We Should Cease the Marketing campaign to Eradicate “Mother and Father”
New York’s largest township is standing up against the Empire State in defense of the American family. Hempstead, the most populous town in both the state and in the country, approved an “emergency resolution” this week in response to the state legislature’s vote last week to eliminate the terms “mother” and “father” from state law, replacing “mother” with “gestating parent” and “father” with “non-gestating parent.”
Referring to the state legislature’s woke rewording of state laws, Hempstead Township Supervisor John Ferretti said in a Fox News interview this week, “As a father of two, it was an insult to me and to my wife.” He reported that, as he told his wife the news, his 9-year-old daughter overheard. “Can I still call you dad?” she asked, deeply distraught. “It really hit close to home.”
“We need to take a stand in the Town of Hempstead, the largest township in America, and make sure that we make it clear not just to residents in the Town of Hempstead, but to residents throughout New York State, that we won’t stand for this kind of woke nonsense,” Ferretti insisted. “We’re taking a stand because we will not allow woke Democrat liberals in New York State and the New York State Legislature to erase the traditional family,” he continued. “They did not pass a law that adds language. They passed a law that erases mother and father from certain statutes under New York state law, and that’s completely unacceptable.”
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According to Ferretti, the state legislature could have achieved its ostensible goal by simply adding “gender-neutral” language to state laws. “Instead, they chose to erase mother and father and replace it, and we won’t stand for that,” he said. Ferretti noted that Governor Kathy Hochul (D) has not yet signed the bill. He anticipated that she will sign the bill but wait until after November’s elections to do so “because she’s not brave enough to take a stand,” fearing possible political backlash.
Hochul’s office, however, fired back, defending the proposed language changes as required for the sake of legal clarity. “The governor believes mothers are mothers and fathers are fathers, and no legislation changes that,” said Gordon Tepper, a spokesman for Hochul’s office. “The legislation, which we will review, appears to address technical legal issues related to surrogacy and parentage. … Anyone making bad-faith arguments is deliberately misleading New Yorkers for political gain.”
Author and mother-of-six Bethany Mandel rebuked the Democrats’ claims in an op-ed article last week. “Americans were assured that if Donald Trump became president, women would be stripped of our rights. As it turns out, Gov. Hochul is the one poised to make good on that prediction in New York,” she wrote. “In the name of inclusion, New York lawmakers have managed to do something remarkably regressive: stripping women of perhaps the most meaningful identity they can ever hold.”
Reem Alsalem, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women and Girls, also condemned the proposed changes, warning that eliminating “the word ‘mother’ and mother-related terminology in law and policies” is “linked to the devaluation of motherhood and women overall.” She added, “This is deeply troubling. I hope New York will step away from this move!”
Hempstead Township’s emergency resolution, which has earned the support of Republican state legislators, is intended to preserve the use of the terms “mother” and “father” in municipal and local laws and regulations, regardless of any state-level changes. “Nobody will ever change the fact that my children’s mother is their mother,” Ferretti said in a separate interview with the New York Post. “Nobody will ever change the fact that I am their father. Just words on a piece of paper won’t change someone being a mother, someone being a father.”
The Democrat-dominated state legislature’s changes in language will impact state law relating to parenting, child custody, family law, and education.
LifeNews Note: S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washigton Stand.
