To grow up, it is said, a child… normally (!), needs both parents. Both the father and the mother.
And who raised all these unbalanced parents? What does “normally” truly mean? What constitutes normal and who defines it as such? If having both our parents present is somehow a prerequisite or even a guarantee for us to grow up “normally,” then who created the situations we experience as Cyprus and planet Earth?
Who wrote the dark pages in the history of humanity? Which mother and which father raised all these individuals? So many criminals, paedophiles, oppressors, murderers, and fraudsters, were they raised by two fathers? Perhaps by two mothers? Didn’t the majority grow up with both a mother and a father? Why didn’t they grow up “normally”? Why did they turn out somewhat “abnormal”?
If for a child to grow up “normally” (!), it requires both parents, both the father and the mother, does that mean that children from single-parent families, either those that became such after a separation or those chosen to be single-parent by design – and there are many cases of well-known women who chose this – will lack in “normality”?
Do these children start life with fewer guarantees than other children to grow up “normally”? Could the presence of the mother be pivotal, overshadowing the absence of the father? Hence, the prerequisite that a child needs both parents, both the father and the mother, to grow up “normally,” may not hold true in an absolute sense?
I wonder, if they only have the mother in their lives, do they grow up “normally,” while if they only have the father, they grow up somewhat “unnaturally”? The children, this too is a valid question, who have both a father and a mother, should they be born to grow up “normally,” or is “normal” growth not affected by birth? Perhaps, just perhaps, having both parents, both your father and your mother, is not enough, nor a prerequisite, nor a guarantee to grow up “normally”?
Could it be that when two people come together – or perhaps I should say fuck, since marriage is called so because it permits sexual relations, according to the Bishop of Morphou – and a child results, often unplanned and “at the wrong time,” it doesn’t automatically qualify someone to raise a child “normally”?
Isn’t Cain, the firstborn of the human race and the first murderer and fratricide, raised by his mother and father? Are we so certain that “all things were made wisely” and thus our peace is disturbed – with implications of national conquest for those with even more creative imagination – by anything we consider to deviate from the “perfection” of the Creator?
“Since we cannot make laws, we will have the ability to speak the truth and proclaim to the world to avoid any deviation from the law of God,” stated the archbishop. The “truth”! That’s a significant statement, Your Holiness. The Church, of course, has every right to express its views and advocate for its beliefs. Nor is it right, I believe, for anyone to demand that the Church’s positions change, which were built upon the wisdom of the Creator – even though the Church has not always held the same positions, it has created new ones, reformed others, and even the Creator himself stumbled, allowing mating between siblings and cousins to multiply the human race, because He wanted to rest on the seventh day (indeed, who created the days?), rather than creating another couple to prevent them from mingling among themselves.
Nonetheless, the Church has its beliefs, and from these stem its positions. And it rightly points out that it is not the legislator – fortunately, we add. What progress, indeed, was achieved because of it? Did it even care for the rights of women, whom it so praises as mothers? Fortunately, then.
