adopt or produce children of their own. These thoughts and ideas reflect my own personal interpretation of how heteronormative culture has impacted both straight and queer family life, and in which ways these societal standards affect the world we inhabit today.
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