|
Gay parents ok
14/03/2002 11:04 - (SA)
Steve Gorman
Los Angeles - Talk show host Rosie O'Donnell, publicly discussing her homosexuality for the first time, said her own experience as a gay parent proves that the state of Florida and President Bush are "wrong" in their opposition to gay adoption.
"I don't think America knows what a gay parent looks like," O'Donnell, the mother of three adopted children, told correspondent Diane Sawyer in a televised interview to air on the news programme Primetime Thursday. "I am the gay parent."
O'Donnell, who turns 40 this month, said she was moved to openly discuss her sexuality and motherhood after reading about the case of Steve Lofton and Roger Croteau, a gay couple suing the state of Florida to overturn its ban on gay adoption.
"I'm saying it now because I want people to know that I'm the kind of parent the state of Florida ... thinks is unworthy, and it's wrong," she said, according to a excerpts of the interview provided by ABC News.
Asked by Sawyer what she thought about President Bush's statement that children ought to be adopted in families with a woman and a man who are married, O'Donnell replied, "Well, he's wrong. President Bush is wrong about that."
"If ... he and his wife are invited to come spend a weekend at my house with my children ... I'm sure he would change his mind."
Her interview comes just weeks before the former stand-up comic and actress plans to end her six-year stint as host of The Rosie O'Donnell Show in order to spend more time with her adopted children - two boys and a girl - Parker (6), Chelsea (4) and Blake (2).
'Well-adjusted' kids
She described her kids as "well-adjusted" and "happy", though she acknowledged they will likely be teased for having a gay mom and that it probably "would be easier for them if I were married to a man".
O'Donnell said if she had to choose between having her children "go through the struggles of being gay in America, or being heterosexual? I would say heterosexual".
She added, "if I could take a pill to make myself straight, I wouldn't do it, because I am who I am, and I've come to this point in my life, and I'm very happy, you know. But it's a lot easier in the world to be heterosexual than it is to be gay."
O'Donnell said bias against gay adoption exists because of the widely held perception that "the gay lifestyle is a lot of party, pretty boys and South Beach dancing".
"But those are generally not the people who are applying to adopt," she said. "It's people who are settled who know that the priority in their life is to have a family."
While the interview marked her first public acknowledgment that she is a lesbian, O'Donnell said she never sought to keep her sexuality a secret. The star said she waited this long to go public, in part, because she wanted to be "in a committed, long-term relationship". O'Donnell and her current companion have been together about four years, she said.
Asked about past comments that she found actor Tom Cruise attractive, O'Donnell said there was nothing wrong with gay people being able to "appreciate the aesthetic beauty of somebody of the other gender".
"He makes my heart beat, and I adore him, gay, straight, or somewhere in between," she said of Cruise. "He is the [most] perfect man that ever walked the face of the Earth."
- Reuters
|
South Africa
