Here’s an interesting admission from David Fowler, the far-right religious nut who heads the Family Action Council Tennessee:
It happened on a family rafting trip in North Carolina.
David Fowler’s daughter went into the bathroom and never came back out. He sent his wife in to investigate and was later told his daughter had begun menstruation.
“For me, at the time, it was a relief my wife was there to handle a situation I felt utterly incapable of addressing,” Fowler said.
“It truly took both of us to raise our daughter; one without the other would have been a total disaster. My daughter might still think it was a total disaster,” he said with a laugh.
Fowler’s inability to deal with his daughter’s first period is supposed to be the reason we can’t let gays marry, which seems rather weird and not relevant. Should we remove all children from single-parent households, then? But beyond the illogic of his argument as relates to marriage equality, I have another question:
If David Fowler can’t handle his own daughter’s menarche, WHY THE FUCK HAS HE SPENT HIS ENTIRE CAREER TRYING TO LEGISLATE WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS????????!!!!!!
Just Go. The Fuck. Away.
Southern Beale 
Bingo!
“Utterly incapable of addressing” not awkward, uneasy, etc. I guess the child was a product of divine intervention.
They will never shut up.
Or go away.
Bet on it.
Unless we make them.
Beautiful and spot on response, SB — and Randy as well. But the story either is more ridiculous than it first sounds — or Fowler is. He, I presume, has some knowledge of the facts of menstruation — and I assume he knows how old his daughter is. He should have known this would happen and at least asked himself what he needed to be prepared.
But MUCH more importantly, he has a (presumably) female wife. Why should he have needed to worry about instructing his daughter on what his wife had already told her — or is theirs the sort of relationship where his wife is not permitted to use any initiative without telling him first? That would be the only explanation why he had a problem, because he knew his wife wouldn’t have talked to their daughter without his knowledge.
In which case, there is only one proper response, a couple of tears for the daughter.
I have a further comment, but it belongs separately from this. Hence the second post.
I might actually have had a different reaction, not an agreement, but an understanding of the problem — if it were still around 1960, sex education didn’t exist in schools, and parents had difficulties discussing sex in any respect with supposedly“innocent” children. I’d have that understanding because — I’ve mentioned this many times, but possibly not here — I grew up in a lesbian household. In fact, even though I am bisexual — more physically than emotionally — and have always been
‘obnoxiously’ open about it (my wife occasionally suggests I should know someone more than thirty-seven seconds before I find an excuse to mention it) — my main personal reason for supporting SSM is so other couples can have what my mothers never could — a legal acknowledgement of their 30+ year relationship.
(Sadly, Claire died a few months before Stonewall — Billie lived another five years — and was ill for a few years before, so they could never even have walked, openly, down 5th Avenue, hand in hand and kissing.)
And, yes, back then — and with one partner, Claire, old enough that she was literally a Victorian, having been born during the Queen’s reign — they did have a problem discussing and dealing with my own sexuality. (And, unlike today, there was no sex on tv that could have stirred questions. How many kids today start the conversation with their parents by asking why sometimes the male is on top of the female and sometimes it is the female on top? — I pity the parent who is asked to explain standing sex — an athletic feat I rarely have mastered heterosexually.)
I’m tempted to explain some of their solutions, but only will do so if encouraged, because it does take us far afield.
But what this has to do with legalizing same-sex marriage escapes me. Any parent has difficulty connecting with his children on some topics. That’s why you have friends, and teachers, and hope they get good information from the people they are going to pay the most attention to anyway, their peers. (Given the importance of the automobile to this culture, would the fact that my wife and I are both non-drivers and couldn’t teach a kid how to drive be a reason for forbidding us a marriage license, even if we’d thought it was fair for any kids to have us as parents?)
“Butt and Fowler,
Fowler and Butt,
Which one’s the howler
And which one’s the nut?”
(New Tennessee state song?)