NOM: Adoptive Families Are 2nd Best -- Including Chief Justice Roberts' Family // Update: NOM Doubles-Down on "Adoption=2nd Best Families" Meme!

(Originally written on 03/14/13): The anti-gay family forces are so eager to make digs at married gay people and our kids that they are dissing heterosexual adoptive parents as "second-best options" -- including U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and his wife, as well as U.S. Supreme Court Clarence Thomas!:

Gay marriage opponents said they are not worried about the votes of Roberts and Thomas. "You're looking at what is the best course societywide to get you the optimal result in the widest variety of cases. That often is not open to people in individual cases. Certainly adoption in families headed, like Chief Roberts' family is, by a heterosexual couple, is by far the second-best option," said John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage. Eastman also teaches law at Chapman University law school in Orange, Calif.

I'm sure Eastman thought he was making an effective point. But he ended up coming off as a bit of a jerk. IMHO, as always.

Updated on 03/15/13: At a panel on conservatives and bullying last night at CPAC, Brian Brown, NOM's president, not only affirmed Eastman's assertions about adoptive families. He confirmed that this as the official NOM position:

“Well, the reality is that on any indicator we’ve been able to measure since the explosion and the break down of the family from the 60s to the present is that children do best with both their mother and father,” NOM President Brian Brown said. “Obviously, we need to encourage adoption, we need do everything we can to help single motherhood...”

While promoting the idea of children being raised by biological parents, he also said he encourages adoption. Brown later drew a distinction between adopted children being raised by opposite-sex parents or a single parent and same-sex marriage.

“It’s entirely different when you put into the law the notion that either mothers or fathers are completely expendable,” Brown said. “And that, at it’s nature, is what same-sex marriage is all about: two moms or two dads are essentially the same as a mother and a father. That is not the case. Children have rights, too. Children have a right to have a chance to have both a mother and a father.”

The Blade’s question to Brown was whether he shares the views expressed by NOM Board Chair John Eastman in an Associated Press report that Roberts’ decision to adopt children was the “second-best option” for them as opposed to being raised by their biological parents.

So this is what we are learning about the National Organization for Marriage these days. NOM believes in a tier system when it comes to families: 1. Biological families; 2. Adoptive families; 3. Single mothers; 4. Single fathers (maybe; though this wasn't articulated). It's unclear where step-families fit into this hierarchy.

We also know that gay families don't even make the list and that NOM.

I still remember the days when Maggie Gallagher used to assert that NOM was only about the definition of marriage and actually affirmed gay parenting.