Recently, Barack Obama acted as the flag bearer as he championed gay men as a necessity for boys to be around, while simultaneously minimizing the capabilities of fathers around the country. As a guest on his wife's podcast, Barack engaged with Michelle in a conversation about what boys should be exposed to while he declared the limitations of fathers.
"And that's one of the things I think a lot of times boys need is not just exposure to one guy. No matter how good the dad is, he can't be everything. Like, he can't be everything. And then that boy may need somebody to give the boy some perspective on the dad, right?" Barack Obama stated. He continued, "I had a gay professor in college at the time when openly gay folks still weren't out a lot, who became one of my favorite professors and was a great guy and would call me out when I started saying ignorant stuff.
"You need that to show empathy, kindness—by the way, you need that person in your friend group so that if you then have a boy who is gay or non-binary, they have somebody that they can go, 'Okay, I'm not alone in this.'"
In good faith, I can agree with Barack Obama that, in a vacuum, it's beneficial to have friends from diverse backgrounds who hold different life perspectives. However, the premise of his statement is that fathers, "no matter how good the dad is," are never enough to build a well-rounded, compassionate child, and that surrogate adult gay men are a necessity for every young man in order to learn this emotional skill set.
If we're to be honest, he would never say that "a mother can't be everything" or "one woman is not enough for a child." This is a purposeful minimization of fathers and what we fathers teach our children throughout their entire lives. Like me, Barack Obama grew up without his father as an active participant in his childhood development, and he doesn't have the child's perspective of what a loving and competent father looks like. Obama specifically made this about what boys should have in their lives. Since he only has daughters, he never had the opportunity to raise a boy and recognize all the lessons he would need to teach his spitting image to become a healthy adult man eventually.
Throughout my son's childhood, I consistently reinforced the importance of being polite and considerate of others around him. In various age-appropriate ways, I taught my son to be empathetic and compassionate when necessary. As fathers, we tell our young men to treat people like we'd want to be treated, which is laced with considerations that every person wants. However, we also teach our sons that they should not let anyone use their emotions against them or be ruled by their fleeting feelings.
Obama's absent father and his lack of experience with raising a young man in the modern era have left him vulnerable to being emotionally controlled by anyone who possesses a moderately different story than his. He now believes that you hold a special type of virtue if the person you have sex with resembles you because he presumes an inherent hardship they must face being different than himself, despite hardship being part of the human experience. Similarly, he assumes that due to this hardship, you must possess a magical form of empathy that should be sprinkled onto the younger generations to create a more prosperous future.
Good fathers teach their children to be open without making openness an idol. We tell our young men that they should always be respectful, even in the face of noticeable differences, but never compromise their principles to increase someone else's comfort. Kindness, compassion, and empathy are not exclusive to gay individuals; they're human traits. There are kind gay people and horrendous gay people, just as there are straight people. Who you have sex with doesn't make your personality appealing, and fathers shouldn't be reduced to uplift a group of people everyone thinks needs to be treated with kid gloves.
