“You just didn’t have enough love”
That’s the first line in a private message I received. It went on to say that the message was from someone who had gone to UC Berkley and I needed to get therapy and grow up.
For the record, I had plenty of love. If anything, I was too loved. Too coddled. Too shielded.
When did this idea that ‘all you need is love’ begin to permeate our society?
Ironically, it probably all started in 1967 when the Beatles released a song with that exact title. And it’s pathetic that society has fallen for it hook line and sinker. Yes, it sounds good. And in theory it would be wonderful, but in reality love is not all we need.
Gender and “sex” exist for very specific purposes, mainly to ensure the existence of the human race. We seem to think that now that we can create babies in test tubes, and birth them from women who look like men, we can just dismiss eons of human reality and erase gender altogether.
But ask yourself this, would you want to drink from a hairy breast grown from the chest of a man who used to be a woman? Or have four moms? Or six dads? Oh, but it’s ok so long as they love you?
It’s fanatical to me when someone who was raised in a heterosexual, or single parent household wants to belittle and berate me for my experience and try to tell me how I should have perceived my life. I should just be happy that I had two people that loved me.
Love from two women did not teach me how to have a relationship with a man.
Love from two women did not teach me how to be a wife.
If anything, love from two women taught me all the wrong things and made my relationships with the opposite sex harder and more complicated.
Love is not all you need.
Brandi
The Lesbian's Daughter 
This is both a sad and well needed article. So many say the world needs love more, but what the world, what people need is truth. Truth is love and a lie is hatred. Stay strong.
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Thank you, William.
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I think you are a hero who gives a voice to the victims of same sex marriage. I am amazed too that anyone would try to tell you that you have not right to express what your experience was. They did not live it, you did.
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Thank you, Keri. You are too kind.
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Doesn’t make any sense that people are unwilling to the voice of experience. I mean I can understand someone being told off because they are quoting facts and figures and stuff that seems so remote from personal experience but how one can disregard personal experience is baffling.
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They do it all the time. And then try to throw “facts and figures” at us to prove why we’re wrong and need to “get therapy and grow up.” It’s irritating to put it nicely.
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Brandi, thank you so much for having the courage to share your own personal story regarding life as the daughter of a lesbian. My Mom came out as a lesbian when I was ten and my Dad came out as transgendered in my mid-twenties. (He has since undergone several surgeries and procedures to change his sex.) Both of my parents showed me love in so many ways I’m grateful for. Like any parent, they weren’t perfect, but there was no doubt they loved me. I really could devote paragraphs to the wonderful ways they demonstrated their love.
This doesn’t take away from the reality that both of their decisions have had a profound impact on me. It has been heart wrenching and difficult.
For years, I’ve carried this pain privately, until I cam across your blog and a couple of others. It’s quite comforting to know I’m not alone. Underneath the umbrella of love my parents had for me, there are the several nitty gritty ways I suffered as the child of a lesbian (and the later the son of a transgendered).
I really appreciate you giving a voice to our pain. You’re story brings me the comfort of knowing I’m not alone and inspiration to share my story publicly here for the first time in my life.
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John, I would love to talk privately. Is it ok if I send you an email?
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I’m gay and my straight parents didn’t teach me how to be in a relationship with a man. I managed to figure it out by myself. I also paid attention to my parents loving relationship with each other and me. Unless you have parents who hate each other, what couldn’t you learn from your moms relationship? I foster/adopted. My son is 8 years old now and i’m pretty sure he’s straight. I can never teach him how to be in a relationship with a specific person, he needs to figure that out on his own. I can show him how I live in my loving relationship and guide him with how to treat people properly. Did your parents not do that for you?
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Thank you for speaking out.
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No hard feelings, but you seem like a spoiled, ungrateful brat.
“For the record, I had plenty of love. If anything, I was too loved. Too coddled. Too shielded.” – just stop and think how many children would give everything just to be loved and to have home? Your moms obviously spoiled you and now they can enjoy results of such upbringing.
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So which is it Johnny? Is being too coddled a good thing or bad? Is it something one should be thankful for, or something that makes one a brat? I agree with Brandi. Years of social science have proven the most stable home environment a child can grow up in is one where they are raised by both their biological mother and father. What science can’t explain is – why exactly it is that fathers make such a difference. But one thing is clear from the data – they do!
That any children would be deprived of that basic human right is shameful.
No hard feelings, but you seem like you could learn a little about common decency and compassion.
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Thank you for writing. I don’t feel like I have anything useful to add to that, just thank you for being willing to write this.
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Thank you for taking the time to thank me. It means a lot.
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HI Brandi,
first of all, sorry if my English isn’t perfect but it’s not my first language. I’ve just read your article on the Federalist site, and you really struck a chord with me.
Even though my mom is not lesbian, she left my father when I was 3 months old and, although we maintained a relationship, I was basically raised by her and I vividly remember thinking that she and my older sister were my only family.
My father was, in my little world, someone who I would meet once a week for, like, 2 hours. Yes, I knew he was my father but I didn’t knew what that meant…And, just like you, not have ever lived with a man,and being surrounded by women, gave a me a strange perspective on the world which, later, landed me in a very very sick and abusive relationship which I had the strength to escape only when it became physically dangerous.
Only recently, at the ripe age of 35 y.o., I’m connecting the dots and try to make sense of all my insecurities and odd ways of thinking about men and relationships. Of course there would be so much to tell, I just wanted to let you know that you are perfectly right: I was always coddled, almost inundated with feminine love, but, no, love is not enough, a baby need two sides of what being human means and those two sides can only be provided for by a man and a woman.
We have been told a lie, that divorce doesn’t create consequences, not even for infants who are basically raised by single parents (it would have been very different, I think, if my parents divorced when I was at least a teen) and now, they are trying to make us accept another lie, that “all you need is love” and you could be raised by two men, two women,or even 18 people, as a very clear headed politician advocated in my country, without seriously harming the children.
Thanks for what you are doing, you rock, please keep going and spreading the truth!
Flavia
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